There is a silver lining. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
Last night, 45 fouls were called collectively. That’s 5 more than the game has minutes. If you look at the stat sheet, you see that we got called for 24 fouls and they got called for 21. This, according to those who didn’t watch the game or are in #protecttheblues denial, would indicate an evenly called game.
We obviously saw the shift in momentum when the stripes called a barrage of fouls to begin the 2nd half (can’t let Duke lose honestly #protecttheblues). Obvious LOL of some fouls came when Richard Howell was pushed down and tripped someone because he was on the floor and he gets whistled for his 4th. Or the time where Calvin gets a rebound and has 3 Duke attack dogs hacking at him to the point where he loses the ball out of bounds. No whistle, except to notify everyone that Duke gets the ball on the turnover. Or the insane over the back no calls that Duke gets away with all the time. Or the obvious flops (I recall one sequence where two Duke players went down simultaneously). It was so bad that even Gmenski had to report to the folks that Duke was simply fishing for fouls. Â All I know is that you have to have help losing a 20 point lead with 11 minutes to go.
And here’s that help: 18 fouls called against our starters. 10 on Duke’s. Thorton was Duke’s only starter in foul trouble who had 4 fouls and 0 points to go along with them.
I know, I’m preaching to the choir.
The silver lining, though, came via twitter this morning from @thedevilwolf who gave us this gem:
At least NC State’s starters should all be well rested for FSU on Saturday. Am I right?
Yes, @thedevilwolf, you would be right.
