http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2197664

somebody post it.

11/6/2005 4:36:50 PM

Editor's Note: ESPN Insider has teamed with Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook to provide a comprehensive look at all 326 Division I teams. To order the complete 25th anniversary edition of Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, visit http://www.blueribbonyearbook.com or call 1-866-805-BALL (2255).

(Information in this team report is as of October 1.)


COACH AND PROGRAM
To some North Carolina State fans, the road back to the upper half of the ACC standings and a position to make some noise in the NCAA Tournament has been exceedingly slow.
But as Herb Sendek enters his 10th season as the head coach of the Wolfpack, he is poised to have one of the ACC's most experienced and deepest squads, one fully capable of challenging Duke and Boston College for league superiority. Blue Ribbon Previews
Take an Inside look at the ACC with Blue Ribbon's 2005 team reports:
Boston College
Clemson
Duke
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Maryland (free)
Miami
North Carolina
North Carolina State
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest



"I like our team a great deal," Sendek said. "I think we have a balanced combination of players with experience and some promising newcomers."

Of course, one of the most important things about this season is who is not around anymore: 2004 ACC Player of the Year Julius Hodge, the versatile leader of the program-changing, five-player recruiting class of 2001 that took Sendek from being a coach on the hot seat to the leader of a program that has made four consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament.

Hodge, Josh Powell, Jordan Collins, Levi Watkins and Ilian Evtimov were freshmen when the Wolfpack ended its 10-year NCAA Tournament drought. And last year, they capped off their steady careers by taking the Wolfpack back to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1989, knocking off defending national champion Connecticut along the way.

Now, if the Wolfpack can make it back to the NCAA Tournament, Sendek will tie former NC State coach Jim Valvano's school record of five consecutive NCAA bids. Evtimov, who missed the 2002-03 season with a knee injury, returns this year as a fifth-year senior. So does fifth-year senior Tony Bethel, who transferred to NC State from Georgetown two years ago.

Add in fourth-year senior Cameron Bennerman and junior Engin Atsur, who has started 58 consecutive games at shooting guard, and the Wolfpack has what is likely the most experienced team in the ACC, if not the country.

Sendek also has the fruits of two excellent recruiting classes, with three sophomores (Andrew Brackman, Gavin Grant and Cedric Simmons) who saw considerable action last year and three freshmen who constitute his best signing class since Hodge and Company arrived five years ago. The trio of guard Courtney Fells and forwards Brandon Costner and Ben McCauley was ranked in the top three of the ACC and the top 20 nationally by most recruiting analysts.

"I think we have going into the season 10 guys, all of whom should be able to add value to our program in significant ways," Sendek said.

It's a talented team, as well as a basketball-savvy team. Two of the players (Evtimov and Costner) have dads who played professional basketball. Brackman's father also played at the University of Cincinnati and is a former high school basketball coach.

However, not a single one of the players is as versatile as Hodge, who led the Wolfpack last year in scoring, rebounding, assists and field-goal percentage and was second in steals. He also joined former All-Americans David Thompson and Rodney Monroe as the only players in school history to score more than 2,000 points in a career. But Sendek isn't looking for a new Hodge.

"That wouldn't be fair to anybody on our team," Sendek said. "What we will have to do is be a different team. Guys collectively will have to make up for his departure. We have to remain true to our core beliefs and our fundamental packages. And we have to be able to tweak things and make adjustments and hopefully put people in position where they have the best chance of being successful."

So the coach is for a combination of players to up their contributions in his Princeton-like, motion offense, a system that doesn't rely on positions as much as it does putting five versatile players on the court at any given time that can score with backdoor cuts and three-pointers from every player on the court. It's a system Sendek installed a few years back with the help of assistant coach Larry Hunter, who left after last season to become the head coach at Western Carolina. Former Wolfpack guard Archie Miller took his place on the coaching staff.

That system is a reason Sendek has been able to recruit four capable big men over the last two years, with the lure of being able to take the outside shot as well as scoring inside. The additional benefit is that it will improve the Wolfpack's interior defense, as Simmons and Brackman did last year with their shot-blocking abilities.

