NC State / Marquette Recap

This was a game we all thought it would be, and even better in some areas.  We knew that they had some really talented guards (3  Senior) and were going to full-court press our inexperienced guards.

The positives - Costner of old played awesome, he should have played more imo.  Mays looked very smart and assertive on the offensive glass. Fells came through in the cluth when we needed him and had some nice drives, dunks, and slashes to the basket.  Ferguson played ok, had some nice drives.  Our freshman look really sound fundamentally and seem to be progressing nicely.  Halftime show- great turnout and crowd cheer for the 1974 national championship team.  Great recap of the 1974 championship run on the jumbo-tron and well planned by the ath. department.

Negatives / Areas for improvement - I’ve read that Ferguson broke his wrist, not confirmed yet,  but if true, would be a big blow to our inexperienced guard lineup.  Free throws - missed free throws at the end cost us the game.  I want to emphasize that our D really stepped it up in the clutch and made several huge stops at the end to put ourselves in a position to be up by 4 with 30 seconds left.  We faultered down the stretch by I have confidence that Farnold now knows that if the opposing team is running a screen, you trust your big man (Ben) to move over into the passing lane on the left side and you hold your ground.  For some reason, Farnold tried to do too much and got burned.  Kind of reminds me of last year when the Clemson guard (Hammonds?) went for the steal against unx and got burned.  Degand is a smart individual and a progressing player coming back from a serious injury, and although he sometimes get himselves into situations that are too hard to get out of, I think he learned a valuable lesson last night by not standing his ground on the screen and trusting his teammates to help out.  Also, half court traps - Degand has the speed to beat the trap, why not use it?  We had several bone-head plays trying to pass it too much and got torched.  I am confident that Sid is all over the guards today in practice about dribbling (and passing if necessary) out of the half-court defense.

All in all, I am very pleased with the way we played last night and are progressing this season.  This team is playing hard and needs to play smarter, but we knew going into this season that we werent going to blow people away.  IMO, we could have easily put away Davidson and Marquette with just a couple few changes in either the lineup (Costner and Smith getting more p.t.) or decision making (dribbling out of the half-court trap and playing smarter defensively).  For now, lets hope Ferguson is alright and at worst just a sprain.  And lets hope that in the next big matchup, if your best player is 5-5 from behind the arc and simply unstoppable in the paint, the coach decides to let you play a little longer.

Time for the fans to rally around the team and support them, for we need to get through Loyola and Towson and then head down to Gainesville to steal one from Florida.  They are well coached but I feel like our team matches up with them a lot better than the guard-oriented teams like Marquette.  Go Pack!

Photo Courtesy of Flickr, john.d.long

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