Jay Bilas Comments During Halftime and Postgame Of The UNC Beatdown

Bilas at halftime: “A little embarrassing? That was the most embarrassing first half I’ve seen all season long. What do you do if you’re Sidney Lowe? Do you draw a play up? You’ve gotta go in (to the locker room) and draw a big heart there and say, ‘Do we have any?'”These guys are not relating to each other. Their body language is horrible. They look like a bunch of zombies whenever they get into a huddle. They didn’t come prepared to fight. When you go on the road, you have to come prepared to fight and fight together. This is a team going in five different directions on the floor. I have not seen a performance as embarrassing as that all year long.”

Bilas after the game: “There’s no way that any team in America is going to hold a good team to 13 points in a half with their defense alone. N.C. State helped them (UNC). N.C. State was a huge problem for themselves.

“There is something going on with that team — and I don’t know what it is, I’m not Dr. Phil here — but they don’t get along with each other. That was not a team that trusted each other, that valued each other. They didn’t come together when things got tough, they went in different directions. That’s the first thing that they’ve got to address, how that team relates to each other.” Jay Bilas, ESPN

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07-08 Basketball Quotes of Note

124 Responses to Jay Bilas Comments During Halftime and Postgame Of The UNC Beatdown

  1. RTPMedic 01/13/2008 at 1:36 PM #

    “I just think that the players hate each other.”

    Why do we as a group (Pack fans) seem to be avoiding this as a possiblilty? This thought hit me after the first game or two because I did not see the “team” mind-set from them. I don’t know why it seems that way, but that is my impression. About the most interaction you see between players is Grant and Hickson. They talk and try to motivate each other on the court, but I do not remember seeing it from ANYONE ELSE consistently for the whole season. They just come to the RBC when there is a game and leave when it is over. Maybe it is different with some of the guys that don’t get a lot of playing time.

    Do the players know something that we do not (i.e. Hickson ‘one-and-done’ and they are just waiting for him to leave) or is the lack of cohesion of this unit due to something else said or done before the season or during practice.
    I venture there is something that has torn this team apart and none of them are willing to do what it take to heal the wound. If that is the case they all need to go and we just start over. I do not see the Pride of the University in them – period.

  2. ncstu 01/13/2008 at 1:41 PM #

    Things I’d rather been doing yesterday than watching Costner walk down the court down 30:

    1 – having LASIK surgery
    2 – getting a root canal
    3 – talking comedy with Henry Kissinger
    4 – listening to a full box set of Wham
    5 – gardening with Rosie O’Donnell

  3. choppack1 01/13/2008 at 1:44 PM #

    DFMo – I think your position is perfectly reasonable. The season isn’t even close to being over yet.

    I did some quick research and suffice to say we could use Larry Davis this year. He wouldn’t cure our ills, but he would certainly help us. (I think he’s averaging double figures in big east play.)

    Regarding Ellington’s comments – I hope Sidney pastes those on everyone’s locker/desk. They are a huge slap in the face to every coaching and playing basketball for NC State. It’s time for this team to WAKETFU!

  4. ncstu 01/13/2008 at 1:44 PM #

    I could find 5 girls in the Peace Corps who could score 15 pts in a half….

  5. ZZ 01/13/2008 at 1:46 PM #

    Well, I’ve sat back and read these blogs for way too long without adding anything of my own..so here it is.

    Year after year, loss after loss, football and basketball, I’ve never felt as I do today. I’m not embarrassed or sad or down on the school that I give my soul and emotion to day in and day out. I love NCSU and I always will. Rather, I sit here as ANGRY as a parent would be after seeing their son come home from school with a black eye and bloody nose. After you ask if he is alright, you ask…”did you fight back?”

    I’m not the biggest or the toughest guy in the world, but the fight in this dog will never die! It’s hard to give my $$ and heart to a team that cant even fight back. No- screw the $$ it’s not about that, it’s about fighting back after you get punched in the nose.

