Category Archives: Featured stories

Featured stories, N.C. State, The skinny

N.C. State deserves better than lousy year in basketball, other sports

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N.C. State fans can give thanks for football. Other than that, this year has illustrated how new athletics director Debbie Yow has her work cut out for her in West Raleigh.

It’s hard to imagine a more disappointing men’s basketball season. State stumbled out of the gate yet again Tuesday night and lost at Virginia, 69-58. This is a Cavaliers team that could barely score Saturday against Boston College, and yet they ran right over N.C. State.

As one Wolfpack fan said recently, the team isn’t even “relevant.”

The media picked N.C. State for fourth in the ACC in preseason, a lofty assessment based on a strong recruiting class. But State is now 10th in the ACC and, as we predicted last month, in danger of having a losing season. The Pack is 15-14 going into Saturday’s home finale with Florida State.

A loss there, and then in Greensboro’s ACC play, puts the Wolfpack under water for the year. State fans should be outraged, but even a fan base with an amazing commitment to its school is greeting this season with a collective shrug.

For whatever reason, Sidney Lowe has not been able to elevate this program, and a season that looked promising has been greeted with deafening indifference from Wolfpack fans.

The football team, obviously, was a bright spot this season.  But other than that, it’s almost comical how low N.C. State is across the board in ACC sports.

  • The women’s basketball team is in 10th place despite a huge win over North Carolina
  • The men’s swimming and diving team and the women’s swimming and diving teams both just finished eighth in the ACC championships in February
  • The wrestling team is in fifth place among the six teams that compete in the ACC – ahead of only lowly Duke – heading into this weekend’s ACC championships
  • The volleyball team finished 11th in the ACC at 4-12 in league play
  • Men’s soccer was eighth out of nine teams at 1-5-2 in ACC play
  • Women’s soccer was 10th of 11 teams at 0-9-2 in the conference

Baseball, softball and tennis are the spring sports that are underway, and State has some potential in those. The Wolfpack does not compete in lacrosse or field hockey, and heck, that’s a good thing for Pack fans who are tired of suffering.

N.C. State has had brighter days – much brighter days, in fact. But Yow has a big job ahead when it comes energizing an athletics program that is struggling to gain traction across the board. And nothing – nothing at all – would do more for the spirit of the school than to find the right man to energize the basketball program and get N.C. State headed toward respectability again in that critical sport.

Featured stories, The skinny, UNC

UNC’s Bullock out for the season

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The knee injury that has plagued UNC freshman forward Reggie Bullock has ended his season. UNC announced this afternoon that Bullock has a torn lateral meniscus and will have season-ending arthroscopic surgery.

This will be the second surgery the Kinston native has had on that left knee. Bullock, while in a slump lately, is the sixth leading scorer on the team with six points a game.

Featured stories, UNC

Heels tie Duke by putting away Maryland

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North Carolina never trailed as the Tar Heels banged inside and hit from outside to defeat Maryland 87-76 and tie Duke for the ACC lead with just two regular-season games to go.

Tyler Zeller did the offensive damage inside with 25 points while Harrison Barnes and Leslie McDonald did the damage outside with 21 and 15 points.

Barnes drained three threes in the first four minutes and Carolina got out to a quick 13-5 lead. But Maryland fought back to tie it at 13-all and it stayed close until the last five minutes of the first half.

Carolina went on a late 12-4 run to take a 43-31 halftime lead that stood up through the second half. That run was highlighted by a McDonald three from straight away, an old-fashioned three-point play by Zeller and a Barnes reverse lay in.

The Tar Heels now stand at 22-6 and 12-2 in the ACC, even with Duke after the Devils lost at Virginia Tech Saturday. The Heels go to Florida State Wednesday night before finishing the regular season at home against the Blue Devils.

When asked about possibly playing Duke for the ACC regular season title, UNC coach Roy Williams said, “We better be thinking in terms of Florida State.”

For more on the Maryland game, please click here.

Featured stories, The skinny, UNC

Roy Williams says Tar Heels can be ‘immature,’ but they still know how to bear down

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North Carolina is well aware it plays Duke Saturday night in the Smith Center, and yes, the Tar Heels know they are tied with the Blue Devils at the top of the ACC Standings.

But Carolina also knows it plays a tough Florida State team Wednesday night in Tallahassee, and coach Roy Williams insisted his team – though young – isn’t getting ahead of itself.

In fact, Williams even called his team “immature” in some ways.

“We know that we’ve go a big challenge at Florida State,” Williams said. “This team is immature as all get out about some things but they really have been pretty focused about playing the next game.”

For example, Williams said his club can be loose and comical around the clubhouse. But the Tar Heels are often playing with the poise of an experienced team despite starting two sophomores and two freshmen. Carolina has won 15 of 17 and 10 of 11 since that loss at Georgia Tech.