And Sendek isn't necessarily looking for someone to replace Hodge as a leader either. From the day he stepped on the court, Hodge was a lightning rod for his players, Wolfpack fans and opposing fans. He rallied his troops well, even when his game was struggling, as it did at times last year.

"We don't have a dictatorial style of leadership in our program," Sendek said. "We don't have a single entity who is responsible for leadership. For us, leadership is a matrix that cuts every direction. We are all leaders. We all have responsibilities to exhibit leadership. We might do it in different amounts and various ways in different times.

"It is not reserved just for a senior or a captain. It is not something that just the loudest guy on the team is responsible for, or the most vocal guy. We will ask all of our players to partake in leadership."

With the experience Sendek has, along with the influx of talent, the Wolfpack should easily make another appearance in the postseason.

"We want to continue to make progress as a program," Sendek said. "We have done that in just about every measurable way. I am really looking forward to coaching this team. I think we have an assembly of really good guys who are very determined to succeed."


PLAYERS
Tony Bethel didn't want any sympathy for his ailment- and injury-depleted junior season. But he sure could have used some.
He did not miss a single practice season before last, as he sat out under NCAA transfer regulations after leaving Georgetown after two years of starting in the Hoya backcourt. But last year, when he was to be counted on as the starting point guard and primary defensive stopper, Bethel caught a couple of bad breaks.

First, he got the flu while the team was on an extended holiday road trip, from Washington State to BYU to New York for the Holiday Festival. That flu turned into colitis, which caused Bethel to lose about 15 pounds and miss four consecutive games.

He came back in a weakened state and needed a few games to regain his strength. With him out, the Wolfpack struggled mightily on defense, giving up an average of 75.0 points in the five games Bethel was most affected by the illness.

He came back in mid-January, just in time for Cameron Bennerman to go down with an elbow injury that caused another revamping of the Wolfpack lineup. By the time everyone was healthy again, Sendek's players regained their confidence offensively and defensively and was looking to make a run in the postseason.

They were able to do that, but not with Bethel in the lineup. He suffered a severely pulled groin muscle in the first round of the ACC Tournament against Florida State and was out virtually all of the Pack's final five games. (He came back for two minutes in the Syracuse Regional semifinal loss to Wisconsin.)

"It was a really challenging junior year for Tony," Sendek said. "He was never really healthy, and our team had to adjust and redefine itself as we did not have his full services throughout the season. That took some getting used to because he was certainly a key player for us.

"We are hoping that he can put all that behind him and come back for a healthy senior season."

When Engin Atsur signed with the Wolfpack in the spring of 2003, few people knew what to make of the first native of Turkey to play in the ACC, because unlike so many other foreign athletes, he never spent any time in an American high school.

Only a few other schools knew about him, and even NC State assistant Mark Phelps, who recruited Atsur, mostly made contact with Atsur's family via e-mail.

But Engin knew he wanted to follow in his older brother Emre's footsteps and play college basketball in the U.S. Emre Atsur played four years at Western Carolina University in the mountains of North Carolina.

11/6/2005 4:43:25 PM

What the Wolfpack got was a player who has been vastly underrated during his career. He's a well-skilled basketball player who can handle the ball and consistently make outside shots. He was the primary shooting guard for the Turkish junior team that played internationally, but his background was as a point guard.

Sendek immediately liked Atsur's offensive skills, his enthusiasm and his defense. After sitting out his first three games as a freshman because of an NCAA eligibility issue, Atsur cracked the starting lineup early in his career. Heading into this season, he has started 58 consecutive games. He was second only to Hodge in minutes played last year and has never missed a game because of injury, a rarity for a Sendek player.

ACC Player of the Year J.J. Redick called Atsur one of the toughest defenders in the league, because of his ability to deny good shooters the basketball with his position defense.

"He has put together back-to-back, very consistent outstanding seasons," Sendek said. "I think once again he has put himself in position, especially with the transformation of his body, to have a breakthrough improvement year."

