Every year someone posts the NCSU basketball Blue Ribbon preview for those of us who can't afford ESPN Insider. Anyone out there want to help us out? (If someone already posted it I'm sorry but I couldn't find it.)

11/10/2008 10:28:44 PM

COACH AND PROGRAM

Sidney Lowe can file the 2007-08 season, his second at his alma mater, under "Lessons Learned."

The former NC State point guard and two-time NBA head coach had some significant issues to deal with, not the least of which was dissecting why his team, picked to fin-ish third in the ACC last year, faltered so badly down the stretch, losing its last nine games in what had started out as a promising season. When it was over, the Pack had its first losing season since 2001 and was last in the league.

NC State Wolfpack
Last Season 19-15 (.559)
Conference Record 4-12 (t-11th)
Starters Lost/Returning 2/3
Coach Sidney Lowe (St. Paul's '06)
Record At School 35-32 (2 years)
Career Record 35-32 (2 years)
RPI Last 5 years 15-65-51-89-103

The Wolfpack had talent -- especially in forward J.J. Hickson (14.8 ppg, 8.5 rpg, 1.5 bpg), a freshman from Atlanta who came in and led the team in scoring and rebound-ing. But just as quickly, as many had anticipated, Hickson left for the NBA after just one year, the only ACC underclassman to stay in the draft. He was taken as the 19th overall pick by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

PLAYERS

While Hickson's brief career started with a bang -- he scored 33 points in the season opener -- his presence in the lane drew lots of defensive attention. That affected the way the Wolfpack ran Lowe's flex offense, which relied heavily the year before on pick-and-roll plays between then-point guard Engin Atsur and interior players Ben McCauley and Brandon Costner. They perfected that play by the end of the 2007 season, and that's what enabled Lowe to take his team to the ACC Tournament championship game in his first year as coach.

Despite high expectations, Lowe knew replacing Atsur at the point would be the biggest challenge facing last year's team, and a mixture of youth, inexperience and bad fortune turned the play-making position into a mess that had to be pasted and spackled together throughout the season.

The list of things that went wrong for the Wolfpack began in the summer when Costner, coming off his MVP-worthy performance at the ACC Tournament, injured his right knee while trying out for USA Basketball's Pan American Games team. He was unable to continue his off-season workout and training regimen, causing him to gain weight and stopping the momentum he had after scoring 90 points in the Wolfpack's four-day run to the championship game.

It continued when incoming point-guard recruit Javi Gonzalez suffered a wrist injury to his shooting hand that required surgery and forced him to miss the early part of preseason practice. The loss of freshman recruit Johnny Thomas to a knee injury that sidelined him for the entire season further cut into the Wolfpack's roster.

But the biggest problem came on Dec. 23 when sophomore point guard Farnold Degand (#12, 6.9 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 2.9 apg) -- who had started the team's first 10 games at the point, leading the Pack to a 7-3 record, which included the championship of the Old Spice Classic in Orlando -- suffered a season-ending knee injury during the team's road win at Cincinnati.

That forced Gonzalez (#10, 3.8 ppg, 1.8 rpg, 2.1 apg, 1.0 spg) and Tennessee transfer Marques Johnson (who didn't become eligible until mid-December) to take over the point-guard position, something that neither was quite ready to do at that point in the season. Gonzalez was thrown into the starting lineup and looked slightly overwhelmed as the Wolfpack opened its ACC schedule with games at Clemson and North Carolina.

He improved greatly as the season progressed and was a serviceable point guard by season's end. By then, however, other problems began affecting the team's per-formance.

"I think you saw a young man as the season grew and did a nice job for us," Lowe said. "I expect him to come back and be better this year. He's getting more confident and more comfortable with it."

Hickson, easily the team's most talented player, did not exactly fit into Lowe's offense that had been so effective down the stretch the year before. And he had no experienced point guard to put him in position to score. So while he put up good numbers and was obviously a gifted player, Hickson's one-year college career did not bring the success that Lowe hoped.

Costner (#33, 8.5 ppg, 4.6 rpg), a 6-9, 231-pound junior, seemingly overweight and uninterested, did not live up to his preseason expectations. McCauley (#34, 6.1 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 1.5 apg), a 6-9, 237-pound senior whose playing time was most affected by the arrival of Hickson, saw his scoring and rebounding cut in half. It was a team, from all appearances, that did not get along very well.

