By Andrew Jones
FOXSportsSouth.com
December 23, 2010
Raleigh, NC --- N.C. State sophomore Scott Wood thought for a second before responding to a question asking if the Wolfpack grew any in its 72-70 victory over Delaware State on Wednesday night.
He really didn't want to reply, because the answer is pretty obvious. But the Indiana native responded, anyway.
"You just take the win and you move on," said Wood, whose only basket of the night fell through the cylinder with 2.1 seconds left to give N.C. State the victory. "You go watch film and you find out what you did wrong and you have to improve. I think that's the main thing for this team right now. We have to look at all these negatives that we have turned into positives."
What went wrong for the Wolfpack was a laundry list coach Sidney Lowe no doubt agrees with. In fact, he rattled off a healthy heaping on his own after the game.
Lowe criticized his defense for not staying with the Hornets' 3-point shooters. DSU made 9 of 22 on the night, including a go-ahead trey with 4:53 remaining that capped an 11-0 run. The fifth-year coach also noted his team's poor passing, especially in the second half, poor shot selection, and that they forced things when it wasn't necessary and weren't aggressive when it was called for.
It just wasn't a good showing for a team that needed one.
"Not really," senior point guard Javi Gonzalez said when asked if there were any positives in the game. "We won, and that's about the only positive thing we can take out of this game. We didn't come out with a lot of energy. We missed assignments, and we just didn't play well as a team."
The stat sheet doesn't come close to accurately telling the tale of this one.
The Wolfpack shot 49 percent from the field, but it curiously failed to go inside on every possession against a very small DSU front line that included a 6-3, 255-pound forward, who often found himself on likely lottery pick C.J. Leslie, who is 6-9 with a longer wingspan.
And when the Pack went inside, Leslie, 6-9 Deshawn Painter and 6-8 Richard Howell weren't aggressive enough to take advantage of the mismatches. They combined to score 45 points, but should have been much more productive. It appeared they just didn't recognize the advantage.
And of all of the Pack's mistakes in this game, last Sunday's loss to Arizona and last week's ugly win over Youngstown State, that lack of recognition was the most puzzling development of the night.
"If you can't take advantage of a 6-3 guy, 6-5 guy how are you going to take advantage of a 6-9 guy, 6-10 guy, especially when you get into conference play," Lowe asked.
Gonzalez and Lowe advanced excuses that players were looking forward to seeing their families over Christmas, but it's not like Delaware State doesn't celebrate Christmas. Last week, the excuse was final exams.
And there was also the defense that senior forward Tracy Smith missed his ninth consecutive game.
"We miss him a lot," Lowe said. But Smith won't improve the ballhandling, passing, passiveness and defensive execution. And even without Smith, there's not much excuse to not dominate more in the paint when you're an ACC team and a program with NCSU's tradition.
"You would hope so, yeah. You would hope so, absolutely," Lowe agreed. "I think that's the disappointing part is that we should play better in both of those games, we should play better, and we didn't."
So now the big question: Is Lowe concerned about his team, especially its play over the last week-plus?
"I don't k now if I want to say I'm concerned, but we need to get better, we need to get better," he said. "We need to improve. We need to take some bigger steps, some longer steps, especially when we have an advantage, so to speak. If you have a 6-3 guy in the post on you, and we have 6-8 and 6-9, we have to score on those guys."
And State must get better, soon.
Andrew Jones is in his 15th season covering the ACC.