Atsur's two biggest deficiencies as a player were his lack of strength -- he had never been in a real weight room before he got to college -- and his inability to communicate with his coach and teammates. Though he speaks four languages, English was at the bottom of the list behind Turkish, German and French. He spent the bulk of his freshman year getting instructions relayed to him in French by Ilian Evtimov.

Now, however, Atsur has changed his physical appearance with his diligent work lifting weights and is much more comfortable with his place on the team. He should continue to be a key -- if sometimes unnoticed -- contributor for the Wolfpack.

"His basketball maturity has always been high," Sendek said. "He has an excellent feel for the game, a terrific savvy. He has a real edge of toughness as well. He might have a relatively quiet, unassuming demeanor, but he also has a jagged edge of toughness."

Cameron Bennerman had the breakout performances he was hoping for when the season began, and they couldn't have come at a better time: during the Wolfpack's postseason success.

The problem was that he had a frustrating regular season, something he hopes to change for his final year in a Wolfpack uniform.

Bennerman had just started performing the way he did at the end of the 2003-04 season, when he filled in for an injured Scooter Sherrill to score 16 points in the regular-season finale and 17 points in the first round of the ACC Tournament. At the end of December he scored a career-high 24 points against Columbia, the only offense the Wolfpack had in that abysmal performance in Madison Square Garden.

When the Wolfpack returned home in January, he found himself in the starting lineup, and in consecutive games, scored 20 points on Duke and 16 points on Georgia Tech.

Then, Bennerman suffered an elbow injury in practice that affected his performance the rest of the regular season. He completely missed six straight games. When he came back, he found himself at the back of the line of a long list of players who were hoping to lift the Wolfpack out of its season-long doldrums, and his name was never really called.

Healthy and willing, Bennerman did not play at all in a win at Virginia, a coaching decision that was questioned vehemently at the time. He played just four minutes in the regular-season finale against Wake Forest.

In the Wolfpack's last seven regular-season games, Bennerman scored just 27 points and grabbed just seven rebounds, as his playing time dwindled all the way down to no minutes.

He was clearly frustrated by his situation, and said as much to reporters who asked. Sendek said he simply had a difficult time "being re-absorbed in the middle of the ACC season."

"When he got his feet underneath him again, he had a very strong finish," Sendek said.

Did he ever. In State's first game in the ACC Tournament, Bennerman scored 12 points. In the second round, against Wake Forest, he played the most complete game of his career, scoring 17 points and adding eight rebounds and five assists.

Then, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, he put the clamps on Charlotte shooter Brendan Plavich in the second half of the Wolfpack's victory over its in-state rival. As a natural rebounder who can execute strong offensive moves to the basket, Bennerman has a tremendous upside. He hopes to consistently reveal that potential the entire season, not just at the end.

Few freshmen made a bigger impact on campus than Andrew Brackman did last year.

The two-sport standout -- Brackman is a leverage-enhanced right-handed pitcher with professional baseball aspirations -- made an early impact on the basketball court, contributing inside and outside scoring, rebounding and blocked shots from the moment the season began.

His numbers tailed off in the middle of the season, when his lack of upper-body strength caught up with him in the hard-banging ACC season, but by the end of the year, he was making key contributions, not the least of which was a three-pointer at the end of the Wolfpack's upset of defending national champion Connecticut in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The bucket, Brackman's only field goal of the game, gave his team a four-point lead with 1:05 remaining.

Brackman, a skilled player who played both guard spots and small forward in high school before hitting a growth spurt as a junior, also showed his maturity by making 15-of-16 free-throw attempts in the Wolfpack's two NCAA victories.

He was already a well-known name on campus by the time basketball ended, but baseball season turned him into a cult hero. He was in his baseball uniform the day after the Wolfpack lost to Wisconsin in the Sweet 16. He pitched in his first game about 10 days later, then took his place as the ace of the pitching staff.

He was particularly impressive in striking out 12 against archrival North Carolina, which matched the number of points he scored in two games against the Tar Heels on the basketball court. He also combined with first-round draft pick Joey Devine to beat nationally ranked Miami in the ACC baseball tournament, regularly hitting better than 90 miles an hour on the radar gun.

