Aye, I hate these stupid "Fells/Costner/McCauley were our best three players and they would/wouldn't start anywhere in the ACC" debates. Stop throwing our our own guys under the bus like that. You can appreciate their contributions to NC State without lambasting them for all their faults, faults which have been too heavily discussed due to the team's lack of success.

Fells and Costner were both exceptionally gifted. Nobody denies that. Costner at times could take over a game singlehandedly. Fells had physical skills that few could match, and his 3-pt shot by his senior year was (at times) downright lethal. McCauley, while less talented, was the workhorse for NC State for 3 years running. From 2006-07 to 2008-09 McCauley anchored the 4/5 position despite being recruited as more of a WF/SF. I have a a lot of respect for his passion and work ethic in addition to being a part of the NCSU bball team.

That said, Costner and Fells were two of the most inconsistent players I've ever watched. Their inconsistency was IMO the biggest reason why Lowe shuffled his line-up so frequently last year. As 4th year players Costner and Fells should have stepped and led the team down the stretch. Instead they faded, and Tracy and Javi (two sophomores) became the go-to guys. That says a lot. McCauley on the other hand, while a solid 4, was simply overmatched at the 5. He was a good player, but not a great one. Not an All-ACC player.

This means that State's best players last year comprised two inconsistent but talented guys and one solid but less talented guy. Add in the fact that none of the three was either (A) a PG and (B) a big man, and you've got a very shaky foundation.

Also, for those of you that didn't buy the various "selfish players" excuses last year as the cause for the chemistry and hustle problems, take a look at this year's squad. The difference w/o Costner/Fells is night and day. The final verdict isn't in, but the evidence so far is striking.

12/10/2009 8:25:36 AM

"OMIGOSH I'm not reading that!!!"

"No novels allowed"

"Get a blog"

"Another Erios post..."

There I saved you all the trouble. Now, discuss.

12/10/2009 8:26:50 AM

^ actually i read all posts; anyone that bitches about the length of posts (knowing how much bullshit people read on a daily basis) must mean you have reading trouble; its reading; its automagical.

so you don't want people throwing players under the bus... let me step aside as current tww sports threads about our CURRENT players smacks you in the face. That's all that's done on here except by a few, and let's also throw the current coach and one of our best-ever PG's under the bus as well.

I'm not saying the guys didn't have talent, and Fells had out of this world athleticism, but with the attitudes that some of these guys had, they may have been kicked off the teams at some schools, McCauley (a senior) didn't even make it to Toronto due to this issue. Maybe I exaggerated a little (hyperbole) on where and for who these guys would start, i'm trying to make a point to some thick-headeded people who think Lowe has wasted away talent.

12/10/2009 9:35:51 AM

I don't know I pretty much agree with that. I think the issues for Costner/McCauley were defense, for two different reasons, lack of effort (Costner) and speed/size (McCauley). Fells could be a great defender at times but his execution and consistency wasn't there. He also had turnover issues.


Smith has come out this season so far and gotten it done every game(Given matchups haven't been an issue yet). Javi has also played a lot better so far this year. But they both work really hard and are able to set a tone for the underclassmen. This is why our team looks so much more active this year. Offensively last year we got it done plenty of times, but our constant shitty defense let teams get back in games. I mean how many games were we up ~20 pts at the half to blow it. (example @ Duke last yr)

12/10/2009 9:39:10 AM

We were up 4 pts at the half last year at Duke 26-22, not ~20.

12/10/2009 10:23:41 AM

Quote :

"I mean how many games were we up ~20 pts at the half to blow it."

not many

12/10/2009 10:26:08 AM

jimmac90 credibility watch

12/10/2009 10:33:11 AM

Quote :

"Stop throwing our our own guys under the bus like that. You can appreciate their contributions to NC State without lambasting them for all their faults, faults which have been too heavily discussed due to the team's lack of success."

I agree. It's pretty fucked up to watch the idiots in this thread refer to them as the "3 Vaginas" all the while circlejerking some kids who haven't even put on an NC State uniform yet or a guy who used us as a one-and-done.