[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 10:39 PM. Reason : lol]

11/10/2008 10:37:59 PM

Lowe doesn't necessarily buy that analysis, saying that chemistry is simply a matter of each player accepting his role on the team. But it's not hard to infer that he didn't think that happened at times last year.

The coach expects changes this year, even though his team doesn't have the same buzz it did going into last season. He brought in only two recruits, both of whom were ranked in the 150 range among high school seniors. Johnson, who started six games last year at the point, saw that he would likely be down the list of options to start there this year and decided to transfer.

But the Wolfpack will be one of the ACC's more experienced teams, with three seniors (McCauley, Courtney Fells and Simon Harris), a fourth-year junior (Costner) and three juniors (Degand, Horner and Trevor Ferguson) all in the regular rotation.

Lowe took a significant step to help promote team chemistry by arranging an international trip to play a pair of exhibition games over Labor Day weekend. The trip got off to a rocky start when McCauley was left behind for what Lowe called "actions detrimental to the team." But the overall results from the trip were positive, well above the blowout wins over York University (87-47) and the University of Guelph (81-60). Costner scored 49 points and grabbed 23 rebounds in the two games. Junior Dennis Horner (#31, 3.2 ppg, 1.2 rpg), 6-9, came off the bench to score 22 points in the second game.

"Brandon looked like the player he was in March, 2007," Lowe said. "His body is different -- he's lost about 15 pounds and he is in great shape. More than anything else, his mind is there. His mind is on the team and leading."

Both Degand and Thomas (who didn't play in 2007-08) made the trip, but were not yet medically cleared to play, Lowe expects Degand to be at 100 percent by the time practice starts in mid-October, but Thomas may not be ready to go until closer to the start of the season.

Lowe debuted several new looks on the trip to Toronto, including a more aggressive, pressing defense that he believes will work well with the quicker lineup he expects to have on the floor.

"I really liked our aggression and the way we attacked in both games," Lowe said. "We ran and we pounded the offensive boards with two or three guys on every shot."

Degand, the fastest player on the team, will be a big part of a more aggressive defense, but so will the 6-6 Fells (#4, 10.6 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 1.2 apg), who is shifting from the shooting guard position he played the last three years to fill the small forward vacancy left by departed senior Gavin Grant, a starter for three straight seasons. Fells excelled in his new position in the two exhibition games in Toronto, especially on defense and on the offensive boards.

"Courtney made some outstanding defensive plays in the last ball game that were just unbelievable," Lowe said. "He had great hustle the whole time. I am not worried at all about him making that transition. He is so athletic and talented and his mind is set that he wants to be very good."

Fells' move to small forward will create opportunities for both Ferguson (#15, 3.6 ppg, 0.7 rpg), a junior who came off the bench last season to add a deft shooting touch, and perhaps the team's two scholarship freshmen, 6-2 Julius Mays and 6-5 C.J. Williams. Mays is technically a point guard, while Williams is more of a wing player. But Lowe has hinted he could use any combination of his guards in the lineup at any given time.

"I think we are getting two class individuals," Lowe said. "They are not very flashy, but they are solid basketball players. They don't make a lot of mistakes and they have very high basketball IQs. That's what I like about them.

"And they both want to win."

Williams helped Jack Britt High School in Fayetteville, N.C. reach the North Carolina High School Athletic Association's 4-A semifinals, compiling a 27-5 record along the way.

The two-time conference player of the year and two-time second-team all-state selection averaged 24.2 points, 9.6 rebounds and 3.6 blocked shots as a junior but was slowed as a senior by a back injury. But he played all five positions in helping his team reach the state final. For the year, his overall numbers fell (15.7 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 1.9 bpg), but he tripled his average number of assists to 3.5 per game.

Mays, from Marion (Ind.) High School, also had his best season as a junior, but his team advanced farther -- all the way to the state finals -- his senior season. He also had health problem, with his numbers falling to unexplained abdominal pain. In February, he had an emergency appendectomy. When he returned, he played like his old self and his team came within a last-second layup of winning a state championship.

Horner, who proved to be an effective outside shooter as a freshman, will likely be a candidate to come off the bench in the frontcourt, along with 6-8, 240-pound sophomore forward Tracy Smith (#23, 3.3 ppg, 1.6 rpg) and 6-5 senior forward Harris (# 2, 0.6 ppg, 1.0 rpg).