Brackman finished the season with a 4-0 record with a 2.09 earned run average. He even got a shot at making Team USA over the summer.

Brackman clearly lost some momentum with his basketball game midway through the season, but Sendek thinks a better offseason weight-lifting regimen will help him stay consistent throughout all of next year.

"He is really changing his body in the weight room," Sendek said. "Last year, if there was any one thing that was limiting him, it was his lack of strength. I think as he continues to get stronger, each part of his game will reap the benefits."

The issue will be how long Brackman can play basketball. He was so good in baseball by the end of last spring he caught the attention of all the scouts who didn't know about him before. Brackman was not drafted out of high school because he told all the major league teams he was adamant about going to college.

The scouts will really be paying attention if he a similarly successful sophomore season on the mound.

But, as the son of a former college basketball player and a former Cincinnati-area high school coach, Brackman still loves to play hoops and will continue to do so as long as it doesn't hinder his baseball prospects.

Besides, NC State has already won one basketball national championship with a baseball player making big contributions at forward. Long-time Major League relief pitcher Tim Stoddard was a member of the Wolfpack basketball team that won the 1974 NCAA title.

When NC State turned its fortunes around at the end of last season, winning four postseason games, Ilian Evtimov's shooting was a key reason.

Over the last 13 games of the season, Evtimov made 39 of his 73 three-point attempts, showing amazing effectiveness from a player listed in the starting lineup as a center. He matched his career high with five three-pointers in five different games, including a stretch of three consecutive games against Wake Forest in the regular-season finale and Florida State and Wake Forest in the ACC Tournament.



[Edited on November 6, 2005 at 4:44 PM. Reason : asd]

[Edited on November 6, 2005 at 4:46 PM. Reason : ada]

11/6/2005 4:43:49 PM

His shooting dropped off a little in the NCAA Tournament, but he had set a standard that would have been tough for anyone one not named Stoudemire or Redick to keep up with.

Sendek thinks there is a simple explanation for why Evtimov shot so well at the end of last season, and it bodes well for his coming senior year: he was healthy for the first time in ages.

Heading into his sophomore year, Evitmov blew out his left knee in an exhibition game. The recovery was slower and more difficult than anyone expected, and Evtimov came back slower and less effective than he was as a freshman, when he was the biggest surprise of Sendek's most important recruiting class, which included Hodge, the long-departed Josh Powell, Collins and Watkins.

Then, before last year, Evtimov had trouble with his right knee, twice needing arthroscopic surgery in the preseason to get it cleaned out. He didn't miss any playing time because of it, but it did severely cut into his individual workout time and was a contributing factor for why he made only nine of his first 36 three-point attempts.

"He is more healthy today than he ever has been," Sendek said. "This is the first offseason since perhaps after his freshman year that he has actually been able to work out the whole time, that he has actually had the value of an offseason.

"I think he is in the best shape and the best health of his career."

Evtimov comes from a basketball family. His father Ilia was a sharp-shooting guard in the European professional leagues for nearly 15 years. His older brother Vasco played college basketball at North Carolina and is a standout player in the European professional leagues.

He uses his excellent basketball skills and savvy to make up for his inability to get up and down the court because of his bothersome knees. Evtimov can make pinpoint passes from the high post, as well as dive for loose balls in the backcourt. He led the team last year with 14 charges taken and was second with 221 deflections.

If he can come close to matching the scoring and shooting pace he had at the end of last year, Evtimov could be in for a monster senior season.

Brandon Costner's father, Tony, was a 6-11 big man who played college ball at St. Joseph's, two years in the NBA with the Washington Bullets and 12 years in Europe. Brandon had a vagabond childhood, growing up playing soccer in Greece and Italy before settling back in New Jersey for his high school basketball career.

So he is quite nimble with the ball, either dribbling it up the court or passing it around to his teammates from the high post. He played in the post in high school, but given Sendek's system, it's a sure bet that Costner will play all over the floor in the Wolfpack's offense.

The left-handed Costner has the skills to contribute immediately, with the possibility of adding another inch or two to his frame. Recruiting analysts familiar with recent NC State teams call him a more skilled version of Marcus Melvin.

