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There was a full slate of games on Saturday, with four blowouts (three of which were in the Triangle) and two nail biters.
[See the full post at: ACC Recap and Analysis]Beat BC, figure out how to play a whole game and beat Clemson and then lather, rinse and repeat on Senior Night against Syracuse and we’re in good shape. Add in a conference tournament win and we can relax while the seedings are announced.
But I am selfish. I think we can beat Carolina, but we’re going to have to play as well as we did against Louisville to do it. Roy has our number, that’s for sure, but his team this year is not the typical miles-and-miles better than NC State type.
Yeah, just saw that and deleted the dupes. RoadRunner is really wonky tonight…Google Fiber can’t get here quickly enough.
Just win baby.
For some reason, I’m expecting us to show well in Chapel Hill on Tuesday. Not predicting the win necessarily, but Heels will need to be at their best to avoid the home upset I think.
Or maybe I’m just insane.
Thanks for your work on these and for getting them up every week (phrasing!).
Or maybe I’m just insane.
We’re State fans. Take solace in the fact that you’re not alone.
As for the entry, if it wasn’t clear before it should be now: strength of schedule matters. A lot. It may be the most important metric (subjective or otherwise) that they take into consideration. I think Duke would be a 1-seed today and I’d be fine with it. Their schedule is insane, and no team matches wins at two other prospective 1-seeds. If they stumble down the stretch or lose before the ACC tourney final then that might change, but right now I’d probably have the as the #2 overall seed due to winning @ Wiscy + @ UVa and UVa being w/out Anderson + Perrantes.
Another thing about SOS being so important: State’s in the Top 5 :). For this reason, I’m more inclined to see things as the Dance Card sees them – with State more or less “safely” in at the moment.
Re: Palm – I’ve found him to be less than reliable when it comes to Bracketology. In my opinion, he relies on perception and bias a bit much and he’s sometimes off by more than one seed line. Tough call on the Cheats though, so I certainly don’t fault him for that seeding. I can’t get with Notre Dame being on the 3-line though – but it’s going to be interesting to see what line they do wind up on.
Re: KW – PackPride
Straight from the horse’s mouth:
On Kyle Washington [DNP-CD]:
I think right now we are going a little bit more with Lennard, Malik and BeeJay but we also played a team tonight that played four guards and defensively it was a hard matchup. Really, we went with the four guards in the second half and Bee Jay was a presence. BeeJay was blocking shots, altering shots and so it was more a matter of just nothing intended towards [Washington].
You have got to be ready to play. North Carolina is a much different game Tuesday night. They play two bigs all the time. We need to probably match up with that more, so sometimes the game just unfolds that way.On Washington’s psyche after not playing:
I worry about everybody’s psyche. Kyle understands, I talked to him about it after the game. Sometimes it is just the way the game kind of happens. I wasn’t going to put him in there with a couple of minutes to go. I told he and Cody[Martin, also a DNP-CD] both that. I wasn’t going to do that.
They’ll stay ready. They’ve got to say ready. Understand right now, different matchups, different game. We need all of them ready to be ready to play. Hopefully, he will be mentally fine.I don’t have any issue with Duke as a one seed. Kentucky and Virginia are obvious ones. Gonzaga sits at 26-1 which is tough to ignore. You also have to look at Wisconsin, Villanova and Arizona. I’d put Duke ahead of all of those.
Pitt really has turned it on. They looked awful earlier in the year.
I’m also not feeling Miami this year. That Lvill loss was a crusher.
I’m thinking the ACC will get seven with us and Pitt joining the top 5.
Oregon seems to have punched their ticket last night with a win over Utah. That takes a “last four in” spot away from somebody.
Oregon displaced Stanford in Lunardi’s Last Four In. We were at the top of that list.
We have a really tough stretch to get through. All four of these games are ones we could lose. When I see the 3-1 talk I think to my self that would mean 1-6 (with the one win being GT) followed by 5-1. That’s why I won’t be comfortable with our spot until the morning after Selection Sunday.
As a lifelong Pack fan (and alum), I’ve grown accustomed to two diametrically opposed theories in NCSU basketball: we either pull off miracles or fall flat on our face. As a vocal Gottfired opponent, I have my hunches.