That’s an impressive run for a program that was a huge disappointment last season, and came into this year with significant, and unexpected, personnel losses.

“You go back to last May, when the Wears say they are not coming back … Will Graves … Larry Drew. There has been some adversity I never want to to through again,” Williams said. “Right now I’m estatic about what they have done. … I am really proud of what my team has done. It hasn’t been easy. Ol’ Roy has had a hard year since last May. But I am really proud of them.”

Featured stories, N.C. State

Pack’s Lowe says Wood being grabbed by defenders

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N.C. State shooter Scott Wood has been up and down this season, exploding for points in some games and disappearing offensively in others. He had zero points against Duke, nine against Wake Forest, five against Clemson, 15 at Maryland and three against North Carolina.

Then in Saturday’s win over Georgia Tech, Wood erupted for 20 points and hitting seven of 10 shots.

That raises the obvious question of why Wood has been so erratic. On Monday, Wolfpack coach Sidney Lowe had a pointed response on the ACC teleconference.

“One [reason] is that people are really paying attention to him and trying to do things to him to prevent him from getting shots,” Lowe said.

But Lowe couldn’t help but add a strong point about how Wood is being grabbed by defenses.

“I know he’s my player and I might be biased but the film doesn’t lie. He gets held more than anybody I have ever seen. They literally grab him, grab his jersey.

“People are just aware of him. The last ballgame he really moved well without the ball. That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to tell him – keep moving so they can’t grab you.”

Duke, Featured stories, The skinny

Duke reaches No. 1 despite Singler slump

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Duke ascended to the No. 1 spot in the polls again Monday, a move that reflects the carnage of the top at last week and the fact that the Blue Devils have steadied themselves after the loss of Kyrie Irving.

The Devils are continuing to win despite an odd shooting slump by senior star Kyle Singler. Coach Mike Krzyzewski continues to praise Singler for his defense, which you can take as a way of boosting Singler’s confidence, but there’s no doubt Singler’s shooting woes are puzzling.

Singler scored 24 at Wake Forest on Jan. 22, 14 against Boston College Jan. 27, 20 vs. St. John’s Jan. 30 and then 22 at Maryland on Feb. 2. So he was pretty much rolling along to a year worthy of national honors.

Then suddenly, he skidded. Here are his last five games, with shooting from the field and three-point range:

Feb. 5, N.C. State 5-13 (1-2) 14 points
Feb. 9, Carolina 3-17 (1-6) 10 points
Feb. 13, at Miami 6-12 (2-6) 14 points
Feb. 16, at Virginia 1-5 (0-2) 2 points
Feb. 20, Georgia Tech 5-14 (0-1) 15 points.

“I don’t know if there’s any one thing,” Krzyzewski said Monday. “Sometimes you just don’t shoot as well. Sometimes when you don’t shoot as well you don’t play as well. To me what’s remarkable about that kid is every other part of his game is terrific.

“At Virginia, he let that, for one of the few times in his career, affect how he played. And he can’t do that. He’s so important for us, whether he goes 2 for 12 or 8 for 12.
We won’t win a really important game unless Kyle plays with that spirit. And when he hits that shot, he’s a lot better.”

Krzyzewski compared Singler to a .320 hitter who is suddenly hitting .250.

“We think that he will hit .320 and balance out for the season. But I’m proud of him. He’s handling all his other responsibilities well.”

Featured stories, UNC

Heels hang on in low-scoring affair against BC

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I like low-scoring games, I promise. But I found myself surfing the Internet during the first half of North Carolina’s 48-46 victory at home over Boston College. (It was just 21-20 at the half.) BC certainly controlled the tempo and made for a ho-hum game for much of the time.

“We could have played a nice offense like we usually do and we would have lost by a lot,” said Boston College coach Steve Donahue.

Carolina looked really good offensively for five minutes in the second half but that was it. During that stretch, UNC outscored BC 15-3 and appeared to have the game in hand at 41-26. A long pass from Kendall Marshall to a streaking Tyler Zeller started the run which included a Harrison Barnes three and a pair of spinning, driving layups by Marshall and Barnes.

But then the Heels lost the ball on five straight possessions and BC, unlike the Heels, were able to hit some threes which got them back in it.

The Tar Heels did hold BC to just 27 percent shooting and outrebounded the Eagles 44-30.

Carolina’s defense is carrying the Heels right now but it’s just a matter of time before they lose one they oughta win unless they get their offensive woes figured out.

For more on the Boston College game, please click here.

Featured stories, N.C. State

Leslie’s poem is unwelcome tempest for N.C. State

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It has been that sort of season for N.C. State, hasn’t it? Thursday night was exactly what you wanted from the Wolfpack – an intense ACC win over a good Clemson team, solid defense and some real effort by the Wolfpack.