With a good basketball pedigree and well-honed skills, it's no wonder that Costner is considered the gem of Sendek's three-player recruiting class, a player that was ranked No. 15 in the nation by recruiting analyst Bob Gibbons.

He chose the Wolfpack over Kansas, UCLA and his hometown Seton Hall.

As a junior at Seton Hall Prep, Costner averaged 17.0 points, 10.0 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 2.5 blocks, helping his team compile a 27-3 record. His productivity as a senior led Seton Hall to a 30-1 record and a New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association non-public state championship.

He capped off his career by scoring 31 of his team's 63 points in the New Jersey Tournament of Champions, a postseason tournament that features all the state champions. Along the way, Costner was one of 24 players chosen to the McDonald's All-America team and one of 40 players selected Parade All-America.

"When I have watched North Carolina State play, I have always felt it was a system that would fit Brandon," Seton Hall Prep coach Bob Farrell told The Wolfpacker. "I think he got a little excited seeing guys like Marcus Melvin and Levi Watkins shooting three-pointers. Brandon is probably a better passer than most people understand, and he will be a perfect fit for NC State in the high post."

The general feeling on Courtney Fells going into his senior year of high school was that he had a lot of work to do before he could be a productive ACC player. By most accounts from those who watched his incredible senior season, that mission was accomplished even earlier than expected.

Fells, a wing player who could play guard on offense and forward on defense, had good numbers as a junior (18.6 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 6.0 apg), but he mostly flew under the radar. NC State was the first school to offer him a scholarship.

He then skyrocketed up the recruiting ratings with a terrific senior season, winning the Mississippi Gatorade Player of the Year award and first-team all-state honors. In addition, he was chosen the most valuable player of the Commonwealth Classic All-Star Game, a spring exhibition played in Richmond, Va.

He was rated a five-star player by Rivals.com, making him the Wolfpack's first five-star recruit since Hodge. Rivals also had Fells rated as the No. 24 player in the nation.

Fells is a shooter and will be expected to fill Hodge's position, if not exactly his shoes. He expects to do well in an offensive system that allows three-point shots from every position.

"He's an athletic, talented player," Sendek said. "He has the ability to shoot with range, and I like his ability to get his shot as well."

He may need a little more discipline to fit into Sendek's system, especially early. And he'll have to play better defense, something he improved as a high school senior. But his talent and potential will likely make him a key component of any success the Wolfpack has in coming years.

A native of Jamaica, where he spent most of his first 10 years playing soccer, Gavin Grant picked up basketball on the streets of New York, then refined his skills at the same high school where Hodge played, St. Raymond's Catholic School in the Bronx.

He was raw, but he was on the varsity team at St. Raymond's by the time he was a sophomore. Like Hodge, Grant was a versatile high school player, which was a perfect fit for Sendek's position-less motion offense.

11/6/2005 4:46:34 PM

Once he learned his responsibilities in that offense, Grant showed he could play every position on the floor except center, making him the basketball equivalent of a utility man. That helped him earn a starting job in four games as a freshman, while Bennerman and Bethel were out with their injuries and ailments. Three of those starts were on the road.

He showed an ability to make driving shots to the basket, create open three-pointers and to rebound on occasion. He had three consecutive double-digit scoring games against ACC opponents, including a season-high 14 against Virginia Tech, and grabbed 10 rebounds against Florida State.

Grant's 13 points in 21 minutes against Georgia Tech was instrumental in ending a four-game losing streak.

However, even though Grant can make spectacular plays, he's not the overall talent Hodge was at this point in his career. Grant is still learning to play defense in Sendek's system. Once he is more comfortable doing so, he'll get more than 13 minutes a game.

"Gavin is truly one of the most versatile guys that I have encountered in some time," Sendek said. "He has an ability to do a little bit of everything. I like our ability to move him around on the court and ask him to do this and that and some of that too."

A lot of college coaches went to the Pittsburgh area to lure Ben McCauley to their schools with the promise of being a dominant inside player, as he was during his record-breaking career at Yough High School.

