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Since we’re all familiar with “tendencies”, Blackshear has a ‘tendency’ to get into foul trouble. He’s also a streaky shooter, and can go on a run if the ball goes in early for him. We would do well to coerce him into his fouling tendency. Strap him with a couple early, let Cat/Dez frustrate the heck out of Rozier, and Harrell can’t do enough by himself…
Just saw this on ESPN:
Someone stands to win some big money if NC State wins it all.
More ESPN:
1. Which team are you most surprised is still around?
Andy Katz: UCLA. I didn’t have the Bruins in the field. But I’m not shocked they beat UAB.Jeff Goodman: NC State. I wasn’t sold on Nova as a Final Four team, but I didn’t think the Wolfpack would beat Jay Wright’s club. Then again, you never know what you are going to get with a Mark Gottfried-coached team. In fact, you can easily make a case that NC State is the more talented club. However, I didn’t see NC State beating LSU and Nova.
Dana O’Neil: The obvious answer would be UCLA, but the path opened wider for the Bruins with UAB, so I’ll say NC State. The Wolfpack have been so wildly unpredictable this season, the fact that they put two games together back-to-back is stunning. NC State always had talent, but it was never a given it would put it together.
Hmmmm, well some of that is warranted, but Dana’s comment is a bit over the top. But OK. Let’s stun her again!
http://espn.go.com/ncb/notebook/_/page/dailyword150323/daily-word
The Pack is getting all sorts of play thanks to Sad Piccolo Player. She was on The Tonight Show tonight, and all those memes show NC State 71, Nova 68. Sweet 🙂
Not complaining about the game being shown on TBS, but it seems to me that CBS dissed us to show a game featuring a #12 seed against Gonzaga. There are still a good number of people who don’t have cable tv who will miss the State-Louisville game. CBS generally steers clear of games that interfere with their affiliates’ “sacred” time slot of 5pm-7pm, and I don’t understand why they’d choose a game that will start and run through that time period of 4 to 7pm on the West Coast. Had the West Coast game been on TBS, that wouldn’t be an issue. UCLA may be a brand name, but THIS Bruin team SUCKS in my opinion.
Seems like we just can’t get any respect, even when we’re on national tv.
CBS is doing the games from Houston because that is where the Final Four is next year. The lead announcing and broadcast team always works the regional that is the site of the Final Four the following year. It’s that simple.
More ESPN:
Dana O’Neil: The Wolfpack have been so wildly unpredictable this season, the fact that they put two games together back-to-back is stunning. NC State always had talent, but it was never a given it would put it together.
Hmmmm, well some of that is warranted, but Dana’s comment is a bit over the top.
http://espn.go.com/ncb/notebook/_/page/dailyword150323/daily-word
Over the top? I think that the comments are brutally honest.
ESPN has a short article up on all 16 teams:
http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/tag/_/name/2015-sweet-16-first-lookThe sad piccolo/Joe Biden mashup is the internet at its finest.
I also highly recommend this entire page of The Onion’s take on “Diamond Joe” Biden:
This is really cool … she’s a good sport and didn’t hide from all the attention.
Edit: there are actually some State fans in the crowd that help deliver a good laugh
Wufpup,
I didn’t realize the final four games were on TBS. I guess we’ll just have to wait till we play in the championship game to get back to CBS. Oh well….
its funny that Mark Gottfried gets no credit for great coaching or the program is quickly building. We only have 2 game changing players on our team. One of which has only been game changing the last 10 games. Where is all of the “talent” that people are talking about? I mean most of the team is comprised of top 50 recruits but the only McD AA that’s left is Cat. I remember all the griping out the transfers/early exiters being a sign of poor organization per some.
Purvis, Lewis, and Buckets are all gone. Now if we still had all of those players then I could see all of the talent accolades being bestowed on us. I don’t think any of players outside of Cat 2.0 and Lacey have begun to show us what they can do. Twins, Abu, Anya, Kyle Washington and Freeman are all still very raw but improving. Remember where they were at the beginning of this year? It hurt to watch but we stuck with it… #GOTTCanCoach We’ve always talked about in game adjustments recruitment and player development are the marks of true coaching (and keeping jackasses off the team).
