We shot a decent % and scored 76 points so you can get out of here with no pg, bad shots, bad players as an excuse. Sure we might have won if we had those things but we still played bad defense.

so if we had a true center would he cause the other team to miss wide open shots/threes when we get beat chasing guys around?

a true point guard would be sure to make our team defense better

we gave up 40 points in the first half so there goes the "we were tired" excuse. we just played bad defense the entire game and its easy to see. Even when we have great talent its not going to be easy to win any game giving up 87.

Quote :

"Hopefully when the freshmen get here, they will play uptempo and force these guys to earn thier minutes and work to get their shots."

So you plan to just ignore defense forever and pray we can take good enough shots to shoot at least 60% every game.

Like i said, this era isn't going to last long unless theres a drastic change on the "other" side of the court.

[Edited on January 10, 2007 at 12:10 AM. Reason : sit in a zone. its the best way to overcome talent/speed/defensive ability]

1/10/2007 12:06:17 AM

^^^Herb's teams might have gotten lazy at times on offense, BUT we were never this lazy and bad on defense. Fells is Scooter Sherrill all over again. Everyone was bitching because Fells wasn't playing last year and now we see why. Horner is playing over him now. It is almost as if Fells has no effort at all on defense.

[Edited on January 10, 2007 at 12:09 AM. Reason : ^^^]

1/10/2007 12:09:05 AM

well to answer your question


the kids on the court now arent used to this fast tempo system and thats obvious
their D isnt as good as we want it to and yes a true center would help those shots because we would get rebounds and be able to establish a force inside to block shots and compete with their big men and force their guards to kick it to someone else.

thats what a center helps with and we dont have a rebounding force. we make stupid one handed passes that worked when u made backdoor cuts in Herbs system and could out wait our opponent with our slow down offense, which also made defense easier because it took their players out of their game.

basically its a transition year with the wrong athletes minus maybe Fells and Costner.

Ben is doing all he can down low and I can commend the kid for his work. grant needs to give up the point and Horner needs to learn how to guard a three.

Atsur back will help a TON once he is in the lineup on a regular basis..this team may get hot at just the right moment come ACC tourney time.

^ fells is one of the hardest players on D, you realize his guys he guards puts him through so many screens and ball cuts on any given night, his guy he guards has yet to have a breakthrough night, not to mention he may lead the team in blocks.

[Edited on January 10, 2007 at 12:16 AM. Reason : j]

1/10/2007 12:13:40 AM

strongly disagree

i think Fells is perhaps the worst defensive player

(and I say perhaps because I haven't seen the 7-footer play yet)

1/10/2007 12:27:02 AM

have u seen Horner play defense???

aside from the weak side blocks he gets on unsuspecting post players, he may be the worst defender we have.

1/10/2007 12:29:47 AM

i just don't see it in Fells....and apparently I'm not the only one

1/10/2007 12:36:55 AM

^yea you're not. i would imagine his d would be great, but b/c either hes too lazy or too tired, it just plain sucks the big one real bad.

1/10/2007 2:13:53 AM

well, at least football season is only 8 months away now

1/10/2007 2:42:20 AM

Quote :

"^^^Herb's teams might have gotten lazy at times on offense, BUT we were never this lazy and bad on defense."

Right, becuase Herb had the luxury of choosing who he could play.

That's exactly why Fells sat last year, it's why Ced sat for a year, it's why Scooter sat (etc.)

Sid doesn't have a choice

1/10/2007 7:36:14 AM

Quote :

"That's exactly why Fells sat last year, it's why Ced sat for a year, it's why Scooter sat (etc.)"

Yet he got blasted for not playing them.....

1/10/2007 8:17:37 AM

well, atleast our offense is fun to watch!!!!!11

1/10/2007 8:24:03 AM

Quote :

"Sid doesn't have a choice"

That's exactly right. Most teams in the country would be able to sit Fells ass on the bench if he played as shitty as he did last night. We cannot. Even if a player is having a bad game, its the best and only thing that we got. It sucks, but it will be better next year and even better the year after that.

