North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: A Perfect Senior Night For Clark
3/1/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
RALEIGH – Justin Clark didn’t find out that he would be starting in his regular-season home finale until about 15 minutes before tip-off. He sort of had an idea, since he had worked out with the first team most of this week in practice.
But it wasn’t until Sidney Lowe – who didn’t want to make Clark nervous by giving him too much advanced notice – pulled him aside and told him he would be in the starting lineup that Clark knew for sure.
And he went out and made the most of his opportunity.
Usually, when a coach starts a senior walk-on like Clark – who had played in exactly five minutes in four previous games – he can’t wait to get him out of the game. Some coaches call time-out at the first dead ball, just to insert the regulars into the game.
Clark – who played high school basketball in Artesia, N.M., and came to NC State after his family moved to Charlotte in 2003 – helped the Wolfpack get off to a fast start by getting the first assist of his career on the Wolfpack’s second basket of the night.
He scored the first points of his career a few minutes later, taking advantage of Wake Forest’s decision to leave him unguarded in the lane. Clark stayed in after the first official time out, and he went back in midway through the first half. He played almost as much in the second half as he did in the first, continuing to give his teammates a lift on the defensive end of the court. In all, he had six points, four assists and one rebound in his remarkable 22 minutes of play.
“He earned the right to stay in there,” said Lowe, who gave game balls to Clark and former walk-on senior Bryan Nieman, who was also in the starting lineup. “I didn’t know how long I was going to play those guys, but once I saw how we got started, I was going to ride them on out and let them play.
“And, if you noticed Justin, when he came out, he didn’t go down to the end of the bench. He was ready to go back in.”
His contributions were necessary in the 73-66 victory, primarily because regular starters Engin Atsur and Ben McCauley were in foul trouble in much of the game and sophomore Courtney Fells saw just 22 minutes of action.
For Clark, a senior in civil engineering just a few months away from graduation, it was an outcome that exceeded his wildest expectations. He was a good player at Artesia High School, where he was in the same graduating class as Abbie Sims, the top pitcher on NC State’s ACC-champion softball team. He even played three games at “The Pit,” the building where Lowe and his Wolfpack teammates won the 1983 NCAA Championship in Albuquerque, N.M.
But Clark hadn’t played in three years, not until he joined in an open tryout last October, when Lowe was scouring campus trying to find some more bodies to fill out his roster. Clark signed up, got noticed and was placed on the roster, along with senior Kenneth Pittman of Rocky Mount and junior Chad Williams of Greensboro.
Clark played in more games than the other two, but the only statistic he had prior to Wednesday night came from a foul he committed earlier in the season. Things were different, though, against the Demon Deacons. He bounded onto the floor during introductions and played intense defense when the game began, just as his teammates expected.
“To tell you the truth, sometimes I hate going against him in practice because he is so physical on defense,” McCauley said. “He is a horse down there and he showed it. He played a great game.”
Clark was excited to be in the game, but he was also focused on getting a win for Atsur and ending the Wolfpack’s four-game Senior Game losing streak.
“The team goal was pretty much to send Engin out with a win, because he has worked hard for four years and we wanted to send him out with a win,” Clark said. “[But getting to play as much as I did] was over and beyond what I expected.”
But it was a special night. Clark could even hear his mother, Jackie Mills, yelling for him in the corner.
“This whole game was a dream come true for him,” Mills said as the clock wound down. “It was a wonderful night.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
