North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State
Clemson
NC State Clobbers Clemson, 78-56
2/2/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb 2, 2003
By Tony Haynes
Raleigh, N.C.--There were times on Sunday when it looked like Clemson and NC State were playing a game of "whatever you can do, I can do better." With tough, acrobatic shots going in on each end of the court, both clubs shot over 60 percent in the second half. The Wolfpack (12-5, 5-2), however, was virtually unstoppable, hitting 68 percent (17-of-25) of its second half attempts in an impressive 78-56 victory over the Tigers (11-6, 1-6) in front of a crowd of 15, 429 at the RBC Center.
Held to just two points on 1-of-5 shooting in the opening half, Pack forward Julius Hodge broke loose after intermission, scoring 18 of his game-high 20 points on a 6-of-7 touch from the floor. But Hodge was hardly a one-man show. Rebounding nicely from a hip pointer sustained in Thursday's game at Maryland, NC State center Josh Powell made all eight of his field goal attempts in a 17-point outing. In laying claim to second place in the ACC standings, the Wolfpack also got 15 points from Marcus Melvin and 11 from Scooter Sherrill.
Often executing to near perfection against the Clemson zone, NC State piled up 24 assists on 29 baskets for the game, and had only two of its 12 turnovers in the second half.
"I thought we really shared the ball and really made a special effort to play together and make the extra pass," said NC State head coach Herb Sendek. "I thought in large part that was spearheaded by Cliff Crawford. I thought he did a terrific job of running our team as a point guard. I give him a great deal credit. But the guys really played as one"
Crawford's orchestration produced seven points, four rebounds, seven assists and only one turnover in 37 steady minutes. The senior also made his presence felt on the defensive end of the floor, where he contributed to holding Clemson star Edward Scott to 12 hard-earned points.
"Whenever [Crawford] has the break, he'll run the break, but when he has to slow it down and get us in our offense he'll do that," Melvin said. "He's just been doing a great job lately of reading the conditions on the court."
Even after jumping out to an early 13-2 lead on the strength of two 3-pointers by Sherrill and another by Melvin, NC State couldn't shake free of the pesky Tigers, who managed to get a stick-back basket from Hobbs at the end of the first half to make it an eight-point game (32-24) at the break. But following a pair of free throws by Sharrod Ford that brought Clemson within six at the outset of the second half, Hodge caught fire, scoring seven straight points on a pair of layups and a 3-point shot to give NC State a 39-26 lead with just over 18 minutes to play.
 North Carolina State's Julius Hodge (24) celebrates with teammate Marcus Melvin (54).  |
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"It really was a tale of two halves for Julius," Sendek said. "He didn't play nearly as well as he's capable of in the first half. In the second half, he was back to his form."
And with the ACC's leading scorer setting the tone, the entire NC State team was in top form, at one point making 14-of-18 shots to begin the second half. But it took awhile for the Wolfpack to finally apply the knockout punch against a Clemson team that drained 12-of-16 shots during that same stretch. Never closer than 11 points over the last 18 minutes, the Tigers couldn't make a run to make it interesting, not with the Pack burying shot after shot from both inside and out.
"Very clearly, they made timely shots," said Clemson head coach Larry Shyatt. "To be perfectly blunt, I thought we made some real good attempts to get back in the game. Countless times, they made big shots. Sometimes not quite from the people we expected, but they were good shots."
Shyatt was no doubt referring to a couple of perimeter jumpers Powell made near the end of the shot clock on back-to-back possessions. The first, a tough turnaround 18-footer went through just as the horn sounded. On the next trip down, the 6-9 sophomore drained a 3-pointer from the top of the key to give the Pack a 72-52 advantage with 2:00 left.
The zone that Shyatt had hoped would limit NC State's dribble penetration backfired as the Pack finished 14-of-31 from the arc.
"We were hoping that they would get between 25 and 30 threes, and hoped they would miss a lot more," Shyatt said. "We felt that they had really beaten people off the dribble and broken people down hard in many of their recent games."
Said Melvin: "The zone kind of seemed passive to me so I tried to find open guys and the rest of my teammates tried to find open guys. That really helped us out because the zone really didn't seem like it was all that aggressive."
Scott was the only Clemson player to finish in double figures, although the Tigers did shoot 65 percent from the floor and 50 percent for the game. NC State, which would knock down 56.9 percent for the game, outrebounded the muscular Tigers 23-22. The Pack also got a nice contribution from freshman Cameron Bennerman, who tallied eight points in just nine minutes on the floor.