    So for those of us who are fighters, who “don’t give up, don’t ever give up”, we are stuck rooting for a bunck of kids who do, and it hurts.

    As for the fact that they ARE kids and some feel shouldn’t be critisized since they aren’t professionals: Welcome to something called LIFE. The life of a college athlete is pretty damn good. We have our sons, brothers, friends, fathers, and women too, dying over seas who aren’t given a fraction of what these athletes are given. They don’t risk their lives for me or you, they do it for the guy standing next to him, it’s that simple. They are the same age as our athletes and would risk their LIFE, day in and day out to save their buddy’s. (Believe me I was in the U.S.M.C from ’95-’99.)

    These young men need their world rocked, turned upside down.
    Coach Sidney Lowe: It’s time to stop playing father to a bunch of quitters and give them a LIFE lesson…play the bench until something changes, especially Simon Harris, who’s heart and effort stand out like a men amongst boys.

    This is the approach that Sid needs to take, sorry if you have to copy/paste.

  6. rky 01/13/2008 at 2:13 PM #

    Nice link, ZZ . . . we really do not have anything resembling a War Face . . .

  7. BillyVest 01/13/2008 at 2:14 PM #

    I’m in my 30’s and the best basketball I’ve seen is under Sendek. I grew up in the Triangle and remember the way it was in the 1980’s. But I think those days are over. We have been an irrelevant basketball program, with regards to the balance of power in the ACC, for around 20 years. We don’t just need a very good coach to take make us relevant again. We need a first ballot Hall of Fame coach.

    In the past we could get away with very good, if not Hall of Fame good, coaches, like Sloan and Valvano, because our basketball program’s success was fresh in people’s minds. Unfortunately that is no longer the case.

    Kids in college now, weren’t alive in 1987. Helped move some furniture for a friend a few weekends ago. His cousin helped. His cousin’s 19, in college, and wasn’t alive in 1987. It still takes a bit for me to register that the 1980’s were a generation ago. The income freshman class, for 2008, will be the first to be born in the 1990’s.

    As much as people want to talk about 10 ACC titles, and 2 National Championships having a bearing on how we should think of ourselves, I really cannot feel those accomplishments mean anything anymore.

    We have spent too long being awful to above average, at best, to have those events mean anything to a new generation of fans. I remember when UNC-NCSU really meant something, because both teams were good, but those days are over.

    I can appreciate why UNC doesn’t consider us their rivals. When we lost to ECU, I know that was the high watermark for both ECU’s season and basketball program, but we NCSU fans want more than a win against ECU. We want an NCAA tournament birth, a Final Four appearance and an ACC title. One loss to ECU won’t effect the outcome of those hopes. The same way, Carolina plays for National Titles. The occassional upset at the hands of a team, in the bottom third of the ACC, which we are, in January or February won’t effect them one bit in March.

    I cannot realistically think of ourselves as the co-equals of Duke and Carolina, which older fans want to do, based on what this program did until the late 1980’s anymore. I don’t believe anyone, who is casually paying attention to college basketball, will think of us as great basketball power or even know we exist, outside of the state of North Carolina.

    We are a second rate ACC school desparately wanting to play with the “big boys”, in Durham and Chapel Hill.

    I don’t want to say “never”, but to compete with Duke and Carolina, we need a first ballot Hall of Fame caliber coach. Carolina’s plugged in three Hall of Fame coaches – McGuire, Smith and Williams – over the past 50 years. Duke snagged themselves one in Mikie K.

    If we really want to move this program out of irrelevance, we just don’t need a good coach, we need one of the all time great coaches. The kind of coach, who not only wins but establishes programs as being among the elite of the elite.

    I’m not going to judge Sidnely Lowe yet about whether or not he is that kind of coach, but I’m just saying, we cannot settle for anything less than the best among the best of college coaches, if we want to compete with Duke or UNC-Ch.

