North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Pack Optimistic in 1st-Round Game Vs. Duke
3/8/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
TAMPA, Fla. – Duke goes into today’s matchup against NC State without one of its top players, freshman forward Gerald Henderson, who is serving a one-game suspension following his ejection from Sunday’s regular-season finale against North Carolina.
Wolfpack coach Sidney Lowe can commiserate with his counterpart, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. Lowe was without senior point guard Engin Atsur on Jan. 20, when the Blue Devils blitzed the Wolfpack at the RBC Center, 79-56. For the Blue Devils, it was a near perfect game for an imperfect team.
For the Wolfpack, it was the biggest margin of defeat of the season, home or away. Lowe believes that might have been different if Atsur was playing the point. Instead, the Wolfpack relied on both junior Gavin Grant and sophomore Courtney Fells, neither of whom is a natural point guard, to bring the ball up the court.
State had 16 turnovers in the first half alone, 20 for the game. To make matters worse, the Pack finished the game shooting just 34.1 percent from the field. It was an all-round bad day for Lowe and his team, a game they would just as soon forget.
But much of that had to do with the absence of Atsur, who missed 13 games with a hamstring injury he suffered in a November contest against Michigan. He’s been back since early February and should be at 100 percent going into today’s 7 p.m. contest between the 10th-seeded Wolfpack and the seventh-seeded Blue Devils at the St. Pete Times Forum, the third game of the 54th-annual ACC Tournament.
“We are a different NC State team without Engin,” Lowe said. “He is our leader, our general. We didn’t have that calmness when we played them that first time. We had guys who were trying to play point guard against a very good ball club and they would go out and pressure us. Certainly having Engin in there, we should play a little better.”
Atsur watched the earlier Duke game from the sidelines, unable to slow down Duke’s waves of pressure.
“Everything was out of sync,” Atsur said. “This time I am going to be able to play the point and my other teammates are going to be able to play their natural positions. This time, it is going to be a better matchup for us and we are going to try to control the tempo. We are going to be aggressive and try to get this win.”
But not aggressive to the point of being careless, Lowe said.
“This game will still boil down to the same thing as the last one: taking care of the basketball,” he said. “We can’t turn the ball over to them, because they don’t turn it over often and they make their shots.”
The Wolfpack knows the only way it will reach the NCAA Tournament is by winning the whole thing here in Tampa in the ACC Tournament’s first trip to the Sunshine State. Fortunately, the players have heard from multiple coaches on the court what an ACC championship can mean.
Three members of Lowe staff have been on teams in similar situations, including the head coach himself in 1983, when the Wolfpack beat Wake Forest, North Carolina and Virginia en route to its ninth conference champions. Quentin Jackson, the director basketball operations, was on NC State’s 1987 team, which needed wins against Duke, Wake Forest and North Carolina to claim the school’s 10 league title and earn a bid into the NCAA Tournament. And administrative assistant Justin Gainey was a member of the 1997 team that reached the tournament championship game in Charlotte. That run started with an upset over top-seeded Duke and ended with a loss to North Carolina in the title game, ending the Wolfpack’s NCAA hopes. Gainey played in all 160 minutes of action in that four-day span, a tournament record that may stand for a long, long time.
“(Justin) has mentioned it to a couple of our guys, to make them understand how important this thing is,” Lowe said. “Somebody is going to do something like that this year. I don’t know from which team or who it will be, but somebody will, some player or some team will do something special in this event.”
Who knows? It could be the Wolfpack.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
