State of the State Address

State of the State

My fellow Americans and Wolfpack nation:

We are almost finished with the college basketball regular season, so it’s time to start projecting outside scenarios for the Pack making the tournament.

Team A                                   Team B                                   Team C                      

Record: 19-9                           Record: 17-10                      Record: 18-11

ESPN RPI: 51                        RPI: 54                                 RPI: 63                      

SOS: 88                                   SOS: 36                                 SOS: 30

According to Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology, Team A and C are in the tournament, but Team B is not even on the last 8 out. The above picture is incomplete – as quality wins and record against the top 50 are important – but we can see that there is no clear frontrunner, and Team B may have the strongest overall case according to these numbers.

Team A is Xavier, Team B is NC State, Team C is St. John’s.

The only real feather in Xavier and St. John's cap is a win against the RPI top 25, otherwise everything else is pretty equal. My point is that the margin is razor-thin, and a few key wins or losses late in the season can swing the entire selection process.                                  

Last year, NC State lost about 80% of its scoring output to the NBA D-League and Europe, and was picked to finish 10^th (out of 15) in the ACC.  NC State both got screwed and screwed itself out of a huge marquee win on the road over Syracuse. Seriously, has any school done so much to become hated so quickly as Syracuse has done since joining the ACC? As a team in the muddled middle, State must win at home tonight over arch-rival – and perhaps the hottest team in the country – UNC. Surely you, faithful BDL reader and casual college basketball fan, surely you don't want the bad guys to win, do you?

Unfortunately, much of the game will be decided by how much ACC commissioner and ex-UNC Athletic Director John Swofford interferes with the game via his personal body guard: the ACC officials. Yes, he is in fact God and does all he can to help UNC win from his perch in Greensboro. Here is conclusive evidence of the conspiracy:

TJ “The game is, and always will be, about buckets” Warren:

State has one of the most prolific scorers in the nation in TJ Warren – actually the leading scorer among all the power conferences – who has gone off for 27 ppg in the last 4 contests. There will have to be an “I” in victory if State is to beat UNC: he’ll need to drop at least 30 to pull it off.

Point guard carousel:

Life is like the NC State point guard rotation, you never know what you’re gonna get.

Both McDonald’s All-Americans, Sophomore Tyler Lewis, affectionately dubbed “Bilbo Baggins” by the Crazies, and Anthony Barber, affectionately dubbed “Cat” by his sister, are the two players. Both players have been healthy all season, yet the rotation has been inconsistent.

·      In a 10 game stretch from December to mid-January:

o   Lewis averaged 11.7 minutes per game

o   Barber averaged 29.1 minutes per game

·      In the last 5 games:

o   Lewis averaged 22.8 minutes per game

o   Barber averaged 13.8 minutes per game

I don’t love the “what have you done for me lately” coaching strategy, but it seems that this is all State has at the moment.

Remaining schedule predictions and accompanying rationale:

Home versus UNC (win/loss)

1.     The “they’re due” argument? Last game UNC shot 11-15 on 3 pointers. Nobody is that good, it is an anomaly, and they will have an equally awful game shooting in Raleigh.

2.     This game means so much more to State than UNC. This applies both on the court and off the court. For state fans, this is our one game season. After getting screwed out of a big win up in Syracuse, this is our chance.

Home versus Miami  (win)

Miami is terrible and we already beat them on the road.

@ Pittsburgh (win/loss)

So, not sure about this, but I feel like State will split between this game and the UNC game.

Home versus Boston College (win)

Don’t let the Syracuse upset fool you: they’re awful.

Final record: 20-11

State will need to pick up a win or two in the ACC tournament to put on their dancing shoes. I think it happens, and this year, we are 12 or 13 seed-bound.

These are troubled times for our program, but in the words of Jimmy V: “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.” God bless the Wolfpack, and God bless America.

