NC State
Temple
N.C. State Shuts Down Temple, 80-61
1/26/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan 26, 2002
By Tony Haynes
Raleigh, N.C.--Temple played its game in the first half on Saturday, and it wasn't very pretty to watch for the 15,167 fans who gathered at the Entertainment and Sports Arena to watch John Chaney's Owls against NC State. Temple was, well, Temple in the opening 20 minutes. The Owls held the ball for long periods of time, banged the offensive boards and thoroughly frustrated the Wolfpack with their patented matchup zone.
But then, NC State played its game in the second half. And when the Wolfpack got rolling, it was something special to watch. Running, gunning and playing superb pressure defense, the Pack outscored Temple 26-7 over the first 10 minutes of the second half and went on to bury the Owls 80-61.
Trailing 30-27 at the break, NC State put up 53 second half points against a team that was allowing only 68 per game. With the win, the Pack improved to 16-4, its best record through 20 games since the 1975-76 season.
"It was a tale of two halves," said NC State head coach Herb Sendek. "Temple controlled the tempo in the first half with their offense, they beat us on second shots, they beat us to loose balls and we had a difficult time handling the ball against the pressure they were applying in their zone. In the second half, we got things going with our press and our defense became our offense. We really got out in transition and I thought our intensity level was as good as it's been."
Once again, senior guard Anthony Grundy led NC State with 20 points, seven rebounds, three assists and two steals. Freshman forward Ilian Evtimov tied a career-high with 15 points, while Julius Hodge and Archie Miller added 10 apiece.
And while he did help out with his scoring, Hodge did most of his work on the defensive end of the court where he held Temple star Lynn Greer to just four points and 0-11 shooting from the floor. The normally unflappable Greer, who was averaging just 22 points per game coming in, became increasingly frustrated in the second half as he failed time and time again to find an opening against Hodge and the Pack's ironclad man-to-man defense.
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"If you would have said before the game that he (Temple star Lynn Greer) would be 0-for-11 from the field, I would say, are you out of your mind? That's not even conceivable. Julius Hodge did a remarkable job on him."
NC State Head Coach Herb Sendek
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"If you would have said before the game that he would be 0-for-11 from the field, I would say, are you out of your mind? That's not even conceivable," Sendek said. "Julius Hodge did a remarkable job on him."
Greer, who exploded for 47 points against Wisconsin earlier in the season, had no success either shooting over the 6-6 Hodge or driving around him. And on one of the few occasions that he was able to beat Hodge off the dribble in the second half, Grundy was there to draw a charge.
"My strategy was just to keep him in front of me," Hodge said. "I saw a lot of tape of guys guarding him and the one second that they slack off and stand up, he's up with a three-pointer or he's driving right by you. I knew he liked to pump fake before he started his drive, so I just stayed on my feet. I knew he was a very good player and I didn't want to get embarrassed on national television."
Hodge hardly embarrassed himself or his team. Neither did Grundy, who once again showed why he has become one of the best guards in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season. A Grundy rebound and eventual assist to Evtimov for a three-pointer gave the Pack a 32-30 lead with 17:45 remaining.
With Temple (6-12) missing its first 10 shots of the second half, NC State took advantage by rebounding and running, a strategy that helped the Pack get downcourt before the Owls could set up their stingy zone. A Grundy jumper in transition completed a 7-0 run to give the Wolfpack a 39-32 advantage with 14:34 remaining. Pressing after every score, NC State forced the Owls to turn the ball over on five straight possessions during one stretch of the second half. And when Grundy scored on a layup off of a nice feed from Hodge, the Pack was up 53-37 with 10:34 to play. Temple, which shot just 31 percent in the second half, never got closer than 12 the rest of the way. After two Greer free throws cut NC State's lead down to 57-45 with just over eight minutes left, the Wolfpack applied the final knockout punch by going on 13-0 blitz that had the ESA crowd roaring.
"In the second half we just got confident," Hodge said. "In previous games, we would get that 13 point lead and let the other team cut it to six. Today we just kept working and we started to smell a little bit of that killer instinct that we had within us."
Although Greer wasn't scoring, Temple got a surprising performance from guard Brian Polk in the first half. Polk, who was averaging just seven points per game, tallied 16 of his 19 points on a 7-of-8 shooting touch in the opening 20 minutes. The Owls owned a 17-10 rebounding advantage in the first half and forced nine turnovers to grab a three-point lead at the break.
"In think State played extremely well," said Chaney, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last summer. "They did a great job of staying with the script and staying on Lynn. Putting a bigger person on him worked extremely well."
Both of Temple's big men were hampered by injury and illness in Saturday's game. Though he did manage to grab 12 rebounds, starting center Kevin Lyde saw just nine minutes in the second half because of a stomach virus. His backup, 6-10 senior Ron Rollerson, is still recovering from a groin injury and spent only six minutes on the floor.
After being outrebounded badly in the opening half, NC State recovered to own a 33-31 edge on the boards. The Wolfpack made 46.3 percent of its shots, and knocked down 21-of-26 free throws, all coming in the second half.
The Pack, which has now won four in a row and six of its last seven, will host Wake Forest on Wednesday night.