12/10/2009 10:43:36 AM

this thread sure has blown up since our come-back-from-double-digit road win.

12/10/2009 10:52:15 AM

[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 11:12 AM. Reason : copy]

12/10/2009 11:12:00 AM

The offense Fells/Costner/McCauley were recruited for (Sendeks) would have been perfect. They were not a good fit for what Sidney wants to do, but they held on as best they could, and as soon as Sidney gets the right fit in (just wait until Harrow gets here next year) he will also have a top 25 team every year like Herb had us.

12/10/2009 11:12:00 AM

Does anyone have that picture of Sidney after the Wake win? Couldn't find it. But this thread could use it.

12/10/2009 11:19:06 AM

^^Not sure what you're talking about with a top 25 team every year... Sendek had that what... Once to finish the season? Maybe twice if he had them ranked at the end of his last season, but that team while talented, was epically bad at the end of the season.

12/10/2009 11:46:13 AM

Alright, so maybe not that many big leads at the half, but my point is that we lost a lot of games we should have won last year because of defense.

12/10/2009 12:10:55 PM

^name one game we lost last year that we SHOULD have won. I can't think of a single game. There are a few that we lost that we COULD have won, but most of those were games we SHOULDN'T have even been in.

12/10/2009 12:21:56 PM

I think that's part of the problem, people don't give credit to the mental aspect of a game like basketball. Part of rebuilding our team is getting to the point where we think we should win games and not could win games. We shouldn't look at our next recuriting class and imedietly determin what kind of team we are going to be.

12/10/2009 12:29:08 PM

We were a team without a consistent PG, subpar athleticism from many players, and conditioning issues. We probably won 2 or 3 games we shouldn't have even been in, somewhere around 6 or 7 games we lost were relatively close and to teams that should have put us away. Last season was not ideal, but Sid got every win possible from that team.

12/10/2009 12:43:58 PM

Florida, Marquette, and Davidson.

I disagree with the notion that we shouldn't have been in those games to begin with. We lost all of those games in the final minutes after establishing a lead. I'd argue that having a late lead means you "SHOULD" win if you don't fuck up, whereas you could define a "COULD" win as what those three teams did to us.

I'm not sure what the original point of the argument was, but that's my take on it.

12/10/2009 12:54:49 PM

I was using a bad example, thanks for yours, to say that more sound defensive play/more active play could have been the difference maker in some of these "close to the end" games we blew.

Some of that defensive activity isn't nessearly talent driven(obviously can be) but is an energy and tone a team brings. This is something we can do without having top 10 recruits to make us better. I think(hope) this is something we are doing this year. And this comes from the top down (javi, horner,smith).

12/10/2009 1:15:24 PM

someone should call PETA b/c of the amount of dead horses being beat ITT

12/10/2009 1:49:36 PM

Quote :

"Last season was not ideal, but Sid got every win possible from that team."

I didn't want to get involved in this argument but I couldn't let this comment go unchallenged. I'm not a Sid hater but that's a ridiculous statement. Sure the players deserve a lot of the blame from last year but how can you say Sid was a perfect coach (which is what you're implying)?

12/10/2009 2:22:57 PM

That's not even close to what he's implying

12/10/2009 2:23:50 PM

How is that not what he's implying?

By saying

Quote :

"Sid got every win possible from that team"

means he's implying that Sid didn't make any coaching mistakes.

He never took a player out of a game when he shouldn't have, never failed to create the perfect game plan for an opponent, never failed to adjust his team correctly at half or after time outs.

How am I misinterpreting his statement?

[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 2:35 PM. Reason : .]

12/10/2009 2:35:19 PM

You can make plenty of mistakes and still win the game.

12/10/2009 2:35:55 PM

And?

You can make mistakes and lose a game. Which is what he's saying Sid never did last year.

If he was trying to imply that Sid didn't have much to work with and shouldn't be blamed for last year, fine. But that wasn't what he wrote.

