North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State
Youngstown State
Pack Roars Back To Claim 67-50 Victory
12/16/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 16, 2010
RALEIGH, N.C. – Sidney Lowe was concerned, after watching his team go through the motions of its first practice in a while at the RBC Center Wednesday afternoon, that it might not be focused on the task of playing Youngstown State on Thursday night.
For 20 minutes, that concern was legitimate. The Penguins came into the Wolfpack’s home arena and waddled out to a 20-4 advantage in the first 10 minutes of the first half. A little more than three minutes before the half, Youngstown built its lead to a whopping 18 points.
But Lowe tried to stay calm. He knew if his team stopped taking quick shots, turned up its defensive intensity and began to work through its offensive sets, it would eventually settle down.
It took longer than expected, but thanks to the second-half play of point guards Javi Gonzalez and Ryan Harrow, the Wolfpack eventually erased Youngstown’s lead and overwhelmed the Penguins with a 67-50 victory.
“If you watched me, I was still fairly calm,” Lowe said, a trace of sweat still visible on his brow. “But I was thinking, ‘When are we going to come out of this thing?’ What we were doing was some of our fault. We took some quick shots early. We just talked about getting back to our game.
“In the second half, our defense picked us up. We’ve been talking about that for a while, letting our defense ignite our offense.”
The Wolfpack (6-3 overall) outscored the Penquins 46-16 in the second half, with Gonzalez and Harrow combining to score half those points. Lowe’s team came back by simplifying its game, driving to the hole and drawing fouls. It converted its opportunities at the free-throw line, outscoring the Penguins 27-4 from the charity stripe. And it found ways to get guys other than sophomore Scott Wood open for some 3-point shots.
The Pack made four of its six 3-point shots in the second half, with Wood making only one of them.
Lowe hopes his team, which was playing just its second game in 13 days because of fall-semester final exams, has learned a lesson going into Sunday’s important non-conference home game against Arizona.
“We’re more aware of what we need to do,” Lowe said. “After the game, they were talking about how they have to be focused on Friday and Saturday and get ready for Sunday’s game. It’s a good lesson for the young guys, to realize they have to be focused the day before a game in practice.
“Definitely the young guys saw it.”
In particular, freshman C.J. Leslie came alive for the Wolfpack, matching Harrow’s game-high of 14 points and grabbing a career-high 19 rebounds. He ignited his teammates in the final three minutes of the first half, when the Pack cut Youngstown’s lead to 34-21.
“We knew we had to pick it up,” Leslie said. “We didn’t come out ready, and we didn’t come out mentally focused. We knew we weren’t supposed to be down like that.”
Gonzalez, who scored all 11 of his points in the second half, buckled the team down on defense and began creating more opportunities. After freshman Lorenzo Brown opened the second half with a 3-point basket, Gonzalez added another with 16:41 remaining in the game.
On the Pack’s next trip down the court, Gonzalez missed a hurried 3-pointer as the shot clock sounded, but teammate Jordan Vandenberg was under the basket for a follow dunk that got the crowd back into the game.
Gonzalez made four free throws to tie the game at 37-37 with 12:25 left on the clock, then turned the offense over to Harrow, who scored 10 straight points to give the Wolfpack its first lead of the game.
The Penguins marched on, staying in the game with a couple of three-point play opportunities. The Wolfpack (6-3) overpowered them in the final moments, however, building its lead to as many as 15 points in the game’s final five minutes.
Youngstown made just 22.2 percent of its shots in the second half, while the Pack shot 48.0 percent.
The Wolfpack returns to action Sunday against a couple of familiar faces from Arizona. The 4:45 p.m. contest against the Wildcats is a welcome home for Sean and Archie Miller, the brothers from Pennsylvania who spent more than five years each with the Wolfpack.
Sean Miller, in his second year as Arizona’s head coach, was an assistant at NC State under Herb Sendek, while Archie spent five years as a guard on Sendek’s earliest teams.
• Tim Peeler,mailto:tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