No knock on any other coach in the country but I’m rocking with Gott! I hope this run doesn’t interfere with the off season these guys need to have to be ready to make another (and decidedly more consistent) run at it next year.
its funny that Mark Gottfried gets no credit for great coaching
It’s not funny, it’s unfortunately sad yet accurate. He was also the coach when State got their ass kicked by at home by Clemson, WF, and BC. That’s not a sign of great coaching.
We only have 2 game changing players on our team. One of which has only been game changing the last 10 games. Where is all of the “talent” that people are talking about? I mean most of the team is comprised of top 50 recruits but the only McD AA that’s left is Cat.
I’m going to try to write this in a manner in which it doesn’t sound like I’m disagreeing with you, because fundamentally I don’t. But your assertion that a lack of McDAA’s equates to not having talent is mistaken. You’re also mistaken that we have only two game changing players.
Gottfried’s touch for recruiting is what gave the Wolfpack the upper hand in their previous bouts. According to RSCI, the Recruiting Services Consensus Index, which makes sense out of major recruiting services top-100 lists and combines the rankings into a single statistic, the Wolfpack have boasted some of the nation’s best talent since 2012, when they had the fifth best recruiting class. In 2014, their class was 17th.
On Gottfried’s current roster, there are eight players with an RSCI rank of top-110 — three are starters, and two were in the top-35 best players in their respective classes. Compare that to Villanova’s six top-110 players — three are starters, no top-40 players in the last four seasons, and, more importantly, no consistency in top-100 post players in the last four seasons (JayVaughn Pinkston came out in 2010). There hasn’t been a heralded recruiting class in recent memory.
Now, having said all of that, I agree that Gott deserves a great deal of credit for pulling this talented yet oft underperforming collection of talent together for a fairly impressive stretch run this season (excepting BC of course)…more credit, that is, than just bringing the talent to Raleigh.
He has done a pretty good job I think, and seemingly has gotten all of the “legs” to be going in the same direction at the same time, which earlier in the season they didn’t appear able to do, at least not with any consistency.
^ this
The team as a whole was better off with the subtraction of Purvis and Lewis. Buckets maybe a different story. Purvis obviously did not want to play for Gott and his record since then might show the McD honors were not so deserved. Lweis (who I was rooting for) simply was not power conference quality burger boy or not. Buckets was the real deal and maybe that made the team a one trick pony (not at all his fault).
to me telling part this year is the continued improvement of the members of the team, the fact that players like Lee and Washington were at the ready when needed. That speaks well of the recruiting, the coaching staff and the players.
What Gottfried deserves much more credit for, are three things:
1) Identifying and landing “next wave” talent – ie, the layer just below the “no doubters” that typically are 1 (or 2) and done. Players like Cat Barber, KH, and Malik Abu.
2) Proactively using the transfer market to fill roster and scholarship class spacing “holes.” Players like Alex Johnson, Trevor Lacey, and BSW.
3) The most underrated aspect – MAN MANAGEMENT. He’s kept their heads in it when things looked very, very bad. He seems to know when to give a pat on the back, and when to give a kick in the pants. The players LIKE him, but also RESPECT him. He’s dealt with multiple volatile situations during his tenure, and kept us afloat. Guys that undermined his authority or team unity left the program, and they left without cowardly “leaks” from the staff undermining their chances at a fresh start elsewhere. Good Karma created, good Karma reaped this March. You also see this with how role players like Des and AoD have answered the bell when called upon during the tournament, and how MG isn’t afraid to play every card in his deck.
Being a “master strategist” or a “tight disciplinarian” is not the only way to be an effective coach. Not in any way, shape, or form. We have to let Mark Gottfried be the best Mark Gottfried he can be, and so far the results are encouraging that he is developing into something very good.