1/10/2007 8:36:06 AM

Just to show that I'm not the only one that thinks Sid is doing a good job with what he has to work with:

From the DBR site:

Quote :

"State continues to impress: Clemson is a solid team, and State really only goes six deep. Yet they hung in there against a pressing defense. The record doesn't reflect it completely, but Sidney Lowe is doing an impressive job. If you took the vote today, Oliver Purnell - rightly - would be the runaway candidate for coach of the year. But Lowe would have to get some votes too. "

Quote :

"a true point guard would be sure to make our team defense better "

Umm, hell yeah. If we didn't have to have gavin fucking grant guarded their guards, we wouldn't be beat on those outside screens so much. Hell, as everyone has mentioned before, add fells to that list.

The point is: Sid IS making adjustments to the extent that he can. He is limited, because he cannot make personnel adjustments at all, and has young, often fatigued players to work with. He's tried various zones, and for one reason or another cannot sustain them. For example, in the BC game, we HAD to get out of the 1-3-1 zone. It was working in terms of causing turnovers, but we also couldn't get a rebound at all. BC got 3 offensive rebounds in one possession while we were in the 1-3-1.

I applaud your effort to try to engage in conversation about how we can improve, but in this case, you're just wrong.

1/10/2007 8:46:45 AM

Quote :

"Yet he got blasted for not playing them....."

I didn't have a problem with him not playing a player becuase of defense. I mean, you can give them a few minutes if it's not a nail-biter game.

Herb oftentimes would sit a player all year (such as Scooter), and then put him in. Scooter would get so excited he'd fuck up or turn the ball over and Herb would yank him.

A kid's gonna be nervous coming in if all he does is sit the bench... give him a chance to show you what he can do. Herb often yanked him back out the first time he made any type of mistake, which sometimes had nothing to do with his D

With Cedric, you had to play him at least a little and give him a chance to develop. The kid's potential was unlimited.

[Edited on January 10, 2007 at 9:10 AM. Reason : ]

1/10/2007 9:09:54 AM

Quote :

"we HAD to get out of the 1-3-1 zone. It was working in terms of causing turnovers, but we also couldn't get a rebound at all. BC got 3 offensive rebounds in one possession while we were in the 1-3-1. "

Sounds to me like a normal possession. maybe we should have tried a 2-3 or something because last time i checked we don't exactly clean the glass in our normal defense.

1/10/2007 9:35:58 AM

Once again, you act like it can't get worse than we're playing now. IT CAN. While rebounding, and particularly boxing out on the defensive side is our weak point, our worst rebounding of the year came against BC while we were in that 1-3-1 zone.

You can't seem to get through your thick skull that we could in fact do worse, and that many of the changes you propose would in fact make us worse.

Ok, basic basketball principles: When do you use the zone? Against teams that have no range and to shut down any inside or slashing game. Also, use zone if you want to slow the game down.

None of those work in our favor against clemson. They were shooting lights out already, but could have totally lit up a zone and blown us out. Plus, we wanted to speed up the game, since the break and fast pace of the game was working in our favor.

Anyways, I'm tired of refuting your ignorant and ultimately wrong ideas. Sid's doing a good job and knows what he is doing.

1/10/2007 9:43:48 AM

Quote :

"have u seen Horner play defense??? aside from the weak side blocks he gets on unsuspecting post players, he may be the worst defender we have."

i sure hope you are kidding.....you are right?

1/10/2007 10:14:33 AM

ok, i dont have time to read this entire thread, but anyone who thinks Lowe isnt "coaching" is an idiot.

Quote :

"Bottom line: the reason we are losing is that we are undermanned, young"

and inexperienced.

coach lowe is a blessing to NC State, you guys wanted a man with heart and emotion, you got it

1/10/2007 11:52:42 AM

As frustrating as this season is, people (especially on StateFansNation) need to lay off on roasting the team...Everyone on there is saying Fells sucks, Gavin sucks, Costner sucks,Fergusion is garbage and such...Fells never played under Herb, he is practically a freshman, Fergusion same thing, Costner same thing and Gavin is having to play a position he shouldnt have to do and is probably hurting his stats and chances at reaching the next level by doing it. McCauley is stepping up way big especially seeing how he only saw long stints of PT during the pre-ACC season
I am frustrated with the season but we are playing a 6 man rotation with 4 guys with freshman expierence (Costner, Fells, Ferguson, Horner), one guy playing out of position (Grant), and a undersized center who is doing a helluva job (McCauley). Ill continue to take the punishment and watch every game and then ask for more next year. GO PACK!!!