[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 2:53 PM. Reason : ^]

12/10/2009 2:47:55 PM

Nick Saban got every win he could out of his team this year.

Does that mean he made no mistakes?


[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 3:16 PM. Reason : *]

12/10/2009 3:16:16 PM

Quote :

"You can make mistakes and lose a game. Which is what he's saying Sid never did last year."

He didn't say that.

12/10/2009 3:33:53 PM

^^If Sid had gone undefeated last year, then I would have agreed with his comment.

But State lost 5 games by 5 points or less. And he said there was nothing Sid could have done differently to win those games. I called BS.

^ He did imply that not a single loss was Sid's fault b/c he said Sid got all the wins possible out of that team. If Sid does share the blame in any of the losses, then he did not get all the wins possible out of the team.

[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 3:38 PM. Reason : ^]

[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 3:41 PM. Reason : ^]

12/10/2009 3:37:26 PM

Maybe sid did everything he could to even keep the team within those 5 points when really we should have lost by more?

12/10/2009 3:48:03 PM

Others Receiving Votes
Memphis 99, Clemson 96, Vanderbilt 74, Florida State 59, Kansas State 59, Northwestern 48, Miami (FL) 46, Oklahoma State 41, Notre Dame 37, New Mexico 35, Illinois 18, Charlotte 18, Baylor 17, Richmond 17, Louisville 15, St. John's 14, Missouri State 14, Brigham Young 13, Pittsburgh 11, Dayton 8, Seton Hall 6, California 5, Minnesota 5, North Carolina State 3, Cornell 3, Illinois State 3, Tulsa 3, William & Mary 2, UAB 1, Northern Iowa 1.

Woohoo

[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 3:53 PM. Reason : Fixedbold]

12/10/2009 3:52:33 PM

THIS HAS TO BE DONE TO BE FAIR TO HERB

12/10/2009 3:58:03 PM

if only we had beaten northwestern

12/10/2009 3:58:22 PM

don't worry, there will be plenty of disappointment this season

12/10/2009 4:02:43 PM

^I'm not sure if "disappointment" is the right word. Disapointment occurs when expectations are not met. If your expectations aren't set too high, you won't be disappointed.

12/10/2009 4:21:43 PM

correct

but you see, this is nc state. expectations will be high in the face of evidence to the contrary.

so therefore, even though winning 20 games this year would be fucking amazing, by the time we don't make the tournament this thread will hit 200 pages.

12/10/2009 4:32:50 PM

Point taken. I was disappointed w/ football this season.

12/10/2009 4:54:30 PM

To be fair expectations or not, you expect your program to get better in year four under a coach with all of his players....so far we are looking better. I think the ACC is weak this year so Sid definitely needs to take advantage. BC lost to fucking Harvard again. It will be interesting to say the least.

12/10/2009 4:57:50 PM

well, turns out we would have been disappointed anyhow, because I seem to remember expectations around 7-8 wins and a bowl game

but then we somehow became favorites to win the Atlantic. this is precisely what I'm talking about.

but i was raised to deal with underwhelming state sports. maybe that's why I'm not adamant about firing Sidney and further fucking our program.

12/10/2009 4:58:49 PM

we became favorites to win the atlantic once the media realized it could be won with 7-8 wins

which, coincidentally, it was

12/10/2009 6:32:13 PM

fair enough

12/10/2009 7:01:40 PM

Quote :

"Last season was not ideal, but Sid got every win possible from that team."

Come on man, that is a ridiculous thing to state as fact. It's like you are putting ALL the wins on Lowe and ALL the losses on the players. That's just not fair or true.

