North Carolina State University Athletics
Tony Haynes: Nothing Settled for Pack
1/14/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
BY TONY HAYNES
Raleigh, N.C. Forty-eight hours after absorbing a 31-point loss at top-ranked North Carolina and a day before it was to play another nationally ranked ACC team on the road, NC State was still picking up the pieces on Monday.
Now 11-4 overall and 0-1 in the ACC, the Wolfpack will face off against No. 18 Clemson (13-3, 1-1) Tuesday night in Death Valley. Tip time is set for 7 p.m.
If coach Sidney Lowe didn’t have his team’s attention before, he certainly got it during an intense practice session on Sunday afternoon. Let’s put it this way: no one on the NC State basketball team was sitting back on the sofa enjoying the NFL Playoffs.
“We worked hard,” Lowe said. “There was a lot of teaching of game situations and showing guys basically what teams are doing to us. We have to play the right way, which means making the right pass and making the simple pass and easy plays. Obviously, the hustle game we have to win. Yesterday was a good hard practice.”
Lowe’s biggest concern in the aftermath of the
“From an offensive standpoint in that first half, we didn’t pass the basketball the way we should have,” Lowe said. “We forced a lot of shots. Whether it was because guys were eager to get things done or too pumped up, we just didn’t play the right way. We watched the film where we saw we had a number of opportunities to swing the ball, but we didn’t do it. We held it and took a tough shot.”
And though NC State seemed to eliminate some of those problems by shooting 58 percent in a 49-point second half, it was already too little, too late.
Lowe said on Monday that he was considering some line-up changes, although those changes probably wouldn’t involve using either two-guard Courtney Fells or wing forward Gavin Grant at the point guard spot.
“I’m looking at a number of positions, and haven’t made any decisions yet,” said Lowe. “We need to try to get off to a good start and at some point need to find that group that’s going to be that good starting group. It’s still better for us having Courtney playing his natural position and Gavin playing his natural position. At this point we haven’t thought about that, but it’s not something I would rule out down the road.”
More than likely, if a change is made in the starting line-up at the point guard spot, it would simply involved the two players that have been trying to hold down the ship since Farnold Degand left the line-up with a season-ending knee injury in December. Freshman Javier Gonzalez started at UNC, but Marques Johnson played more minutes with 23.
When Engin Atsur was out with a hamstring pull last year, both Grant and Fells tried their hand at running point. Neither player was very comfortable when asked to abandon their natural positions. Of course, Lowe had no choice last season since he really didn’t have any other point guards on his roster. While Gonzalez and Johnson have struggled to score points and dish out assists, they they have managed to take pretty good care of the basketball. Johnson had zero turnovers in his 23 minutes against
Taking care of the basketball will be among the many challenges NC State will face when it meets a Clemson team that applies fullcourt pressure for 40 minutes. The Tigers force an average of 18 turnovers per game, a figure that ranks fourth in the ACC.
Another stat that will grab Lowe’s attention: Clemson leads the league with an average of 16 offensive rebounds per game. For an NC State team that has had all kinds of problems keeping teams off the offensive glass, the Tigers and their board crashers could cause all kinds of problems.
“We’re trying to just get back at it and bounce back from a tough loss over at