1/10/2007 12:07:34 PM

What I want to know is why we werent playing alot more aggressive on defense toward the end of the game. I mean we had like 2 fouls around the 4-5min mark. If we had tried to force a few turnovers the game could have been alot closer. Then we could have fouled them and tried to make up the difference. I mean they were shooting around 50% from the FT line.

1/10/2007 1:47:28 PM

Even at 50% FT shooting, if you start fouling earlier than we did, you aren't going to catch up. Fouling is a tactic that relies on your opponent missing a few key FT shots for a limited time.

The odds of them missing many free throws in a row if we had started fouling at say the 3:00 mark are bad. Plus, despite a poor FT shooting percentage overall, clemson hit them against us in the clutch.

And finally, we couldn't play good aggressive D because we were physical exhausted. You could tell.

1/10/2007 1:57:10 PM

great recruiters don't always make for great coaches

1/10/2007 3:18:45 PM

Would it honestly be THAT bad if we put Nieman, Jarvis Williams, and Darrell Davis in for a few minutes?

These guys are the best of what is on the bench why not let them play 1 or 2 minutes to spell our 6 so that they can actually have some gas in the 2nd half?

1/10/2007 4:06:40 PM

Quote :

"Oliver Purnell - rightly - would be the runaway candidate for coach of the year. But Lowe would have to get some votes too. ""

i dont know what DBR is, but that quote is ridiculous. say what you will about lowe but to say he has any grabs at coy at this point is just absurd. state has beaten one quality opponent this year and has struggled against such opponents as ecu, unc-g, wofford and gardner webb.

1/10/2007 4:11:14 PM

^^That wouldn't be a good move. They are inexperienced and alot could possibly happen in that 1-2 minute time span.

[Edited on January 10, 2007 at 5:41 PM. Reason : .]

1/10/2007 5:40:52 PM

welcome back, padowack

1/10/2007 5:41:24 PM

Quote :

"Once again, you act like it can't get worse than we're playing now. IT CAN. While rebounding, and particularly boxing out on the defensive side is our weak point, our worst rebounding of the year came against BC while we were in that 1-3-1 zone. "

who said we have to play 1-3-1? if we cant rebound in that try a 2-3 but rebounding is pretty much moot if the other team is making all their shots. you gotta get them to miss first then worry about rebounding.

Quote :

"You can't seem to get through your thick skull that we could in fact do worse, and that many of the changes you propose would in fact make us worse. "

orly? like the michigan game huh?

and no it can't get worse than losing. you cant get a double loss or anything. the worst you can do is lose the game and we are already doing that so no, it can't get worse.

Quote :

"Ok, basic basketball principles: When do you use the zone? Against teams that have no range and to shut down any inside or slashing game. Also, use zone if you want to slow the game down. None of those work in our favor against clemson. They were shooting lights out already, but could have totally lit up a zone and blown us out. ."

Clemson shot about 20% above their 3point average against us. they could not have done much better than 10/19. Clemson is an inside and slashing team. you know why they hit most of their threes? because nobody was guarding them. there were 3 or 4 times when nobody was even on the same side of the court as the shooter. zone doesn't necessarily mean the team will shoot better from three than they would against a man. If you can't keep up on cuts and screens man to man is useless. In a zone somebody will usually be within 5-10 feet of most shots. they might not contest them but at least the other team will rarely get WIDE OPEN looks and inside (where clemson is best at) will be alot tougher and crowded. In the bc game they shot 50% 3s in the first half and our 2nd half zone disrupted their offensive flow and they shot more tentative threes and really cooled off.

Quote :

"Plus, we wanted to speed up the game, since the break and fast pace of the game was working in our favor"

our main excuse is being tired and not having enough players but our gameplan is to run and outscore the opponent? that makes sense.


Also, we should have better conditioning. Many players around the country play 40minutes at a high level. We should have been prepared for lack of depth.

[Edited on January 10, 2007 at 5:53 PM. Reason : players]

1/10/2007 5:44:32 PM

seriously, we not only go just 6 deep right now, we go 6 deep with 5 players who either have little or no experience. this is a rebuilding year. herb's first year we only went 6 or 7 deep as well, but we had a team dominated by upper classmen (harrison, strong, benjamin, and hyatt). that year it took a miracle in the acc tournament to get us into the NIT. i think making the NIT this year would be an equally impressive accomplishment. next year, and definitely by '08-'09, we should expect to be back in the upper half of the conference. but not this season fellas.

