It is ACC-Big 10 Challenge week, and that means it is time for another beat down of big boys from the midwest. The ACC has won each of the previous eight challenges and leads the overall series by a whopping 48-27.
Make that 49-27 after Wake Forest won on the road at Iowa last night.
* This entry will provide you a full schedule of the this year’s challenge.
* This entry will provide you a quick look at how ACC teams have performed to this point.
This year’s match-up against the Michigan State Spartans represents the most anticipated match-up of the series for NC State.
Sidney Lowe is 1-0 in the Big 10 Challenge as the Wolfpack gave us our first glimpse that something special was building quickly in Raleigh when State played an exiciting brand of basketball by defeating Michigan last year, 74-67. The game wasn’t all positive for State as Engin Atsur suffered is season-lingering injury early in the first half; while Jimmy Dykes proved to be a miserable announcer. (To Dykes’ credit, he was never this bad again in future Wolfpack games).
I think that you will enjoy looking back at the live blogging entry done during the game last year as well as the post game/media comments entry. Additionally, this entry also provides some great retrospective that included the following comments from ESPN’s Andy Katz:
If I’d told any of you that Engin Atsur would miss nearly the entire game against Michigan, and the Pack would still win… would you have believed it? Lowe has his team motivated. They believe in the “team concept,†but they don’t believe their team depth is too thin. Beating a quality team — without Atsur — is proof positive.
And how about Lowe’s in-game coaching? He’s animated. He’s intense. And his first-half timeouts — which are becoming a game-by-game event — always seem to spark his team at the right time.
