North Carolina State University Athletics
Back to '83: Whittenburg, Bailey Lift Pack over WVa
12/28/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. When things weren’t going well for No. 17 NC State Tuesday night against
“Get Mom and Dad, and let’s go get some pizza,” the coach told his brother.
Who could blame the coach for not wanting to stick around for such an embarrassing non-conference effort in front of a backyard audience? Valvano, who was born in Queens and grew up in
The Wolfpack opened the game in miserable fashion, as the Mountaineers jumped out to a seven-point lead in the game’s first three minutes. During one stretch, the Wolfpack went more than five minutes without scoring.
It was hardly the kind of bounce-back performance that the coach was looking for a week including a four-day break for Christmas after State lost its first game of the season, last Tuesday at
But that cold streak was immediately followed by a 16-0 outburst that allowed the Pack to build a 32-29 halftime lead. Lowe broke the Wolfpack’s scoring drought with a steal and a layup. Senior Dereck Whittenburg added a pair of free throws and a 3-point jump shot. And sophomore Terry Gannon came off the bench to add another 3-pointer with 1:44 remaining in the half, to give the Wolfpack its first lead in the contest.
Whittenburg, held to just one basket in the first half against a box-and-one defense, exploded in the second half to score a game-high 19 points, leading the Wolfpack to a 67-59 victory.
Three of his jumpers were from beyond the negotiated 3-point line set by the coaches prior to the game of 19 feet, 9 inches from the center of the basket, about a foot longer than the ACC’s line of 19 feet from the back of the basket.
“That shot’s almost normal for me,” Whittenburg said. “I’m normally a 21-22-foot shooter. I love those threes.”
The game was also played with a 35-second shot clock that was turned off with 4:30 remaining in the game, also significantly different from the 30-second shot clock that will is turned off with four minutes to play that the Wolfpack will see in ACC play this season.
However, Whittenburg’s zone-busting shooting was only one component of the Wolfpack’s success against the quicker Mountaineers. Fellow senior Thurl Bailey was the game’s biggest all-around contributor, scoring 18 points, grabbing 12 rebounds and blocking a career-high nine shots against the Mountaineers, coming within one reject of becoming the first NC State player to record an official “triple-double.”
Five of his blocks came in the first half, keeping the Mountaineers from taking advantage of what Bailey called “a horrible start.”
Senior point guard Sidney Lowe also had a big night, with 10 assists and nine points against
The Pack put together another run, this one 10-0, in the second half, thanks to a pair of steals and a Bailey block. Whittenburg scored seven of the 10 points, allowing Valvano’s team to build its biggest lead of the night, 50-37, with 13:45 remaining. The Mountaineers, credited with 19 turnovers against the Wolfpack’s 14 steals, never got closer than five points the rest of the way, though an eight-point scoring run gave West Virginia two 3-point attempts to pull within two points.
But freshman Vernon Odom and Greg Jones both missed their long-range jumpers and the Wolfpack pushed its lead back to double-figures.
By the end of the night, Valvano was glad to be back in his old stomping grounds.
“It was nice to see all the Italians from
It was even nicer, though, to see his team respond to its poor start with such a decisive second half, no matter what the rules were.
“We mixed our defenses and played some zone, some triangle-and-two, things we couldn’t do with the closer ACC 3-point line,” Valvano said. “If you try to play zone under our league rules, you’re giving up outside shots that are too easy. But with the line farther out, you can play zone and that’s what helped us tonight.
“We used that to slow them down a little and take away some of the advantages of their quickness.”
In the end, Valvano came away from the Meadowlands feeling much better than he did after losing to Tennessee-Chattanooga in the first round of last year’s NCAA Tournament, the loss that inspired Valvano to schedule this contest.
“At first there was a tendency for me to think we had not played very well,” Valvano said. “But a couple of things changed my mind. First, they were quicker than I thought. They were a really good team. Secondly, with the clock you will see a game of spurts. College basketball has always been a game of runs and you’re going to see more in a game like this than one which is 39-36.
“I saw this as a directional game for us. I felt it would determine where this team was going. There were two good teams coming off losses so anything could have happened.
Now, the Wolfpack returns home after its two-game road trip to face Farleigh-Dickinson on Jan. 2 at Reynolds Coliseum. It will be the final tune-up before a brutal January schedule kicks in that includes games at Clemson, at
“This gets us through December at 5-1 and I’m very pleased with that against the scheduled we’ve played,” Valvano said. “But it’s going to get tougher.”
NOTES: Valvano reported some disturbing news from back home freshman George McClain, one of the team’s biggest early season surprises, has been diagnosed with bacterial spinal meningitis, which he contracted in his hometown of Rocky Mount, N.C., over the Christmas break. McClain’s status for the near future is undetermined and Valvano said after Tuesday game that McClain may be redshirted. McClain played well in the season’s first three games, until suffering a severe ankle sprain in the game against
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
