State 69, Maryland 74

NCAA Basketball Stats

NCAA Basketball Stats

I'll post a recap once I sober up and cool down.

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ACC Tournament LiveBlog

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Great Moments in Overproduction: ESPN's Opera Man Tournament Intros

Oh, ESPN...you thought you had completely wiped this off the face of the earth. But thankfully, someone out there took the audio and saved it for posterity.

Who could ever forget the horridicity of the ACC Tournament intro videos from last year? Somehow, the idea of having a dude stand in an empty gym belting out "HURRICANES! HURRICANES, HURRICANES, HURRICANES!" made it past all the various levels of production quality control.

"WEARING THE COLORS PROUD-LY!"

Maybe Roy Williams is right...maybe the ACC Tournament really has fallen off the radar. Otherwise, how does one explain getting the third-rate production treatment?

CRANK IT UP!

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How to get fired: Watching the ACC Tournament at work

For those of you looking to keep tabs on the tournament while at work, you can watch all the games (but one...ours) on your computer at Raycom.com

Just click on the "Watch Live" link in red beside each game. Fill out a quick registration form and voila! Instant ACC tournament!

For those not interested in pushing your luck with the bossman (or bosslady), I'll be posting a LiveBlog here with updates on the games during the 9:00-5:00 hours.

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It's Tournament Time!

It's been a long four days, it seems, since State's final game of the regular season.

I think a lot of folks, like myself, are eager for the ACC tournament to get underway for a couple of reasons. One, it's the ACC tournament. Two, and more importantly for State fans, it's an opportunity for the team to regain some momentum lost on Sunday. The loss against Miami still stings -- given that State was up nine at the half -- and that loss, coupled with the news that Demarcus Cousins is heading to Memphis, has allowed some pessimism to creep back in.

The tournament will put the Miami game officially behind the team and its fans.

State will face off against Maryland in a game most folks are talking about because of Greivis Vasquez's in-your-face three at the end of the game. Truthfully, though, I don't get the sense from anyone other than the media that his three was all THAT big of a deal. Compared to the furor over Mike Copeland's attempted dunk and Ben McCauley's hard foul to prevent it at the end of the Carolina game, Vasquez's three has gotten significantly less rise out of the State team, fans and coaches.

Nevertheless, it happened, and State will get a chance to redeem itself this evening at 7:00 in the third game of the day.

(Continues)

The 7:00 Thursday game also happens to be the only game that folks without cable can see. It's the one game ESPN has exclusive rights to -- all the remaining games can be seen on Raycom. So if you tune into WRAL or your local Raycom affiliate at 7:00, don't expect to find the game. You'll need to head over to The Duece, ESPN2. Plan accordingly.

This is a winnable game for the Pack tonight. State proved as much in its loss to Maryland at home three weeks ago when Vasquez put on a one-man show. Had the Pack simply contained Vasquez, I think State would've won that game easily. They'll attempt to do that tonight.

As State fans, you kind of feel good about your draw. The bracket shapes up nicely for a deep run if things fall your way. Maryland is a winnable game, for sure. If you get past them, Wake awaits on Friday. Wake has lost to State once this year in Raleigh and the Pack played them well in Winston Salem. A win against the Deacs would pit State against Duke, most likely, and State played the Blue Devils well in Cameron (though Elliot Williams was not in the lineup at that time and Duke has looked much stronger since his insertion). And beyond Duke, if the Pack gets to Sunday, they could be facing the winner of the FSU/Carolina game and with Ty Lawson's toe acting up (and Roy Williams' "eh" attitude toward the tournament) it could be the Seminoles the Pack faces for the title.

That's a ton of "ifs," though, and it's a very unlikely scenario. But, as we saw in 2007, stranger things can happen. We'll need a performance from someone like Brandon Costner's that year (90 points in four games) to propel us that far. Costner wouldn't be a bad choice to fill that role.

I wish the tournament meant as much now as it did when I was a child. The success of Carolina and Duke and their coaches' insistence on downplaying it has taken the shine off it some. When the ACC essentially became a two-team league, the tide of public opinion on the tournament went with them, but I know that for all the teams in the ACC not named Duke or Carolina, winning the ACC tournament is a very, very big deal, and would mean a great deal to their fanbases, as well. After all, the ACC still considers the tournament champ -- not the regular season champ -- THE ACC champion for that season. With the imbalanced schedules of today, it seems like, more than ever, a tournament is the most fair way to determine the champion for the year. But the folks in Chapel Hill and Durham don't see it that way and most folks have been content to follow their lead in downplaying it.

It's a shame, because for as long as the tournament has been in existence, demand for tickets was so great that they were never available for public sale. One could only get them through your school. Those days are gone as for the first time ever, public tickets for the tournament were made available this year. Certainly the size of the venue (The Georgia Dome) and the state of the economy have played a part in that, but the poo-pooing of the tournament's value has taken its toll, as well.

But that's just how things are these days, I suppose.