    We’ve lost too much ground in the preception of our basketball program, with potential recruits, over the past 20 years to think we can get away with anything less.

    On side note, Herb heavily recruited Ty Lawson. He lost that recruiting battle. Imagine how different the basketball world would be if Lawson committed to NCSU.

    Only an elite coach will come close to winning some of those recuriting battles.

  8. ZZ 01/13/2008 at 2:23 PM #

    Ohh.. and as for Gonzalez. He is TERRIBLE, period. But he isn’t the one playing himself.

    Everyone remember Jay Davis? I never once thought he wasn’t trying, just not able thats all.

    While there certainly are differences between positions in BBall, it’s not like FBall. In Football, you obviously can’t throw a lineman in at QB, it’s just not reasonable. What is reasonable is that Grant play point, as he did last year. It’s not like asking a lineman to play QB. In Basketball’s purest sense, you dribble, pass and shoot. Based on your strengths and your size: there’s your position (in very basic terms, don’t kill me on this).

    Take the 5-10 guys who can dribble, pass and shoot and put them out there as best as you can. But Gonzalez doesn’t figure in that equation whatsoever Coach. You knew it last year with our guards (Grant played point). It’s time to realize it this year too.

  9. ZZ 01/13/2008 at 2:37 PM #

    BillyVest; I see your point, but thats not going to happen. We saw what Sid did last year… We’ve seen him start to get recruits, he can do that… I know he can run the show come GameTime…His heart is deeper into this thing than anyother coach in the country, including the CouchCoaches like us. Besides suiting up himself, (maybe at practice to embarrass our guards) a coach can’t do much else if you teams heart is non-existent (see my above post)

  10. Wulfpack 01/13/2008 at 2:47 PM #

    For NC State fans to compare ourselves to Duke and UNC today is a complete slap in the face to the success that those programs have achieved. I understand that they are our neighbors, our despised enemies, and the benchmark for what we hope to be, but we haven’t done a damn thing in 20 years that closely resembles what they are doing year after year. In fact, there are only a few programs nationally that can even come close to the comparison. What makes us think we can compete year in and year out? You can speak of the past, our storied “history” all you want. But where is that “history” getting us today? Where is it? Hell, we aren’t even Duke or UNC’s real rival anymore. That’s just how irrelevant we have been.

    I hate to be overly cynical, but this thought just jumped into my mind and it’s telling. UNC urgently needed someone to come in and revive their program after the Guthridge and Doherty years. Who do they turn to? A Hall of Famer. One of the all-time greats.

    And who do we turn to?

    That’s where we are today. It all rests on Sidney’s shoulders, or else we are a has been for an even longer period of time. And I think he is going to begin feeling that weight, if he hasn’t already.

  11. haze 01/13/2008 at 2:54 PM #

    I think folks are being a little hard on Javi. For goodness sakes, he was a late Spring recruit that probably never saw any guru’s top 200. He’s now thrown into the position of starting PG in the ACC. It’s a harsh awakening for an undersized kid that was already struggling with his shot during the silly season. I can hardly blame him for being scared out of his wits at UNC.

    If you want to get on someone, how about getting on ourselves (some of us anyway) for extending the “our coaches know PG’s” theory into the “we’ll be just fine with 2 inexperienced transfers and a frosh at PG” theory. That’s crazy talk people.

    The weird thing is that I still fully expect to get 6-7 wins in the ACC. That’ll suck given what we’d be doing with Costner’s do-gooder doppleganger from last year but the point is that we are not completely incompetent; we just look bad a lot of the time. Seriously, we did beat ‘Nova and Seton Hall. We did beat a OK Cinci team and a good Davidson club. We did this despite our “issues”. I expect we will win ugly, quite a few times in the coming weeks. We just won’t enjoy it very much unless these guys (Sid included) start leaving some blood on the floor.