Yeah, don’t get sold on Oregon just yet. They have exactly two top 50 wins after yesterday, and one of those may not be top 50 at season’s end – UCLA is #47. Their schedule was ‘meh’, and they close with three consecutive road games to close the season before the Pac-12 tournament. Dammit Utah, you could have made this all a moot point yesterday … but nooooo.
Agree on Stanford – there’s really nothing there. Best wins are Texas and Wofford, and Texas may not even make the tournament the way they’re collapsing. Stanford also has three 125+ losses. Stanford has looked mediocre at best when I’ve seen them.
Honestly, if the Pac-12 gets more than three teams everyone should be screaming bloody outrage. Three even is a stretch. Gotta hope that it’s Arizona and Utah in the Pac-12 tournament finals so there’s no bid stealing going on.
The fork in the road at the Miami game didn’t turn out so well with 3 straight losses. There sure is a lot of churning ulcer acid surrounding Tuesday’s UNX fork with the 2 point 2012 ACCT game, TJ’s 1 point game last year and the 81-79 score at PNC earlier this season. Still, it means progress if State some how wins and takes 2 of 3 from the blues during the regular season this year. I want a gut wrenching, program changing, down to the last second win with The Cat leading the team from start to finish.
As a native Charlottean, the only team one could watch on TV every week in the 60s, 70s and 80s were the Washington Redskins. Lots of heart breaking misery brought on by the Cowboys over the last 45 years. IIRC, knocked out of the 1979 playoffs at 10-6 by a last minute TD by the boys 35-34. Turning point – 1982 (only regular season loss was to f—— Dallas) 4th quarter of the playoff victory over the Vikings, I hear this RFK chant coming through the TV. At first, the old familiar dread started coming over me because I didn’t want to give the enemy pre-NFC Championship game fodder. But as the chant got louder, the more I started to believe. 55,000 thousand fans screaming “We Want Dallas”.
I know many of you will snicker at the idea of Tuesday night being a program changer. There are many differing opinions about Gott, the staff and the players. The fact is State might not play Duke or UNX in the ACCT or the NCAAT. The Roy Knew scandal and the passing of Dean Smith gives this year new vantage point angles. The old ram establishment would like nothing more than a “Same as it ever was” win tomorrow night. I will sit in my chair and internally chant “I want UNX.” I would love to hear our fan base chant “We want UNX” if there is any chance we can play them in the ACCT.
State really needs to get in the NCAAT and make some noise this year. 2016 is such a crucial recruiting year for us. So many layers of intersections it makes a man want to say “Nuts”.
Oh, for all the WR haters out there, first MNF game of 1983, Redskins 23-0 at the half, Dallas wins 31-30.
Go Pack! Sorry for the duration of my tangents.
Welp, I don’t see us beating the Blues in Dean’s dome. Gott’s never come within 10 points of winning there, I expect more of the same.
So that leaves BC, Clemson and Cuse.
BC has lost 8 in a row coming into Pitt (to make it 9) and then they get us. Like Va Tech, a game we cannot lose if we want to present ourselves as NCAAT worthy. I don’t think they can beat us, but we can definitely fool around and let them win.
Clemson scares me – mostly since they beat us in Raleigh. They’ve beaten Cuse, Pitt and us for their best wins. We’ll get them in SC right after they beat Ga Tech. This will be the toughest game of these last three, I think. We’re gong to need some luck with this one. Not feeling good about it at all.
‘Cuse’s best win was against Louisville, they’ve got the toughest part of their schedule leading into us. At ND, at Duke, UVA at home, and then here in Raleigh. They look about the same as us, they’ve got 17 wins, we’ve got 16. I’d say definitely winnable, especially since we are home.
So I think we win two, and need to win two in the ACCT. And that is going to be very difficult.
“We want UNX”
Agree. Better still, it would be even better if the program, staff, and players felt that way heading into a Cheats game. Seems it hasn’t been that way since Les was on the sidelines.
As a program, we have had some literal roll-over and play dead losses over there the past 20 years. The type of losses that project abject fear and a complete lack of any pride or toughness. It’d be nice for that to change.