But when Pittsburgh native Sendek went to his hometown, he offered the wide-bodied McCauley something a little different: the opportunity to step outside and take a few shots as well. It's something every big guy the Wolfpack has used in recent years has relished, from Marcus Melvin to Jordan Collins to Andrew Brackman.

So McCauley signed with the Wolfpack just before his senior season began, and went out to prove he could be the kind of all-around versatile player that the Wolfpack uses in its motion offense.

The four-year starter had the best season of his career. He almost single-handedly carried Yough to the best finish in high school history -- a 16-7 record and the finals of the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League. He averaged 33 points in four playoff games.

He finished his career with a school-record 2,283 points, and is regarded as the best big man to come out of the Pittsburgh area in more than a decade. Now, Pittsburgh, as Sendek well knows, isn't exactly known for producing basketball talent. But McCauley was rated among the Top 75 players in the country, and he should complement the Wolfpack's other two freshmen, Courtney Fells and Brandon Costner, both of whom were rated ahead of McCauley in every recruiting index.

In the end, the forward -- called a bigger version of Ilian Evtimov by recruiting analyst Bob Gibbons, who rated McCauley the No. 52 prospect in the nation -- could be one of the most important pieces in helping the Wolfpack remain successful in the ACC in coming years. He's one of four versatile big men that Sendek has brought in the last two years, along with Costner and sophomores Andrew Brackman and Cedric Simmons.

"The style of play that Coach Sendek runs fits me perfectly," McCauley told the Winston-Salem Journal. "I like the idea that there's not any set big men. The big men aren't supposed to stay inside. We're allowed to go out and shoot threes. They'll even post up some guards every once in a while. I like to shoot three-pointers. "And nothing beats playing in the ACC."

There is likely no way Cedric Simmons could have met the lofty expectations fans set for him coming into last season. They saw a powerful, athletic guy who could score, jump and dominate on the defensive end.

The coaching staff saw a freshman, playing behind a pair of seniors. Simmons certainly seemed talented enough to contribute. The center who committed to the Wolfpack as a high school sophomore was chosen the North Carolina High School Player of the Year as a senior, and fans expected him to step immediately in and fill the slot vacated two years ago by Josh Powell.

What they didn't know, however, was that Simmons wasn't nearly as polished as the team's other two freshmen, Grant and Brackman, who both came from strong high school programs in big cities. Simmons is from Class 3A West Brunswick High School in Shallotte, N.C., a small fishing town near the beach.

So it took him a while to settle into the routine of college life and the college game. Fans were surprised early in the season when Simmons didn't even play in games against Purdue, Louisiana-Lafayette, West Virginia and Georgia Tech, as he slowly absorbed his responsibilities in Sendek's system.

But the payoff at the end of the season was big. Simmons started back-to-back games against Virginia and Wake Forest, and morphed into the inside beast fans expected all along.

A total of 25 of his 35 blocked shots on the season came in the final 18 games, as he and Brackman added that long-lacking component to the Wolfpack's defense. He hit double-digit scoring only twice as a freshman, against eventual national champion North Carolina and Virginia, but he was never expected to be a big scorer. His offensive numbers dwindled as the season ended and he had only 25 total points in the final 13 games.

But the Wolfpack coaching staff thinks Simmons could be poised for a breakout sophomore season, kind of the way Chris Wilcox did at Maryland in 2002 on the Terps' way to the national championship.

"Cedric has gifts and talents that you certainly can't teach," Sendek said. "He definitely has the ability to be a real presence at the basket."

Bryan Nieman, a one-time high school teammate of Wake Forest All-ACC center Eric Williams, began his college career at Winthrop, where he was a member of the Big South Championship team that played in the NCAA Tournament. He played sparingly as a freshman, then sat out his second year there with a broken foot.

Nieman spent last season at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, Fla., last year, where he played in all 28 games for the 18-10 Commodores. He was a three-point shooting specialist who was second on the team with 39 three-pointers and a 44.8 three-point shooting percentage.

Questions: Who's the next Hodge? Sendek says his team won't rely on any one player to take the place of Hodge, whose versatility and leadership turned around Sendek's program from the moment he stepped on campus.

