North Carolina State University Athletics
Tony Haynes: Respect Goes Both Ways
12/20/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 20, 2004
By Tony Haynes
Seattle - On Sunday night inside a boisterous Bank of America Arena, the Washington Huskies got their win and the respect that will no doubt go with it. Prior to edging NC State 68-64, the Huskies turned themselves into a college basketball version of Rodney Dangerfield, claiming that the national acclaim due them would only come with a win over a nationally ranked team from the ACC. But Washington wasn't the only team that earned a little respect on Sunday night. Even in a losing cause, NC State did nothing to tarnish the notion that it too can be a very good basketball team before this quest for March Madness is over.
On a night when it didn't shoot the ball particularly well and often had difficulties rebounding out of its two-three zone defense, the Wolfpack showed that it was tough enough and resilient enough to still put itself in a position to win in one of the most hostile environments it will encounter all year.
There's every reason to believe that many of the good shooters who were misfiring in Seattle on Sunday will eventually find the range, just as they did last season when the Wolfpack posted a second place finish in the ACC. Improved offensive production combined with the heart NC State showed against the Huskies could eventually become a difficult combination to beat.
"Our guys battled," said Wolfpack head coach Herb Sendek. "They showed a lot of fortitude. I'm really proud of the effort. We can clean up some of the execution parts and build on it."
The season is long and Sendek knows as much as anybody that there are going to be bumps in the road along the way. As shocking is this may sound to some, NC State was not going to become the first team since Indiana in 1976 to win `em all. Washington was primed and ready on Sunday. This was a game the Huskies and their followers had been pointing towards for months, and their eagerness clearly showed both on the court and in the stands.
Playing in front of a standing room only throng of 10,000, Washington took the energy of the crowd and turned up the heat defensively. Bumping, grinding and hand-checking, the Huskies spent much of the game in an aggressive, over-playing man-to-man defense that they hoped would take NC State out of its offense. And while the Wolfpack certainly wasn't at its best offensively, it also showed a certain measure of composure in the face of such suffocating pressure.
"I thought we handled the pressure pretty well for the most part," Sendek said. "To come in here and face that kind of pressure, in this environment and come away with just 11 turnovers is pretty darned good. What we didn't do was handle it down the homestretch of the game when they took away our first option. We just didn't stay with it to get to a second or a third option. Instead we kind of went off on our own and didn't turn those possessions into conversions."
One key possession took place with less than a minute to play. With NC State trailing by only two points, Ilian Evtimov caught the ball on the block and tried a sweeping hook shot that bounced long off the rim. When the rebound was tapped out to Washington's Tre Simmons, the Huskies got an old-fashioned 3-point play on a layup and foul.
But after a couple of Washington misses at the free throw line and an Engin Atsur 3-pointer, the Pack was behind by only two at 66-64 with 12.9 second left. Then, after Huskies star Nate Robinson missed short on the front end of a one and one, NC State put the ball in the hands of its best player in hopes of getting the game into overtime. Just as he has done so many times before, Julius Hodge beat his man to the left baseline and went hard to the rim. As he tried to put up what would have been a tying basket, there appeared to be heavy contact to the body, with the ball bouncing off Hodge and out of bounds. But with the NC State bench screaming for a foul, the ball was awarded to the Huskies by the PAC 10 officiating crew working the game.
"We couldn't have asked for a better shot in that situation with Julius going with his strong hand to the basket in the open floor like that," said Sendek. "He's as good as anyone in the country in that situation. Boy, he was right there and we certainly felt like he got hit on that play, but it wasn't called."
It wasn't called and perhaps that's part of the pitfalls of playing on the road, especially against a non-conference opponent that has officials from its league working the game. But then again, no one should assume that Hodge would have stepped up to the line and made both free throws, especially since he has been struggling from the stripe over the first nine games.
"On the last play, coach put the ball in my hands and I couldn't convert for us," said Hodge, who finished with 15 points. "Never mind if it was a foul or not, I still have to make the shot in that situation. It's the end of the game and I hurt us."
Hodge, of course, was being a little tough on himself. There were numerous points during the course of the game where NC State could have made an open shot here or gotten a rebound there, plays that in a close game that would have made all the difference in the world.
A perfect example occurred late in the first half. Up by three points, NC State was looking for the last shot of the half. Perhaps in a moment of freshmen exuberance, however, Andrew Brackman tried a 3-point shot from the right corner with 12 seconds left on the clock. After getting the ball back, Brackman then missed a short jumper with the ball bouncing into the hands of Washington's Will Conroy. With less than two seconds left in the half and about 90 feet between Conroy and the basket, there was no chance the Huskies would get a shot off. But Washington caught a break when Evtimov, playing hard, inadvertently stumbled into the Huskies guard for a foul. Conroy made both free throws with just 1.9 seconds left in the half, two points that certainly loomed large at the end of the game.
But Sendek and his team can't afford to play the `what if' game, not with another road tilt coming up against Brigham Young on Tuesday night.
"We've already talked about it," Sendek said. "There's nothing we can do that can bring back [Sunday night's game]. We're going to move quickly and with great focus so that we can be ready to play in another challenging environment."
And this time, the Pack will try to earn more respect by getting back on the winning track.