  12. bTHEredterror 01/13/2008 at 3:03 PM #

    You guys want Sendek? Move to Tempe! He is in Tempe because of similar performances, he got jacked up at home (I think Senior Night?) two years ago against an undermanned UNC team.

    Look at it like this, when did Sendek ever score 49 points in a half against Carolina regardless of circumstance?

    There are certainly some gaping holes in the team, and Bilas is right they don’t play like a team. That is troubling, but there is a lot of season left and a team’s personality can change. There’s one talented team (despite PG we have talent) every year that looks rough early on and ends up making a late run, maybe it’s us this year. It certainly was close last year with less talent.

    Talk of firing Sid is ludicrous. I’ll concede they look like an NBA team in terms of effort, but Sid is still learning the nuances of coaching on the college level. He hasn’t even had 2 full years and you want to judge? Just throw a log on the fire and say you want Sendek back to your Carolina colleagues tomorrow, they’ll laugh as loud as I did.

    This is bravado, but the last laugh is the best, you have to think that way. As unlikely as it is for the team to pull of the upset in Raleigh, this ass-beating may be the catalyst for some changes. I refuse to believe that kind of national embarassment won’t hit some kind of competitive nerve in our kids or coaches.

    Of course, I thought that after the MSU game, too.

  13. DFMo 01/13/2008 at 3:08 PM #

    Turned on FSN to get an update.

    UNC 76 – 70 with 47 sec left. TO NCSU. Kay talking firmly, asst coach darn near barking after they did not rebound after a missed FT.

    No laok of effort here. NO lack of direct coaching.

  14. ZZ 01/13/2008 at 3:14 PM #

    haze: not being hard on Javi (who sucks), being hard on the one who is putting him on the floor. No doubt he is doing the best he can, he just shouldn’t be playing.

    As for the Sendek talk: I hope people are blowing off steam. Sid needs to START the bench at LittleJohn and make our starters pay for Saturday by only going in to rest the bench. That’s if they can even walk after the torment that Sid had better be giving them right now. HURT EM’ SID, HURT EM BAD!!

  15. redpack 01/13/2008 at 3:17 PM #

    NC State does not have a basketball team. It has a small group of ego maniacs that do not have a clue about the concept of team sports.
    Each of them have only one searing ambition, pro basketball. It’s all about ME! It’s all about MY playing time. It’s all about MY shot. It’s all about watch ME. They’re playing each other, oblivious that another team is on the court.
    And Sidney is at sea. He cannot instill a team spirit, cannot infuse his oysters to move together in the single pursuit of a common goal.
    There are none so blind, as those who refuse to see. Sidney was a good basketball player. Sidney is no doubt a decent fellow whose heart is in the right place. Sidney is not a coach. He has the talent. He has the resources. He simply does not have ability to inspire.
    Do any of you really think that Sidney is in the same league as UNC or Duke’s coach? It’s not personal. It’s just business.

  16. BillyVest 01/13/2008 at 3:25 PM #

    ZZ; I hope Sid succeeds, I really do. I agree, he is one of the few people, who believes we can be right up there with Duke and Carolina. I know he and Monte (especially Monte) really believe, because they’ve lived it, that NCSU can be the best team in basketball.

    Unfortunately I have not seen the great in game adjustments, much, this year. The traingle-and-2 against Seton Hall was a good move. Other than that we don’t seem to be making many adjustments.

    Last year we went from man, to zone, and back to man to mix things up on defense almost every game. Last year, in both Raleigh and Chapel Hill (before Sid went to the hospital at half-time, in Chapel Hill, UNC was leading 41-40) both games were competitive. Sid was coaching his heart out. He countered every move Roy made. He didn’t care if he ran out of time outs. He was coaching for the moment.

    I know last year’s Carolina team was young and this year’s edition has developed maturity last year’s team lack and has the killer instinct, the 2005 team had (along with some serious improvement in player development, especially Lawson and Ellington, who I hope turn pro after this year because I would hate to see how good they’ll be next year).