Health? It seems every year during the Sendek era the Wolfpack has a key injury that prevents it from fulfilling its expectations.

Chemistry? Hodge was the glue that held everything together for four years, the undisputed leader on a capable team. With the influx of three newcomers, plus three talented sophomores to go with four experienced upperclassmen, Sendek will have to make sure everyone stays happy with their playing time.

Answers: Experience! The Wolfpack has a pair of fifth-year seniors, a fourth-year senior and a junior who has started 58 consecutive games.

Talented youth! Each of the three players Sendek identified early and signed last November had monster senior seasons in high school. If they improve as much in their first year of college as they did in their final year of high school, they will make a major impact.

A solid foundation! Now that Sendek has hit the 10-year mark at the school, Wolfpack fans will finally realize there is no reason to climb out on a ledge when the team hits a rough spot. A fifth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament will match Jim Valvano's school record.


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

For Sendek, whose past teams have been hobbled by injuries on a regular basis, depth is the key reason this should be one of his best all-round teams.

He has 10 dependable interchangeable players, any of whom are capable of starting and putting up double-digit points. The only weakness would be the lack of a back-up point guard, because no one but Bethel plays that position only. Atsur is a possibility, but the best playmakers other than Bethel are in the frontcourt.

Entering his 10th season, Sendek has every reason to be optimistic -- and secure -- about his future.

For the most comprehensive previews on all 326 Division I teams, order the "Bible" of college basketball, the 25th anniversary edition of Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, at http://www.blueribbonyearbook.com or call 1-866-805-BALL (2255).

11/6/2005 4:46:56 PM

appreciate that

11/6/2005 4:59:49 PM

Yep, thanks

Quote :

"Entering his 10th season, Sendek has every reason to be optimistic -- and secure -- about his future. "

11/6/2005 5:01:19 PM

holy damn

thats a lotta words

11/6/2005 5:03:06 PM

It's worth the read.

11/6/2005 5:09:38 PM

the article had great points, i skipped through the last section, but I think the pieces about Simmons and his comparison to Chris Wilcox were on point. Ced played at my ala mater and West didn't see nearly the type of competition he would have seen if he had transferred to a bigger program like Wilcox did from Whiteville High to Broughton. I still think Ced has a little ways to go before he gets to Wilcox's status for Maryland but the potential is definitely there.

[Edited on November 6, 2005 at 5:17 PM. Reason : .]

11/6/2005 5:12:05 PM

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


nice

11/6/2005 5:25:49 PM

thanks for posting that. blue ribbon consistently does the best job previewing the football and basketball seasons. whoever wrote that has clearly followed acc basketball (an in particular nc state basketball) for a number of years. that's a nice preview and gives us reason to be optimistic about the upcoming season.

classic herbism: "leadership is a matrix that cuts every direction"

11/6/2005 5:31:35 PM

Awesome read.

Quote :

"Recruiting analysts familiar with recent NC State teams call him a more skilled version of Marcus Melvin."

I said the same thing after watching him in the McDonalds game, Red/White, and the Guelph scrimmage. I think all 3 freshman will be good.

11/6/2005 5:33:15 PM

thanks for that post. just gets me even more stoked about the upcoming bball season.

11/6/2005 5:36:51 PM

Just wondering.... or maybe I missed it...


Did they rank the teams, and if so... where were we

11/6/2005 5:43:23 PM

thanks for posting that

11/6/2005 5:49:03 PM

this is duke:

BLUE RIBBON ANALYSIS
BACKCOURT: A+
BENCH/DEPTH: A+
FRONTCOURT: A+
INTANGIBLES: A+

11/6/2005 5:59:41 PM

duke ain't shit

11/6/2005 6:12:03 PM

11/6/2005 6:18:54 PM

aha

the beer of quality



(When the only other choice is Schlitz or Southpaw)

11/6/2005 6:51:49 PM

Wilcox played at Enloe not Broughton. I don't mind having my facts corrected, thanks rally

11/7/2005 7:13:29 AM

here's another company's review:

http://draftexpress.com/viewarticle.php?a=1117

11/7/2005 9:43:54 PM