North Carolina State University Athletics
Hodge Hands over Control, Scoring Lead
1/26/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 26, 2004
By Tony Haynes
Raleigh, N.C.-NC State's Julius Hodge, who so relishes his ability to control the flow of a basketball game, was feeling pretty helpless last Saturday. Spending an inordinate amount of time on the bench because of foul trouble in the second half of the Wolfpack's four-point win over Georgia Tech, the 6-7 junior hardly looked comfortable being relegated to the role of cheerleader. Hodge even went so far as to say a little prayer on the sidelines before teammate Ilian Evtimov calmly drained a pair of free throws with seven seconds left to finally put the Yellow Jackets away.
Torture might be too mild a word to describe what Hodge was going through on Saturday. Unable to have any control over the outcome, his gyrations on the bench spoke volumes. For one of the very few times in his career, Hodge couldn't be the go to guy, the player who is comfortable laying it on the line and having the ball in his hands at crunch time.
He finished with five fouls and two points, a scoring output that was the second lowest of his career. The ACC's top scorer coming into the game, Hodge has now to slipped to the second spot behind North Carolina's Rashad McCants, a fact that will only add a little more spice to Wednesday night's meeting between the Wolfpack and Tar Heels in Chapel Hill.
McCants is now averaging 18.8 points per game thanks to a blistering stretch that has seen him score more than 25 points and hit 59 percent from the floor over UNC's last three games. Hodge's scoring average for the season dipped to 17.7 points following the Tech game.
But scoring averages are irrelevant when compared to the won-loss record. What's more important is that NC State found a way to beat a nationally ranked team on a day when it didn't get very much production out of its top player. Now all alone in second place in the ACC standings with a 4-1 record, the Wolfpack can only gain a collective confidence from knowing that it doesn't always have to rely on Hodge to make every big play down the stretch in a close game.
"It says a lot," said senior forward Marcus Melvin, who came up big with 18 points and 12 rebounds against the Jackets. "Julius will go back and re-focus and come back ready for our next game. We all understand that he's not going to be at his best all the time, so we have to be there to pick it up."
Pack and Heels Prepare for 203rd Meeting: For one of the few times in the long series, NC State is in the midst of a significant winning streak. The Pack has knocked of the Tar Heels four straight times, its most successful streak against UNC since NC State won nine in a row during the David Thompson era of the mid-70s. Since the Dean Smith Center opened in 1986, the Wolfpack has walked out of Chapel Hill on the winning side a total of four times. Current head coach Herb Sendek owns three of those four victories, while Les Robinson picked up the other in 1992....North Carolina and NC State own the two best assists-to-turnover ratios in the ACC. The Heels are averaging 20 assists and 15.4 turnovers per game while the Wolfpack averages 16.5 assists and 14.1 turnovers per contest...NC State continues to be the league's top free throw shooting team with an accuracy rate of 78.5 percent. The only downside of that particular statistic is that the Wolfpack has made the fewest trips to the stripe with an average of 18.2 per game.
