Court Vision: NC State guard Trevor Lacey emerges as late-game hero
RALEIGH, N.C. -- NC State just did manage to get past an experienced Boise State team at home on Friday night by a final of 60-54. The Wolfpack have had to execute late in these last few games, but they've gotten it done down the stretch and are one of a handful of undefeated teams left in the ACC.
Three-Point Take
1. NC State is still going to have an inside/outside conundrum with its lineups
When NC State (6-0) faces teams that play "smallball", like Boise State (whose best three-point shooter was actually a 6-foot-8 big man), it's inevitably going to lose some of its strengths at times. NC State had to go small probably way more often than it would have liked against the Broncos (4-2), but at halftime, NC State had zero points in the paint. So NC State head coach Mark Gottfried said to heck with it, as he knew he had the much taller team, and
"The only way that we can play in a game like this tonight with BeeJay (Anya) and Kyle (Washington) and Lennard (Freeman) and Malik (Abu) is if offensively, we're getting the advantage, because defensively, we're not. They're a hard team for us to guard with our big guys chasing their big guys all around the three-point line," Gottfried said.
And at times, NC State did pay the price for it as the bigs picked up fouls trying to guard the perimeter (or on offense at times), or couldn't get out to the three-point line in time to get a hand in a shooter's face.
There aren't a ton of teams who will go as small as Boise will go, but there will be more of them, and NC State's going to have to continue to try different things to adjust to it.
"It was a tough game for our post players because of the way they play, and how their post players step away from the basket and make three's. We went small. We had to adjust and change the way we traditionally like to play," Gottfried said. "They didn't get as many looks from the three-point line, which I thought they did against us when we had our big guys in there. It was a game that had a lot of -- it was like a chess match, back and forth, a lot of things happening within the game and I thought our guys did a nice job of just hanging in there."
2. Trevor Lacey is going to be one of the best guards in the ACC
The Alabama transfer was billed as such coming into the season for the Wolfpack, and he's living up to said billing and then some. The 6-3 junior averaged 11.3 points for the Crimson Tide as a sophomore in 2012-13, and according to the NC State players, he'd been dominating practice all year last year as he sat out.
In the final 1:05 with the game tight, it was Lacey who scored the team's final four points to give them the necessary cushion. With 29 seconds left and Boise State within three points, he hit what amounted to the game-winner when he found Boise State's big man switched out on him.
"I'm not going to say I'll take the shot -- I'm just going to make the right play. They really sunk in and helped him out on the drive, and I didn't want to force it and get a turnover. I felt like that was the best shot to take," Lacey said.
"On that last one, the shot he hit across from our bench, they ended up switching and he recognized it and had the big guy on him," Gottfried said. "At that point, he made a great decision, I thought, to get a good shot -- an on-balance shot, not a fadeaway or a desperation-type shot. To come out of there with just a nice, good, solid jab step, jump shot, big play. That was him recognizing that."
His teammate Ralston Turner, though, wasn't surprised. It's what Lacey has always done.
"Typical. That's Trevor," Turner, who's a native of Alabama, said. "He's never been shy, even at Alabama. I can think back right now to a couple years ago, 2-3 years ago, they were playing South Dakota State, I think, in the first game and he hit the game-winner -- a three-pointer, same way, pull-up. So that's typical."
Lacey is NC State's leading scorer at 18.0 points per game, and after a start to the season that even he admits was a a result of him being a little too excited to be back on the court after a year of sitting out, he's playing as well as any guard in the ACC right now.
In the last three games, Lacey is 16-of-27 shooting (6-of-15 from three), 15-of-17 from the foul line and has averaged 21.7 points, 6.3 rebounds, 4.3 assists (to just 1.7 turnovers) and 1.0 steals. Oh, and he's done it all while averaging 37.7 minutes a game.
At the last media timeout, Gottfried and Lacey both said that Gottfried told him to be more aggressive. It's hard for Lacey, because as he said, he's going to make the right play, even if that means passing and not being as aggressive. But he sometimes needs to remember that he's the best option for this team, and he could stand to be a bit more selfish.
He didn't take a shot for a nearly 10-minute stretch of the second half,. Gottfried said he emphasized getting the ball inside, and so that was maybe on him, but that he does want Lacey to do more.
"I thought Trevor didn't look for his shot enough. That's maybe my fault tonight. He does have great balance with it. I want him to be aggressive," Gottfried said. "He needs to score for our team. He needs to handle the ball a lot. He needs to do a lot for our team. But he made the shots when he needed to tonight, and that was important."
Turner's not going to complain about having an unselfish teammate, but he did say that he turned to Lacey after the game was over and said of his late outburst: "Where was THAT?"
Lacey is still finding the balance, but he's not going to stop making the right basketball play.
"I'm not going to make a bad play and I trust all my teammates," Lacey said. "I feel like when kick it out to them, they're going to make the shot. We made some, we missed some, but we're going to keep playing that same way and I'm going to keep giving up the ball if they're open."
3. Scheduling matters, and Gottfried understands it.
The reason NC State has made the NCAA Tournament for all three years of Gottfried's tenure so far is that he understands scheduling and how to make it work for your benefit when the NCAA Tournament selection committee is looking at resumes.
Boise State is a team that's going to compete in the Mountain West, and one that very nearly made the NCAA Tournament last year (but for NC State potentially getting a bubble spot from them last year). Richmond will be in the hunt for a bid. Almost everyone left on NC State's schedule will be, too.
"Here's what you hope. You hope that you're not on the bubble. We seem to live on the bubble. But if you end up in a conversation where your team is getting compared to other teams, games like tonight, Hofstra, Richmond -- we've got a bunch coming up, obviously -- those games all end up being in your favor," Gottfried said.
"I like playing good teams. I don't want to play teams that you're going to beat by 40-50 points. That doesn't help your team. ... All those games combined, they're going to help our team get better, and hopefully they're going to help us in the RPI as well."
The RPI is a factor, of course, but Gottfried also feels like he learns a lot about his young team against more quality opponents, too.
"It's going to help us become a better team. Tough games like this make you learn really who needs to do what and how do we need to play and who can really defend and who understand what we're doing and how we're going to get a rebound with a small lineup," Gottfried said. "There's so many different things you learn when the game is close. If you get a 25-point win, you don't learn as much."
Stats That Matter
28.6 percent vs. 37.5 pecent -- Boise State entered the game shooting 41.7 percent from three while NC State was shooting 34.8 percent. In the first half, Boise hit just 2-of-15 three-pointers, and one of them came at the halftime buzzer. They hit 6-of-13 in the second half and "improved" to 28.6 percent, but that's what made it close. NC State, meanwhile, got out to a big lead because it shot 6-of-13 from three in the first half before deciding to get better shots in the second. "First of all, they didn't shoot the ball very well in the first half, and I'm not sure a lot of that was because of our defense," Gottfried said. "They had good shots and just didn't make them. So at halftime, we felt like as a staff, they're probably not going to go the whole game and keep missing shots. They're going to make shots. We've got to do a better job of defending them."
Straight Talk
"I don't know that the Big Ten Challenge with the ACC -- it just gives us another really good game. But we're going to play a lot of them anyway, regardless of that. I do think there's some pride involved for our league. I think our league needs to do better than we've done. We need to do better. But it's a good game for us to go on the road. I think Purdue is going to be a little bit better than where people projected them."
-- Mark Gottfried on the upcoming ACC-Big Ten Challenge