Not only that, but we saw something from C.J. Leslie we thought we’d never see – real hustle. Leslie actually dove for a loose ball, something that seemed abhorrent to him earlier in the season. One of the defining moments in State’s home loss to North Carolina was when Leslie barely reached for a loose ball while two Tar Heels dove for it.

But rather than relishing that 69-61 victory, the talk Friday morning is all about Leslie’s poem for an English class that made it to Deadspin. The poem essentially focuses on the poet’s efforts to hook up with a girl and his excitement when she sends a text saying, “sex.”

N.C. State hasn’t confirmed if that was really Leslie’s poem, and the fact is, no student should have his academic work splashed all over message boards. Would you want your freshman essays shared with the world? Uh, no.

Regardless of what you think of the poem, Leslie doesn’t deserve to have his private work shared with the world without his permission. The N.C. State Code of Student Conduct prohibits “willfully damaging the academic work or efforts of another student.”

Frankly, the school should find out who leaked the paper and punish them accordingly.

But all this doesn’t change the fact that State is being made fun of in the national and local press. This morning on 96 Rock radio, for example, the hosts made a big deal of making fun of Leslie’s poem.

Too bad, too. Leslie played great Thursday, with 18 points and 10 rebounds and a determined effort across the board. It’s what coach Sidney Lowe has been waiting for from his star freshman, and what this Wolfpack team needs. What should have been a big win wound up as fuel for talk show hosts, and that’s too bad.

Duke, Featured stories, The skinny, UNC

Williams more comfortable with this UNC team

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North Carolina might be coming off a big win over Florida State and UNC may have found a solid point guard but now the Tar Heels have a week where they play at Duke and at Clemson, two teams that beat them by a combined 51 points on their home floors last year.

The Heels, who play at Cameron Indoor Stadium Wednesday night, were embarrassed 82-50 at Duke last year. While the Tar Heels weren’t playing with their full complement of players a year ago, they just weren’t very good. Carolina was 16-15 and 5-11 in the ACC after that game.

This time the Tar Heels are 17-5 and 7-1 in the ACC as the teams meet in Durham. Coach Roy Williams, during his weekly media teleconference today, said he was “scared to death” but feels more comfortable with the team he is taking over to Duke this year, especially considering the way they are playing.

He said it would be a “monumental task” to beat the Blue Devils but he is confident that his team will try extremely hard and will play together.

Some have marveled at how quickly the Tar Heels seem to have gotten over the loss of point guard Larry Drew II. Freshman Kendall Marshall, who had won the starting job from Drew four games earlier, had 16 assists in Carolina’s impressive 89-69 win over Florida State.

“Kids get over things so much easier and quicker,” Williams said adding that coaches have a harder time with adversity. “But it was a tough 48 hours for all of us.”

Earlier Dexter Strickland seemed to indicate that Drew along with the Wear twins and Will Graves – four players no longer on the team – were not “all in” when he came to being a part of the Carolina team.

For his part, Williams said that the team practiced really well the two days after learning that Drew had left the team. He said that team chemistry is built throughout the course of the entire season and that adversity, within reason, tends to bring a team together.

“I love coaching the guys we have left,” Williams said.

Duke, Featured stories, The skinny, UNC

Harrison Barnes: UNC alumni game swung his thoughts to Carolina

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Duke was quietly confident it would sign Harrison Barnes. North Carolina didn’t come on until late, but once it did, the Heels made a huge impression. Barnes, now a UNC freshman, had a long one-on-one interview with Dan Wiederer of the Fayetteville Observer that was published this week, and in it, he told Wiederer that a trip to the Smith Center for the UNC alumni game changed his perception.

“I’ve never seen or felt anything like it,” Barnes said. “Not only to walk in as a recruit and see all the guys here, all the coaches, but to see how Carolina basketball came to be. Seeing Dean Smith talk to Roy Williams, that was the man he learned everything from. To see the 2005 championship team, to see the ’09 championship team. To have Michael Jordan come back. Vince Carter. Antawn Jamison. Rasheed Wallace. All of those guys are back.

“All of a sudden Carolina basketball and all of the history and legends that they talk about? It’s all literally right in front of you. I wouldn’t say it was an out-of-body experience. But there was definitely something surreal about that. It was like a live and in-person history lesson. The history of the program was playing right in front of me. …

“For any recruit that was there, I don’t know how you could say no after that. For me, it seemed like Carolina was the place to go.”

Duke had recruited Barnes hard, and he was close to Mike Krzyzewski and the staff. His final decision was closely guarded, and many were shocked when he went on Skype and told UNC he was headed to Chapel Hill.

Wiederer asked Barnes if he spoke with Duke after that announcement.

“We went our separate ways after that,” he said.