North Carolina State University Athletics
Fells' 23 Leads MBB Over High Point, 69-56
11/22/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. When the NC State men’s basketball team needs an injection of energy, it turns to Courtney Fells.
In the eyes of Wolfpack head coach Sidney Lowe, it’s similar to the way the Wolfpack football team feeds off the play of redshirt freshman quarterback Russell Wilson.
So Saturday night, when Lowe’s team needed to step up its intensity against High Point at Reynolds Coliseum, the coach turned to Fells, the senior from Shannon, Mis., to energize the team. He did so with a game-high 23 points, which included some of Fells’ high-flying dunks and a perfect 6-for-6 performance at the free-throw line.
On the night, Fells made seven of his 11 field goals and three of his five 3-point goals as the Wolfpack (2-0) recorded a 69-56 victory over the Panthers in front of 6,200 fans.
Besides Fells, the Pack also got a little boost from its football brethren, who arrived after tip-off, fresh from their biggest win (41-10) over North Carolina since 1989.
The Panthers owned a 17-13 lead when redshirt freshman quarterback Russell Wilson entered the building to a big ovation. Over the next six minutes, the Wolfpack went on a 16-7 run to go ahead 29-21.
At a timeout two minutes before halftime, about a dozen members of the football team walked on the court to encourage fans to attend Saturday’s regular-season finale against Miami.
Even Lowe was standing on the sidelines clapping for the football team.
“I was still into the game, but you have to acknowledge a win like that,” Lowe said.
State maintained its lead, 36-29, at intermission.
Early in the second half, sophomore Javi Gonzalez, in the starting lineup to replace injured point guard Farnold Degand, knocked down back-to-back 3-pointers to push his team’s lead to double figures.
Fells then took over to increase that lead to as many as 20 points.
“Courtney is our Russell Wilson, a guy who took us on his back and said Guys, this is what we are doing,’” Lowe said.
Fells has no problem taking on the added responsibility of scoring leader and emotional leader, especially when he believes his team is playing flat, as it was midway through the first half.
“It was flat out there to me,” Fells said about the first half. “After I scored, I just wanted to get everybody into the game. They were deep with fans. I wanted our fans to out-loud them.
“We kind of picked it up [after the football team arrived] because we knew what they did today. They fought their tails off and won a big game. We just wanted to come out and give Wolfpack fans the same thing.
Senior Ben McCauley joined Fells in double-digit scoring, finishing the game with 12 points. Junior Brandon Costner had nine points and nine rebounds in the game.
High Point’s Nick Barbour led his team with 22 points, followed by 12 from Melvin Crowder.
While the Wolfpack defense gave up 11 3-pointers in the game, the Panthers only made 19 field goals all night and shot just 35.8 percent from the floor. Those were numbers Lowe could live with, since his team nearly matched the 3-point total (9-for-20) and shot 43.4 percent from the floor.
“I thought it was a good win against a good team,” Lowe said. “They had perimeter guys who can really score the ball. We told them they can score the ball against anyone. But they are a volume 3-point shooting team, and I thought we hit a spurt in the second half where we made it tough for them to hit 3s.”
Freshman Julius Mays came off the bench in the first half and contributed a 3-pointer and 14 minutes without a turnover, as Gonzalez went to the bench in early foul trouble.
The Wolfpack plays it first game of the season at the RBC Center on Tuesday against Winthrop at 7 p.m.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