One might argue that with the talent we have, this is where we should be anyway. But when you lose your leading scorer, have no shortage of teammates that are happy to hoist up jump-shots, and a sophomore point guard that is still trying to figure things out, this season is what you get. Now, through line-up tweaking, experience and coaching (yes, I said it), we are a much improved defensive team (I leave the proof to the resident statisticians), which I recall was vocalized by many here as Gottfried’s Achilles heel. For at least that, he should be given a modicum of credit.
The next thing to see develop that is critical in my mind is consistency — having more games like the second UNC game or the Villanova game and many less games like the BC one. The prevalent conventional wisdom around the lack of consistency is that we have a young team. We will know for sure next year whether or not that case holds water.
Did Jeff Goodman just call Mark Gottried “Forrest Gump”?
I’ll take it. Forrest accomplished quite a lot.
I think most of the experts equate good coaching with consistent performance. Gott’s teams have not been as steady as a lot of us would like to see, but this is only year four and there has been consistent effort and intensity. His style of play also lends itself to more variable results. If you want to get out and run as much as we do you are going to have more ups and downs as a result.
We do have pretty solid talent, but we don’t have Duke/Cheaters/Kansas/Zona type players. I think Gott’s efforts this year to figure out which pieces fit together and eventually get Cat going deserve some recognition. I did expect more out of the bigs, but perhaps even that is starting to take shape.
Heads up – my post is the long way of saying this “Hats off to Mark Gottfried and his staff – not just their recruiting”
I think we are saying relatively the same thing. I don’t look at our talent pool as drastically superior than most and I know its not bad at all. We had a top 5 class which there aren’t any remaining members right? Wasn’t that just RP, TL, and TJW? Then we also had a 17th rated which is middle of of the pack.
I follow our recruiting very closely and I’m aware of the rankings and the excitement around every player when they signed. I’m just saying our talent level isn’t far superior than most of our competition (ranked teams) playing in the ACC. We’ve gone into the tourney with drastically different teams every year. Lorenzo Brown / CJ Leslie / Wood / Howell to them plus Buckets, RP, and TL to last year with Buckets pretty much carrying our team to this year since the emergence of Cat 2.0 and Pack Defense we are a balanced team.
Most of our losses are good losses but we have some WTF’s. When Georgia football loses a game or two their lunatic fringe says fire Mark Richt, I live here and its nuts. While MG hasn’t built anything near what Mark Richt has I feel like our dissenters are sniffing the same stuff 🙂 after our bad losses.
I’m not intending to be argumentative, I really appreciate your (all SFN) perspectives most of the time and they help me really understand our team’s strengths and weaknesses more. Our kids this year developed a little slower (first 20-25 games) than we wanted and it was frustrating. We saw flashes and were disappointed when it wasn’t sustained. However, by the end of the season we have seen virtually every player minus Trevor Lacey (BALLER ALERT) and Ralston Turner make huge leaps from game 1 to now on both sides of the ball.
With the additional experience this year Gott has our team going into next year with the consistent style of high level play that it takes to be successful and compete with the blues. Gott has been getting his type of player, developing them from individual talents to PACK players. All in all building a solid program. Hats off to him and his staff (not just their recruiting is what I’m saying)
I think most of the experts equate good coaching with consistent performance
^That’s the thing about perception and media and fans, etc. – people like Goodman are far from experts. Goodman is a troll weasel who uses his position as some form of psuedo-power fantasy. He yearns to be a part of the story rather than just report it.
I get a good laugh when people like Goodman bring silly, ignorant criticism. This is the same guy that trolls the fanbase with ‘know your place’ quotes and then when State / State’s coach gets even a little success he revels in making fun of how it occurred and belittling the current coach.
Criticism is fine. Absolutely fine and necessary. But when it’s just throw away trolling crap like Goodman delivers it’s lowest common denominator ‘story’ conjuring.
I’ll listen to Greenberg, Jay Williams, Bilas and the rest who actually played and/or coached the game. I may not always agree with what they say, but their words carry a ton more weight. I think (know) ex-coaches can go way overboard on sticking up for their brethren, but at least they’ve been in the trenches and know what others are facing.
