North Carolina State University Athletics
Wolfpack Hopes to Stay Calm in Cameron
1/14/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 14, 2004
By Tony Haynes
Raleigh, N.C.-NC State's veteran players know full well what they'll be getting into on Thursday night. Seniors like Marcus Melvin and Scooter Sherrill have made the trip to Duke's raucous Cameron Indoor three times. Wolfpack junior Julius Hodge has two starts there. But knowing what to expect won't make the assignment any easier. Bolstered by their home court crowd referred to as the "Crazies," the 2nd ranked Blue Devils (12-2, 2-0) have run off 34 consecutive wins at Cameron, a streak that currently ranks as the second longest of its kind in the country.
The non-stop crowd noise combined with Duke's pressure defense and overall talent level are usually enough to create an environment that has been known to make life very uncomfortable for visiting teams. And it doesn't just start when the Blue Devils go on one of their patented runs.
"It's a tough place to play," said NC State head coach Herb Sendek, who will be shooting for his 200th career coaching victory on Thursday. "All the factors that you need for that are present. First and foremost, they have a really good team on the floor. If you had just a loud crowd but you had a bad team on the court, you might be able to play through that. What they have is a great team on the floor and they have one of the best home courts in college basketball with the fans and the close proximity. Their crowd doesn't wait until something good happens, either. It's not like their crowd gets going after they make a play. They get going when you get off the bus. When you get off the bus and go in to get changed, they're already revved up."
Revved up and ready to join their team in creating misery for the opponent.
And what's the toughest part of the Cameron experience? Is it the crowd or the intense pressure Duke exerts from the opening tap?
"It's both," said Wolfpack forward Levi Watkins. "Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] is a good coach. He always prepares his players and they always play hard all the time. Then with the crowd, they're loud and making noise on every bounce of the ball. That together makes it a great challenge to win over there."
Something NC State (9-2, 2-0) hasn't done since 1995, the year that Krzyzewski sat out the second half of the season for medical reasons.
This time around, the Wolfpack is hanging its hat on its recent success this season along with the competitiveness with which it played Duke last year. Fresh off a big conference road win at Florida State, the Pack has played its best basketball lately and has won four in a row. Last January, State snapped a 13-game losing streak in the series when it downed Duke in Raleigh, 80-71. Later in March in the ACC championship game, the Wolfpack led the Blue Devils by as many as 15 points in the second half before an incredible shooting exhibition by J.J. Redick, who had 30 points, helped Duke come back to post an 84-77 victory.
"We talk about that all the time," Watkins said in reflecting back on last year's ACC tourney final. "J.J. Redick just took over the game in the second half. We felt like we were a better team than them last year and we felt like we had that game. We let an ACC Championship get away."
But as painful as that loss may have been, Watkins also believes it will give NC State some extra confidence when it runs up against Duke for the first time since that contest.
"Just knowing that we can play with them on any given night helps us out a lot," he said. "We're very confident that we can beat them. We know that they're a good team, especially at Cameron Indoor. But we feel that we can beat them."
Watkins' confidence in the Wolfpack is actually shared by the opposing coach. Long an admirer of the defensive abilities and effort level of Sendek coached teams at NC State, Krzyzewski respects the fact that his Blue Devils were engaged in some big time battles with the Wolfpack last season.
"This is a very good NC State team, the same type of team we've played in the ACC championship the last two years," Krzyzewski said. "I think Herb has really taken his program to a very high level."
And the Wolfpack will have to play at an extremely high level to stay close on Thursday. Along with its current home court winning streak, Duke has won nine in a row this year by average margin of 27.3 points.
Along with forcing more than 18 turnovers per game, the Blue Devils also do a good job of taking away the 3-point shot, which is often the great equalizer for underdog teams in college basketball. In 13 games this season, Duke has limited its opponents to a total of 172 3-point attempts, a figure that is dramatically lower than anyone else in the ACC. And of those 172 attempts, only 29.7 percent have actually gone in the basket.
"I would surmise that that's something they try to do," Sendek responded when asked about Duke's propensity to take away the 3-point shot. "They go into a game saying 'we don't want these guys taking 3s. We want them to beat us some other way.' I think that's part of their mentality."
NC State, of course, has made the 3-point shot a major part of its offensive arsenal. But with Duke pushing out and denying on the perimeter on Thursday, chances are that the Wolfpack will end up with fewer 3-point tries than usual.
Redick (14.6 ppg.) is Duke's leading scorer followed closely by freshman wingman Luol Deng (14.4). Center Shelden Williams (11.5), guard Daniel Ewing (10.9), and senior guard Chris Duhon (10.2) are also averaging double figures.
The ACC's leading scorer is NC State's Hodge, who is putting up 18.9 points and 7.4 rebounds per contest. Melvin (13.6 and 7.5) and Sherrill (10.6) are next in line on the Wolfpack scoring list.
