North Carolina State University Athletics
Myers FTs Leads White to 83-81 Win over Red
11/16/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 16, 1982
BY TIM PEELER
Given that he just watched the Red team, featuring seniors Sidney Lowe, Dereck Whittenburg and Thurl Bailey, lose to the White team, 83-81, you’d think the coach might be a little worried about the Wolfpack’s prospects for the coming year.
Not so at all.
“We have so much more depth this year,” Valvano said after his team’s third Red-White scrimmage of the preseason. “We have competition for the first time. This is a good club. The only thing is that we have to play two different styles. Last year, we found the perfect style for that team and we won 22 games.”
The Wolfpack, like much of the ACC, played a controlled game that relied on multiple zone defenses to suppress scoring. Valvano’s team was third in the nation in points allowed per game, but last in the ACC in scoring offense.
Valvano vows to play that same style in non-conference games that aren’t played under the ACC’s experimental rules of a 19-foot 3-point shot and a 30-second shot clock. But, with an experienced backcourt and a deep bench, he is also ready to speed up the tempo in games featuring those experimental rules.
In Wednesday night’s game, two players stole the show, the Red’s Thurl Bailey, who led all players with 34 points, and the White’s Ernie Myers. Bailey, the 6-11 senior forward, had two game-tying baskets in the final 50 seconds of the contest, while Myers scored the last two of his 24 points in separate trips to the free-throw line in the game’s final 13 seconds.
But the coach is struggling to decide who will play with Bailey in the frontcourt. Sophomores Cozell McQueen and Lorenzo Charles entered the season as projected starters, but junior college transfer Alvin Battle is also in the mix. Valvano says the inexperienced frontline is improving, but still has a long way to go if it is going to improve on last year’s 22-10 record and advance farther in the post-season than last year’s one-and-done performance in the NCAA Tournament.
“We are not consistent yet,” Valvano said. “I am happy that people think highly of us, but we are not playing well. We are still finding out things about ourselves. The last two years, I have really felt we were ready to play going into the start of the season. But we are certainly not playing like a top 20 club right now.”
Valvano and his team have nearly two weeks to figure things out: They open the 1982-83 season on Nov. 29 against
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