[Edited on December 10, 2009 at 7:48 PM. Reason : []

12/10/2009 7:45:51 PM

that's true, it is a ridiculous statement

12/10/2009 9:05:35 PM

Quote :

"I disagree with the notion that we shouldn't have been in those games to begin with. We lost all of those games in the final minutes after establishing a lead. I'd argue that having a late lead means you "SHOULD" win if you don't fuck up, whereas you could define a "COULD" win as what those three teams did to us. "

Much of the fanbase thought we would lose all three of those games going into it. I'm sure if you bring up the old threads here and the ones at PP you'll find that. The experts weren't picking us, and fwiw we didn't lose those games because of Sid. Florida was the inability of the players to run the play Lowe called. Marquette was on a last second shot that I do believe had a defender in his face. Davidson I don't entirely remember, but it wasn't because Lowe was making coaching mistakes. We probably shouldn't have been in those games anyway.

Quote :

"Some of that defensive activity isn't nessearly talent driven(obviously can be) but is an energy and tone a team brings. This is something we can do without having top 10 recruits to make us better. I think(hope) this is something we are doing this year. And this comes from the top down (javi, horner,smith)."

Brandon Costner was too soft to defend the post and too slow to defend the wing. McCauley was terrible in the post against decent players. Fells was hurt, Mays and Williams were freshman. Smith was okay and Javi was our best defender at the end of the year. Degand and Thomas were both hurt. Given all that you expected Lowe to coach them up and make them great defenders?

Quote :

"Sure the players deserve a lot of the blame from last year but how can you say Sid was a perfect coach (which is what you're implying)?"

see

Quote :

"That's not even close to what he's implying"

Quote :

"Come on man, that is a ridiculous thing to state as fact. It's like you are putting ALL the wins on Lowe and ALL the losses on the players. That's just not fair or true."

Lowe got the most wins that you could get with that team. If you want to run a traditional offense, see our PG problems and the positionless players. If you want to run the positionless crap we used to run, half the team is suited for a traditional system. If you want to play good defense you can't play Costner, McCauley, Fells (while he was hurt), Ferguson, Mays(played like a freshman on defense), or Degand (hurt) and sometimes Horner. We didn't have the talent to win 20 games. We had a few very talented players, but they either didn't want to fit in our scheme (Costner), weren't quite ready (Horner, Javi, Freshmen), really didn't fit but usually tried (McCauley, Ferg), or were hurt (Degand, Thomas, Fells)

anyway

Quote :

"someone should call PETA b/c of the amount of dead horses being beat ITT"

and one last thing OMG BIGEGO YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO LEAVE A FUCKING BOOK.

12/10/2009 10:08:42 PM

--kicking the horse

"The reality is of where we are and who we are," Lowe said. "We're a young team. Obviously, winning is the important thing, but you have to look at progress, you have to look at development.

"I feel very comfortable, very confident in our guys. This is the first time, really, that we've got our guys in the gym, in the weight room at 6:30 in the morning doing their own thing. To hear the conversations we're having, it's encouraging."

- Sid Lowe

12/11/2009 10:25:26 AM

Quote :

"Lowe got the most wins that you could get with that team."

Again, my opinion is this statement is grossly inaccurate. This indirectly implies that no other head coach with the task of coaching the exact same team could have done better, even just one more win, than coach Lowe. You're putting ALL the blame for losses on the players and ALL the credit for the wins on the coach. It implies that he was never out coached in any of the games last year. That's just 100% false.

I really can't believe you're trying to defend this statement by stating it again. I'm almost certain that there are several other coaches who could have gotten more wins with the same team than what Lowe "achieved" last year.

[Edited on December 11, 2009 at 3:24 PM. Reason : []

12/11/2009 3:22:36 PM

Just stop OhBoyeee.

[Edited on December 11, 2009 at 3:38 PM. Reason : V likewise]

12/11/2009 3:36:31 PM

^ please stop trolling this thread

12/11/2009 3:37:14 PM

What mistakes did Lowe make that cost us the game? The man knows what he's doing. I can name plenty of games we didn't have the players needed to win, or that the player's stupid mistakes directly lead to a loss

12/11/2009 4:02:06 PM

ohboyeee sucks at life, bad

12/11/2009 4:46:14 PM

^ you're a troll

12/11/2009 4:51:13 PM