On the Gottfried discussion, he was on Andy Katz’ show yesterday and the interview really cuts to the heart of the matter imo. I haven’t been able to find the interview online, but Katz began by stating he watched the Nova game w/ State fans and that the fans don’t know what to expect from State each time out. Katz then asked how “challenging” this team has been this season. This set the tone for a fairly contentious interview.
Gottfried immediately stuck up for his team and said the entire process had been rewarding, watching them grow and turn into the team they are currently and that he couldn’t go along with that line of thinking. Katz then, I felt, intentionally antagonized Gottfried by framing his next question as “You’ve got top-2 line talent, so why hasn’t it always played out that way with consistency and why are they doing it know?”
I really credit Gottfried here for keeping his cool. The question could easily have been taken as insulting to both Gottfried and the team – and I felt the question was meant in that manner. Gottfried retorted with (paraphrasing all of this): “You know Andy you didn’t start out the season stating that we had top 2-line talent. We were picked 10th in the ACC. What has happened is that these guys have grown and gotten better as the season has progressed. It’s been great, etc.”.
Katz then wrapped up the interview and Gottfried responded with a fairly gruff ‘thank you’. I like Katz fine, but all-in-all I thought that was a shoddy, ambush style interview. It’s “funny” how media types just flip the script whenever a narrative changes or a new narrative appears.
Anyhow, the point is – this is a talent-laden team. While on one hand it’s fair to criticize certain aspects of the season and how some stuff played out, on the other hand there should be due credit given to the improvement of the team, individual players, and consistency. It’s fine to criticize Gottfied’s past results and actions, but it’s beyond disingenuous to fit and frame those narratives around a March run in the NCAA tournament. The results will always speak for themselves. Notice how the keyboard jockeys didn’t have much to say when State was doing “what it was supposed to”, but now that State has had a tiny amount of success they’re out in full force with the narrative pushing of “underachieve” and the surprise success despite Gottfried’s “incompetence”.
^Those type of statements come from people who have never played, never coached and in general have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s always a chicken-egg argument with no validity and no reasoning. Rather than focusing on why this season’s team was “inconsistent” and giving due criticism plus due credit where warranted, they ham-fist a storyline based on, at best, anecdotal evidence and narratives. That’s what the Goodman’s and Seth Davis-es of sports “journalism” do – push their drive-by opinion off as “fact”.
Hand-wringers will always hand-wring, and haters will always hate.
Here’s another statement to chew on, folks. Consistency, unless you are a runaway freight train like this year’s Kentucky team, is VASTLY overrated.
Remember all year how I talked about variance. I said we would be more likely to upset Duke than UVA, because Duke was more high variance, and UVA was extremely low variance.
A low variance team is GREAT at the regular season. 16-2 is a fabulous accomplishment, in the ACC or the Big East (Villanova). Yet you will find few people shocked that they didn’t make the Final Four, even if most had them making it another round or maybe two. And why is that?
No 5th gear. But a higher variance team like Duke? They have it. Now, that means they will lose more games along the way. It also means they are more prone to REALLY early upsets. But high variance is how you win titles and make Final Fours (again, unless you are overwhelming). And most programs can’t accumulate overwhelming talent.
V’s teams were rarely very consistent. Tampa, UC-Santa Barbara. Shit happens. But you LEARN from your mistakes, and you try to peak and come together for the tournament.
Nobody disagrees that State doesn’t need to be MORE consistent – we don’t need to be so wobbly that we fight the bubble every year. But we don’t need, or really WANT to be Nova or UVA-consistent. We just need to improve on what we’ve started in 2014-15, quite frankly. This is the template to build from, for NC State. We may never win the ACC regular season, and that’s fine with me.
Remember all year how I talked about variance. I said we would be more likely to upset Duke than UVA, because Duke was more high variance, and UVA was extremely low variance.
The exact same people who belittle State and Gottfried for their ‘inconsistency’ immediately turn around and belittle Bennett and UVa for their ‘consistent’ ceiling.
It wouldn’t be as funny if it weren’t this sad.
Really, f*** them.
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