1/10/2007 5:53:16 PM

they shot 62% in the 2nd half. REEEEEEEE DICK U LUSSSS

1/10/2007 7:04:07 PM

Quote :

"Many players around the country play 40minutes at a high level. We should have been prepared for lack of depth."

You are full of shit.

http://www.kenpom.com/leaders.php?c=PctMin

Of the top 50, only FIVE of those players come from major schools (and one of them is Grant).

1/10/2007 7:12:11 PM

^those stats are watered down. Im going by actually watching the games and you're going by google so I probably hold more water.

For instance, Jared Dudley has played 38 or more in all but their 2 really easy games. If he plays only 31 minutes against sacred hart does that really mean anything? no. but it brings his average down. hes played 40 in about 5 games. He's a pretty big guy too. Conditioning. Theres no other reason a d1 athlete shouldn't be able to go hard for 40 minutes on more than a days rest. (unless maybe they're huge).

There are several players on good teams with cases like that but a google search won't reveal something like that.

1/10/2007 7:32:22 PM

"Watching games" doesn't count because you have made it abundantly clear in your posts that you do not understand the sport of basketball.

1/10/2007 7:34:13 PM

old news, but it never got to my ears... why doesnt lewandowski even dress anyore???

1/10/2007 9:53:47 PM

he did dress for the BC game thanks for looking


in other news Aristotle what do you have to say about Coach K and his crowd losing tonight? you want HIM to make more changes???

what an idiotic post you have made earlier about watered down stats.

Dudley has had that opportunity because they have depth, they can replace him and not worry about a lead slipping away, we do not have that luxury. Yes we want to run the ball and yes our guys get tired...but you cant do one thing one time and then not the next, thats getting off your game plan not only now but for the future and the guys that will be here next year to BUILD it in their mind to know to RUN RUN RUN when they can instead of do it now ok dont do it ok do it now.

we are rebuilding and teaching new fundamentals as well as a new system to kids that were not recruited to do what they are being taught.

if you cant realize that and see why its causing us trouble with our lack of experience, depth and talent then you need to stfu and kill yourself with a staple gun.

1/10/2007 10:00:25 PM

no way... i was THERE!, how do you miss hiM?

1/10/2007 10:02:06 PM

haha true

my parents even asked about him like WHO THE HELL IS THAT GUY

1/10/2007 10:03:19 PM

Coach k made adjustments to turn up the defense and gave gt alot of trouble scoring in the 2nd half. If players just don't make plays, finish or take care of the ball on offense i can't get mad at the coach for that.

Quote :

"Yes we want to run the ball and yes our guys get tired...but you cant do one thing one time and then not the next, thats getting off your game plan not only now but for the future and the guys that will be here next year to BUILD it in their mind to know to RUN RUN RUN when they can instead of do it now ok dont do it ok do it now."

This is not smart. you play to your team strengths and not some system you want to run a few years down the road. Sidney's man defense has never beaten a real team. It got murdered by Wofford. You can't run as much but its not like you can't run at all from a zone defense.

Quote :

"but you cant do one thing one time and then not the next, "

its called coaching. only teams that are somehwat dominant can afford to play to their opponents stregths. we need to play to our opponents weaknesses and not ours.

[Edited on January 10, 2007 at 10:25 PM. Reason : im not talking about winning games. i just want them to be coached/ mid game adjustments to be made]

1/10/2007 10:19:03 PM

just to let you know

no one expects us to win this year. alot of times no matter how good we play or how great of coaching we have...we still will not win.


accept this and move on.

i am done with airheadistotle

1/10/2007 10:21:44 PM

aristotle, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you are NOT smarter than sidney lowe

1/10/2007 10:22:44 PM

don't forget he's a dookie.

1/10/2007 10:23:01 PM

We all knew it's going to be a rough year. Sidney should definitely go in for some 'back surgery' and hang the losses on Monty Towe.

1/10/2007 10:25:57 PM

^ hahaha i think K has one more loss in him before his back "flares up" and johnny dawkins takes the fall.

1/11/2007 9:52:30 AM

Can you concede the point that perhaps no matter what Sidney does, we will suck this year?