    After the game was tied 9-9 and Carolina went up by a couple of buckets, I was saying to myself – Sid’s not going to let this game get out of hand, he’s going to call a time out and settle us down, before Carolina goes on real run. He didn’t. He waited till were down 10 before calling a time out. A ten point deficit, on the road in the ACC, even without the problems we have on offense, is tough to overcome.

    Deep down I hope and pray Sid succeeds, but from my experience, when a class (or team) isn’t doing well, it’s usually the fault of having a poor instructor, who is not able to communicate to the class (or team).

    We have too many players, who were highly rated coming out of high school, who played better last year, who look lost this year for me to not to call the coaching staff’s ability into doubt.

    I have to wonder how many more blow out losses, Sid & Co., can endure before the players quit respecting their ability as coaches and pack it in for the season.

    I know, at work at least, folks have a pretty short fuse with incompetent bosses and if the boss doesn’t seem to know what’s going on people aren’t going to try hard to make things succeed. They’ll start pointing fingers and try to cover themselves.

    I’ve never played organized sports at a high level, but as adults – and college players are adults – I don’t see why they would have the childlike awe of adulthood, which usually keeps kids in rec leagues from copying the finger pointing and politics adults display, when they are in poorly managed organizations.

    The sad thing is the folks at the top, the board of directors if you will, in our athletics department have no idea we are poorly managed. For them not failing is more important than succeeding.

    I’m glad Herb left, even if Sid doesn’t succeed. A program, in our position, in a premier conference with state-of-the-art facilities and a passionate fanbase should not have to endure fruitless coaching searches to find a top notch replacement for an outgoing coach.

    Unfortunately the people in charge of our athletics department don’t see things that way.

    For them, it’s more important to not make mistakes, than try and fail and then try again. Trying to succeed is harder than keeping the status quo.

    There’s no reason, if Sid doesn’t work out, we can’t get a proven winner from another conference, like Tim Floyd at USC. If Michigan is an upgrade over West Virginia and West Virgnia an upgrade over K-State, there’s no reason for us to think we aren’t going to be a better destination than other programs in premier conferences and a sought after job for successful mid-major coaches.

    All I’m saying is we have to keep trying till we succeed at finding the right coach. It’s hard, but not impossible. I’m willing to take whatever lumps we have to take, if we are trying to find the best coach out there.

    If we’re (I mean the AD) is not, I might as well quit caring.

  17. ZZ 01/13/2008 at 3:44 PM #

    BillyVest; wondered why you hadn’t responded, it takes a while to type all that! Agree with all you said.

    But before we look for a new coach, lets see if he will pull a 180 on these guys, I want to give him the chance to break them down to nothing, even if they are already there. “No more mr. niceguy” He needs to try the (link) approach in one of my above posts.

    If Sid doesn’t make DRASTIC changes, then lets hear about a new leader. I guess we will see Tuesday at 7. If you’re like me, you can’t quit caring, I’ve tried and it just doesn’t work. Aparently I’m different than our players. They are the ones who have to own up to this, not Sid or Fowler.

  18. BillyVest 01/13/2008 at 3:56 PM #

    If you’re like me, you can’t quit caring, I’ve tried and it just doesn’t work.

    I really think NCSU fans are “lunatics”. Any sane person, after 20 years of futility, would just quit believing.

    I know the feeling. I really want to quit caring because of the disappointment, but I can’t.

  19. BillyVest 01/13/2008 at 4:04 PM #

    Talk of firing Sid is ludicrous.

    No one is talking about firing Sid. Wait till someone registers a “www.firesid.com” website before making statements like that.

    We have problems. Coaching might be part of the problem.

    I just want fans to be open to what is the most likely weak link in this basketball program, other than Lee Fowler, because otherwise fans will just point fingers at other fans and toss insults at each other, if we continue to have disappointing losses in a few seasons.