That gives Lowe a solid rotation of nine to 10 experienced players to choose from. None of them are as physically gifted as Hickson, but, as the coach learned last year, college basketball isn't always about who has the best player. It's about how well they accept their roles and come together as a team.

BLUE RIBBON ANALYSIS
BACKCOURT: C
BENCH/DEPTH: B+
FRONTCOURT: B
INTANGIBLES: C

In Lowe's first season at NC State, the Wolfpack was picked to finish last in the league. It looked like that would happen, until the team gelled behind Atsur, who missed a dozen games mid-season with an Achilles injury. When he came back, the team managed to win five ACC games, then caught fire in the ACC Tournament. A team that was supposed to struggle finished with 20 wins and played in the tournament championship game.

Last year, the Wolfpack expected to ride that momentum, with the help of three talented freshmen and a pair of newly eligible transfers. But, because of the string of injuries and the inability for the team to gel, things just never worked out that way. This time, Lowe's team did finish last in the league and bowed out of the ACC Tournament in the first round.

In the off-season, Lowe and his team worked on its conditioning and its chemistry. They believe this season has a better chance of mirroring 2007 than last season.

"My sophomore year, no one expected us to do anything," McCauley said. "We were picked last in the league, and by the time the season was over, we were playing pretty well. We all spent the summer working really hard, starting just a week or so after the end of last season.

"I think everybody on the team realizes that we have a great opportunity this year, because we can surprise a lot of people."

As long as Lowe can resolve the point guard situation and get everyone on the roster to accept their roles in his plan.

11/10/2008 10:38:22 PM

Summarized:

Slightly better than last year but no where near an ACC Tourney bid.

Most fans are missing Herb after last year.

Have fun in the NIT.

11/10/2008 10:42:11 PM

it will be a really bad year if we miss the ACC tourney

11/10/2008 10:49:02 PM

Quote :

"no where near an ACC Tourney bid. "

So you need a bid to get into the ACC Tourney now? Sucks for all 12 members of the conference.

11/10/2008 10:49:21 PM

we are missing the ACC/Big 10 challenge though

11/10/2008 10:50:25 PM

ok what the fuck

somebody better thank me or I'm deleting my post in 10 minutes

11/10/2008 10:51:09 PM

^^ Yeah, missing the Challenge does blow.

^ Great read, thanks Slave Famous

11/10/2008 10:51:48 PM

wut = troll


Not really expecting anything this year =

11/10/2008 10:55:17 PM

We love you Slave Famous.

[no homo]

11/10/2008 10:58:28 PM

Quote :

"Summarized: Slightly better than last year but no where near an ACC Tourney bid. Most fans are missing Herb after last year. Have fun in the NIT."

wut an idiot.



[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 11:01 PM. Reason : lulz]

11/10/2008 11:00:23 PM

Quote :

"it will be a really bad year if we miss the ACC tourney"

Wut are the chances one person actually found the sarcasm ITP.

GG

11/10/2008 11:12:16 PM

^ I'm all for sarcasm, but that's an awful big stretch. Nice attempt at saving face though.

V I meant more the part I bolded. But whether a person's words are meant to be sarcastic or not is open to interpretation. Especially when tone of voice and body language is taken out of the equation.

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 12:13 AM. Reason : asdf]

11/10/2008 11:54:06 PM

yea i didnt see any sarcasm

11/11/2008 12:08:38 AM

Quote :

"Last Season 19-15 (.559)"

huh?

11/11/2008 12:14:01 AM

^^^^ I thought UNC fans actually were intellegient when it came to college basketball.

11/11/2008 12:25:16 AM

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 12:32 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2008 12:25:16 AM

hehe I KEEEED I KEEEED

If Lowe doesnt set unreasonable expectations NCSU can win the NIT. I think that should be the starting goal, then recruit, "rebuild", and move forward from there.

Reasonably I think they could be toward the upper half of the conference standings, but they are going to have to play well, consistently well.

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 12:29 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2008 12:28:49 AM

thanks, good read...

11/11/2008 9:20:00 AM

Thanks so much! Where do they have us picked to finish?

11/11/2008 4:17:19 PM

11/11/2008 5:03:12 PM

Quote :

"Most fans are missing Herb after last year."

11/11/2008 5:03:19 PM