Re: Clemson – they’ve also beaten Arkansas and LSU … their resume is all over the map. If we can’t get it done tomorrow night, we almost have to find a way to win BC, Clemson, and Cuse.
I was in the Dean Dome in 2012 when we got absolutely mollywhopped. Of course, I was wearing my State shirt under my hoodie. Ended up zipping the hoodie up by the half.
We’ve been so tantalizingly close in more recent times. It would be great to see the boys go out and exact revenge. In some ways, I believe we can pull it off. We definitely put up a much better showing against UVA the second time around, despite the late loss. And hey, we beat Duke, Duke beat UNX, therefore, WE can beat UNX.
Right? Play for pride, boys!!!
I don’t think there is much question that we have the horses to pull it off tomorrow night. But will we be right between the ears for 40 minutes of play? Paige is the kind of player that can go off for 6-8 points in the blink of an eye, and that could be the difference. We can’t afford any major lapses.
Roy has made it known that he absolutely loves beating us. He’s old school – he knows what this means. Couple that with the passing/memorial of Dean, and Roy’s sharp criticism of Carolina fans, and I think it is safe to say it is going to be quite a scene. They will be ready. Will we?
Team Rankings — an interesting site that stacks up the teams and gives us a 50/50 chance of getting a bid.
Lunardi has us as a 12 seed playing Oregon then VCU followed by UVA.
Transitive hopes and dreams aside, the game is really about matchups. Round one in Raleigh, UNC withstood a rally to win. Paige had his usual good game, but what I recall is Tokoto’s defense against Lacey, with the resultant 5-19 performance. Despite what I’d like to think, Roy is not stupid. It worked last time, so I expect to see it again. Will we have an answer?
UNX’s strength is inside – when they play in the paint, they win. They’re good rebounders. Will our shot blockers give up crucial ORB’s while glory-seeking ill-timed blocked shots? Or will we alter the shots, body up, and get the damned ball?
It will be an incredibly hostile environment, fully charged. It’s not an accident that Roy called out the fans ahead of this game. Expect the place to be rocking (or, at least, what passes as “rocking” for them). It will take the best showing of the season to have a chance.
It will take the best showing of the season to have a chance.
Agree 100%. And that is exactly what I expect us to give. I ain’t a scared of cheatin Roy or his wine sippin, cheese eatin, blue shirt and khaki wearin, arrogant, nose stuck up in the air fans.
How do you properly quote someone (red lettering and all)?
It’s not an accident that Roy called out the fans ahead of this game.
That is a very great point. Roy hates us more than the fans do because he remembers when the coin was flipped and we were handing it to the Heels every meeting. It’s still a rivalry to him, deep down in his cold, black heart.
How do you properly quote someone (red lettering and all)?
^For whatever reason, I don’t think this functionality is working properly when you access a topic from the front/main page.
If you access a topic from the Forums though, all you need to do is hit the ‘quote’ button on a post you’d like to quote. If you’d like to only quote a portion of the post, highlight the portion you want to quote and then hit the ‘quote’ button. Scroll down to your comment text box and you should the post you want to highlight surrounded by ‘quote’ tags. When you submit your post you should see the quoted post – like your post is highlighted above. Hope this is helpful.
WolfWiz11’s comments about covering his State shirt in the Dean Dome was very telling about this series when the games are played in Chapel Hill.
Just about every State team I’ve seen play since the 1980s has played like a scared rabbit in that place. A Wolfpack win there tomorrow night would shock me more than an ACCT run to Saturday night. Heck, a strong State performance would be almost as surprising.
I’m probably one of the few on here who think Kyle Washington should be playing a lot more, but remember, our most damning loss of the season came on an inside possession by Notre Dame, who pounded it inside against us to send the game to OT. KW sat out most of that second half, and I honestly believe had he been in the game at the end of regulation, ND would not have gotten that tip-in. UNC has just killed us inside lately, and you can bet they’ll pound it inside again Tuesday night. I think Gott will have to play #32, but I don’t think sitting out the entire VT game helped him or the team, especially with Carolina up next.
If the 3s aren’t falling for us tomorrow night, just where will the offense come from?
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