    Just keep an open mind about Sid & Co. as coaches, if they don’t succeed. As fans our priority should be to have a winning basketball program, which operates within NCAA rules and graduates a reasonable amount of players, and not circle the wagons to protect a coach.

  20. ZZ 01/13/2008 at 4:06 PM #

    Then we’re “lunatics” (not the first time I’ve been associated with that word), you’re right. I wish we had some “lunatics” on our basketball team. A good and ongoing THRASHING might convert some of them, we’ll see if Sid has it in him. I know about it all too well, if he needs some help, I’ll happily volunteer, as I’m sure we all would!

  21. BAC79 01/13/2008 at 4:23 PM #

    This team needs to see film of a gutsy performance just concluded by Philip Rivers and the San Diego Chargers. Philip went out in the fourth quarter and the backup drove them down the field and scored. They never quit no matter who was injured and not playing. LT had gone out earlier in the game. Philip Rivers is a class act and is passionate about winning. We need that attitude from our coaches and staff on our basketball team.

  22. BAC79 01/13/2008 at 4:24 PM #

    I should have added, Philip went out with an injury as did LT.

  23. turnoffthetv 01/13/2008 at 4:31 PM #

    This team really looks to me like it is in a similar funk that it was in last year when Atsur wasn’t playing. Don’t get me wrong, we still were able to win games without Atsur, but we also lost when Atsur was playing. But the team seemed to Click and played together more like a team when he was in there. He was a Leader. HE was an experienced, talented, and smart leader.

    In almost every preseason publication I read from magazines to blogs and forums, there were similar predictions—NCSU 3rd in the ACC, and anywhere from 20th to 25th in the nation. At the same time in most of those same articles were question marks surrounding the point guard spot and the loss of Atsur.

    The fact is that Jay Bilas assertion about the lack of team’s chemistry problems and poor relations with each other is right on the money.

    The answer to those problems last year was Engin Atsur. We still haven’t found that answer to the problems this year. There is no Leader, there’s no Engin. None of the Point Guards up to this point have shown me any sign that they carry close to half the talent and smarts that Atsur displayed. And we know they don’t have the experience.

    Monte Towe and Sidney Lowe were true leaders when they were players. Now they are coaches but they can’t suit up anymore and play. They just do not have the Talent or Experience at the postion they once held as a player.

    The only player that I could see having the potential of being that player right now is Gavin Grant.I see absolutely no other candidates at the present time. We need to put the weight of the team on his shoulders now anyway to ensure we do not lose anymore games. We reached our loss limit(4)right Gavin.

  24. ZZ 01/13/2008 at 4:35 PM #

    Last year after being in my seats for the game at the RBC when we beat unc, I went home and did some laundry in preperation for the next day.

    The following day I got dressed in my RED and WHITE, convinced my girlfriend to go get some lunch. We went to Franklin St, to her surprise, and got there at about high noon. (I’m an instigator, what can I say)!

    As I proudly walked up and down several times, went to lunch at “top of the hill”, walked up and down a few more times; I asked her if she would like to go to lunch again next year when we won again.

    Well, I’ve still got the girl…..here’s to hoping I still have the girl in ’09, I’m looking forward to another lunch date like the last one!

  25. bTHEredterror 01/13/2008 at 4:40 PM #

    OK, year three Coach K, any Duke fan would have told you he knows nothing about Basketball.

    Its not as easy as the Greats make it look, and Sid is LEARNING on the job. To say he has no talent is FOOLISH. You think the NBA would waste a precious coaching spot if he had no talent for development, strategy, or motivation? It’s a different atmosphere dealing with young adults, and Sid is picking that up.

    I’m shocked you would give up so easily on the man who didn’t give up on us when everyone else had. Give him an honest chance to develop guys and learn from his mistakes. This is the classic sophomore jinx, for Costner, too.

    This was a mid-term exam, Sid wasn’t ready and Profesor Roy was rough on him. He’ll be better for the lesson.

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