The UNC-Duke Game That Wasn't

Edited at 10:21 2/13/14 

Much can be said about the “Greatest Rivalry in Sports” taking a backseat to Mother Nature last night.  As a alum of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a current graduate student at Duke University I believe I can offer some unique (and only slightly biased) insight into the situation.

Let’s start with the facts.

First, and most unequivocal, the game should have been cancelled earlier than it was.  We have radars, we have relatively accurate weather reports.  There was no reason to cancel the game right before 6 pm.

Having said that, Duke could have absolutely made it to Chapel Hill yesterday if they wanted.  Duke could have left around noon and beat traffic, or drove over around 6 like planned (a bad idea).  One fellow decided to make the drive himself to assess road conditions.  You can see his results here:  

The ACC has a policy that if both teams, the officials, and enough game operations folks can get to the stadium, the game will be played.  So, from the UNC perspective the matter was simple:  the refs were there, UNC was obviously ready to play and Duke simply didn’t hold up their end of the bargain.  I spoke to a buddy earlier today who was a former manager of a UNC team.  He reminded me that Carolina typically leaves Chapel Hill 3 hours before tip-off when they play in Durham.  To say Duke was breaking protocol is incorrect.

The other fact is that the weather was terrible.  For fans to consider driving to the game from anywhere outside of the immediate Chapel Hill area was insanity.  The Dean Dome holds over 21,000 fans.  My guess is only around 2 to 4,000 would have made it to the game.  Some sold their tickets on stubhub during the afternoon, others just sat on their tickets hoping for a reschedule.  UNC announced around mid-afternoon that all unused seats would be given to students, something that hasn’t happened since the 2000 snow game vs. Maryland.  Students were psyched.  My guess is around 8,000 would have made it down, a guess which may be off by 4,000 or so either way.

To suggest Duke and Coach K did not want to travel to Chapel Hill to play a game because the Dean Dome would be swarming with students rather than old, blue-haired, wine-and-cheesers is probably ridiculous.  Duke was favored, holds the recent advantage in the series, and is likely the better team regardless of venue.  As a Carolina fan, it is fun to think the Heels had an advantage last night, but the truth is more students doesn’t mean Roy Williams will change his three-point defensive scheme.

Coach K was able to get his side of the story on the record this noon.  The Leader of Men said, “There's still problems today. That's why the game was not pushed to today. We're going to play it next week, and it was the smart thing to do. Their fans were not able to get to the game, and we couldn't even get a bus here. The main route you have to take there was a parking lot." 

See, not only is K the Greatest Coach of All Time, but he’s also benevolent and cares deeply about UNC’s fans. 

I don't believe him.  You shouldn’t either.  It is completely reasonable to cancel the game for weather.  But to say the game was called because the bus couldn’t make it?  I’m not buying it.

My friend Marcus made some great points about the game in an email today.  He wondered what kind of message it would send about college athletics that classes can be cancelled and campuses shut down, but games are still played.  Fair point.  He also wondered about Duke’s team and fans getting back to Durham after the game.  Another fair point.

The facts tell two stories:  Duke could have made it to the game and home afterwards in sub-optimal conditions.  The other fact is that the weather was terrible and some roads un-drivable.  Playing the game from a rational, “I care about safety” perspective would have been a bad decision.

As we stand now, the only real losers are the fans who sold their tickets yesterday afternoon for a percentage of face value and all the UNC students who waited all afternoon in the snow to watch a once-in-a-generation game.  Thankfully, we have no reports of people getting in accidents traveling home from the game that wasn’t.  The game is rescheduled for Feb. 20, just two days before Duke’s rematch with Syracuse. 

I’m a UNC fan and I think Duke could have left earlier in the day to play the game, but the responsible decision was made to postpone the game.  No matter how awesome the rivalry, it's not worth the damage a drive home at night could cause.

I just don’t buy the bus excuse.

PS - Evidently DPAC felt their Wednesday show of the Book of Mormon was worthy of people risking their life to see.