You've already proven that you are an idiot. I guess you'd want us to play a 2-3 zone the entire game and play a slow tempo offense because of our lack of depth, right?

It can get worse than the past few games. At least we challenged them and it was relatively close at the end of each. A few breaks here or there and we could have been in those games.

Here's what would happen if we played zone all game and subbed in the football players and played a slow offense:

We'd get blown the fuck out because other teams outshoot and outrebound us, our best offense right now is transition fast breaks...so we'd have a poor offense, and your few minutes where a football or nieman would be in would be disastrous against ACC foes. We'd have lost by 25 to BC and clemson.

1/11/2007 10:47:43 AM

Quote :

"our best offense right now is transition fast breaks"

even though we're getting beat for the time being, its refershing to hear that after such a long time

1/11/2007 10:57:27 AM

zone defense doesn't mean you have to play slow on offense. a zone might actually force more turnovers that would lead to fastbreaks because we are long.

All you people that think zone would be so bad please explain the michigan game to me. Everything i've said is backed by something that has actually happened and worked so dont act like its some kind of magical random sugesstion.

1/11/2007 12:59:42 PM

Quote :

"zone defense doesn't mean you have to play slow on offense. "

No, but you were saying above that it was not smart to play an uptempo offense this year.


As for defense:

In both the Michigan and BC games, we used zone effectively, for a short time.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't though, and I'm pretty sure coach knows when to play them. For example, playing a 2-3 against clemson would have been suicide in that game. Playing the 1-3-1 against BC worked to slow the offense, but they were eating us alive in rebounding, so we had to go back to man.

Playing zone 100% of the time is not the easy answer.

[Edited on January 11, 2007 at 1:05 PM. Reason : ]

1/11/2007 1:04:47 PM

and no one cares about win/loss this year b/c its practically out of the question to do anything special

but all i know is the games are so much fun to go to now with more excitement... doesn't even bug me when we lose... especially the bama game

1/11/2007 1:11:30 PM

you really don't understand. i'm not sure if anybody else in this thread does either. you think zone=alot of 3s.

we cannot guard the threes at all in man but in a zone we wouldnt stop 3s but we would do a much better job (and that is the weakness of the 2-3. clemson is an inside running team. i don't understand why you thinkg slowing down and clogging the middle against an inside team is suicide. you can't just sit here and say they would have been >10/19 from three if we played zone because that is simply not true because many threes agaisnt a zone are out of the flow of the offense. A baseline screen for instance isn't going to get a shooter open against a zone but horner got caught up in it a few times and rivers was all alone.

[Edited on January 11, 2007 at 1:15 PM. Reason : no zone is not good all the time but it is against inside or fast teams like bc or clemp]

1/11/2007 1:13:29 PM

Quote :

"No, but you were saying above that it was not smart to play an uptempo offense this year. "

Well, I'm saying that. We don't have the bodies to ignore the defensive side of the court a la UNC and try and get 100 possessions a game. Our boys would die out there if we did that for 30 games. I wish we brought the same kind of effort on the defensive side of the floor as we do the offensive. With players like Grant and Fells I guess that is out of the question though...

Quote :

"but all i know is the games are so much fun to go to now with more excitement... doesn't even bug me when we lose... especially the bama game"

I have to disagree. It's a hell of a lot more fun to watch my team win than get their ass handed to them. I don't care if we score 55 points a game or 95. I do care that we do the little things that give us the best chance to win every game.

You think I like watching the Knicks today scoring a hell of a lot more but being a running punchline in recent years better than I liked the mid-90's slug it out defensive Knicks winning Eastern Conference titles and being perennial contenders for championships?

-------

In my mind if you bring intensity and effort to every game defensively, more times than not you will be in the game late. Just look at Duke. They have ZERO offensive ability this year yet they are in every game they play the whole game. Why? Because they play balls to the wall defensively. I don't think it's too much to ask for our players to at least show SOME effort.

This isn't an indictment to coach Lowe at all. It is to some of our players who have been pissing me off recently with, what seems to my eyes, a complete lack of effort on the defensive side of the ball..

[Edited on January 11, 2007 at 1:22 PM. Reason : x]

1/11/2007 1:19:32 PM

they don't teach defense in the NBA - although the Pistons played decent D

1/11/2007 1:36:10 PM