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CollegeHoopsNet.com: State ACC's "Worst Nightmare" To Bubble Teams

From CollegeHoopsNet.com, State represents the ACC's best chance among teams unlikely to make the NCAA tourney to run the table in their conference's tournament, thus robbing an at-large bid from a bubble team:

(Continues)

ACC
North Carolina State: With five teams looking like locks to go to the Dance, and four teams on the bubble, North Carolina State certainly looks like the best of the rest. The Wolfpack have knocked off Wake Forest and Miami (Fl.) in conference play this season, and played some other teams very close. Brandon Costner is difficult to defend and Ben McCauley has bounced back after a down year. Courtney Fells is the most potent scorer in the backcourt. NC State can shoot the ball, both inside and outside the arc, and it also offensive rebounds at a high rate. They also slow the pace of the game down and force teams into tough shots.

Now granted, this doesn't really mean a whole lot. It's basically saying out of the group of three teams at the absolute bottom of the league--State, Virginia and Georgia Tech--we have the best chance to win four games in four days. I also have a better chance of blocking a dunk from Shaquille O'Neal than do either Verne Troyer or Danny Devito.

So I don't expect you to get too amped up by this. But I think it's a bit ambitious to think that there are four bubble teams from the ACC at this point. There's no way Virginia Tech finishes above .500 in the league at 6-6 with Clemson, Duke, Carolina and FSU remaining, and the best Miami can do is finish at 8-8 with only one decent OOC win (Kentucky).

So adding Virginia Tech and Miami to the pile of need-to-win-the-tourney-to-get-in teams, I think it makes it a bit tougher to make that same argument. McClinton can keep you in any game and if he gets Randolph Childress hot for four games, Miami can win it. Virginia Tech is dangerous, but I think State would stand a better chance to go all the way than the Hokies who always seem to struggle in the ACC tournament.

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State Vs. Miami: One Man's Opinion

State Vs. Miami

It's make or break time for State. One bullet left in the revolver, one last chance to do something positive to build on for next year.

Miami is a team State has beaten once already this season, so that alone is reason to believe we can pull a win off today. State's recent history in the tournament (8-5 over the last 5 years) also suggests that we could pull the upset.

The downside is that Miami is playing better than they were when State shocked them in January. Jack McClinton is playing out of his mind at the moment, commanding enough attention in the Pack's gameplan that Sidney pretty much plans to blanket him for the entire game. Could we see a box-and-one defense today?

As for State, they have got to get more production from both their starting lineup and their bench. Too many players have disappeared this season for me to feel comfortable about this team. Costner, of course, is the big piece of the puzzle missing this year, but role players like Dennis Horner have completely gone MIA this year, as well. Horner's perimeter scoring is especially missed; were we a more dangerous team from outside I feel fewer teams would sag down on our "bigs." And Courtney Fells is a here-one-game-gone-the-next type player. It goes without saying that today we need him in the former category, not the latter.

Short of an upset, I want to see State look like a "team" on the court. I want to see effort; I want to see hustle; I want to see good ball movement and a sense of purpose on the offensive end of the court. If McClinton gives us his best shot against reasonable defensive pressure (I'm realistic about our defensive capabilities) and we lose, so be it. Going down swinging is better than quitting.

If we play like we did against Carolina in the RBC Center, that will be unacceptable, and the players will have no one but themselves to blame.

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ACC Tournament Eve

Ah...can you smell that?

That crisp...something...in the air that lets you know that the best four weekends in sports is right around the bend?

Yes, it's tournament time. The time when all the highs and lows (Lowes?) of the last four months of college basketball get condensed into seeding for the two best events in college sports, possibly in ALL of sport, the ACC and NCAA Tournaments.

I'm a North Carolina native; born in Charlotte, raised in Fayetteville and schooled in Raleigh. The ACC Tournament is a birthright of mine, and I heartily claim it as such.

I grew up a State fan, and loved the Pack, but I truly got hooked back in 1990 when Georgia Tech was tearing it up with "Lethal Weapon 3"--the tandem of Dennis Scott, Brian Oliver and Kenny Anderson. I remember watching the championship game that year at the house of one of our church members who'd invited our family over for some cards and drinks. No one downstairs seemed to care that the title game was on, but I snuck away to the homeowner's bedroom to catch it. It seemed like Dennis Scott could hit from anywhere, and Kenny Anderson was easily one of the best point guards I'd ever seen play the game.

In school on Fridays--back when the league was only eight members deep--TVs from the AV room were tough to come by; they were all rented out by teachers showing the games in class. I consider those moments, watching early-90s tournament basketball in class, as crucial a part of my North Carolina education as anything else.

In 1995, Randolph Childress gave us one of the great moments in tournament history, scoring 107 points over three games--including the winning two in overtime--to beat Carolina in the finals. He also gave us one of the greatest crossovers of all time, breaking down Jeff McInnis and daring him to get back up before drilling a three. (And you can't mention Jeff McInnis in one breath without mentioning Phil Ford's wife in the next, but I digress...)



I remember as a freshman at State in 1997, hanging around the dorm as Spring break was starting, delaying my departure so I could catch our games Thursday and Friday. Then watching the game Saturday at a friend's house. Then dying on Sunday. It was glorious and devastating.

I suppose there's no reason to think that it can't all happen again this year. The deck looks as stacked against us as it ever has this year, but we potentially face two teams in the opening rounds that we've already beaten this year, Miami and VT, so to say that we CAN'T make another run would be a fallacy.

After all, it's tournament time.

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