N.C. State fans are starved for a winner in basketball, which is why this season is so anticipated. Watching Sidney Lowe’s previous teams could be dreadful at times, with plodding basketball and lineups that lacked the talent of State’s Triangle rivals.

Now, though, N.C. State has some real players of its own, as the freshmen showed in Friday’s 82-69 opening win over Tennessee Tech. That’s hardly a thumping one might expect against a foe of that caliber, but the story of the game was the play of the freshmen.

C.J. Leslie had 21 points, Ryan Harrow 16 and Lorenzo Brown 14 – a pretty strong effort for a first attempt. But what State fans will watch closely is how those new players merge with the returning cast. Tracy Smith, who certainly expects to be the hub of this team, made only 2 of 8 shots for 10 points. Scott Wood had 11.

A player Lowe raved about in preseason, point guard Javier Gonzalez, made only 1 of 4 shos for four points and had only three assists in 26 minutes of action. Harrow made just 4 of 12 tries but had some electrifying moves in his 24 minutes.

All this makes you wonder how long some of the established players will keep their minutes, and how Lowe will balance the time with multiple players expecting to be on the court. State struggled with chemistry when J.J. Hickson was on the team, and even Dean Smith, with UNC in 1994, struggled to blend a group of talented veterans with a freshman class that expected to play right away.

If Lowe can find the right chemistry, then State has a chance to be exciting. Brown is the only freshman who started and he’s a tough, physical player with an advanced build. Richard Howell did little on Friday but he’s also a big body who gives State depth up front.

Lowe’s advantage is he finally has real competition for playing time – no more keeping guys on the floor because there is no talent on the bench. That could make for a fun year for Wolfpack fans, who would love to see the RBC Center buzzing for more than just the Carolina game.

N.C. State accomplished what it had to do on Saturday for homecoming, which says a great deal about the maturity of this team. Good teams win games they are supposed to win, and the Wolfpack did just that in a 38-3 victory over Wake Forest before a throng of 57,161 at Carter-Finley Stadium.

If this was Russell Wilson’s last game for the Pack, then he went out with a sharp performance, completing 24 of 35 throws for 300 yards. But Wake wasn’t much of a match for him, and that has been the refrain for the Deacons this season.

Jim Grobe rebuilt Wake with a creative offense and sound defense, but his defense has let him down this year. The Deacons gave up 38 points and actually improved their scoring defense average, which came into the game a miserable 38.3 points per game. That brutal defense is the reason Wake is now 2-8 and 1-6 and has an eight-game losing streak, its longest since 1978.

You can pretty much go through the checklist and see why this was such a rout for N.C. State. On just about every pregame question, the Wolfpack came up big:

@ Red zone offense? Check – State scored on all five times inside the red zone, including four touchdowns.

@ Concerns about the kicking game? Check – true freshman Chris Hawthorne of Raleigh made his only attempt, of 25 yards, and also kicked five extra points. Hawthorne kicked off seven times for an average of 63.7 yards.

@ Ready for Nate Irving to break out? Check – he had a school-record eight tackles for loss.

@ Questions about the run game? Well, that remains an issue. State’s leading rusher was Wilson, with 17 yards. James Washington had five carries for 13 yards, Curtis Underwood two for 12, Mustafa Greene six for 12 and Dean Haynes one for 1. That hardly strikes fear into the UNC defense.

But other than that, this was a game you expected N.C. State to dominate – and, like a good team should, it did.

The regular season for high school football wound down last week but playoffs start tonight. Here are predictions for tonight’s games involving Triangle-area teams. Friday night’s weather is expected to be clear and fairly cold with temperatures in the mid to low 40s. Most games are at 7:30 p.m. You might want to check with local officials as some games start at 7. In bold below are the predicted winners. My record of predicting games was 8-2 last week, making the final regular season total now 97-23, which is an 81 percent accuracy.

Broughton at Garner

Cary at Fuquay-Varina

Harnett Central at Southeast Raleigh

Hoggard at Clayton

Lee County at Northern Durham

Middle Creek at Leesville Road

Millbrook at WF-Rolesville

New Hanover at Southern Durham

Overhills at Cardinal Gibbons

Southview at Panther Creek

Southeast Guilford at Durham Hillside

Wakefield at Wilmington Laney

Whiteville at Carrboro

Check the scores in our Sports Roundup on the left navigation bar.

In a sternly worded letter, the University of North Carolina has disassociated itself from former tutor Jennifer Wiley, the school announced late Thursday afternoon.

Athletics director Dick Baddour sent Wiley a letter earlier this month asking Wiley not to have any contact with the football program for five years.

Baddour wrote that Wiley provided impermissible benefits worth in excess of $2,000 and ,in 2009 and 2010, “provided impermissible academic assistance to some of our student=athletes. As a result of your actions, the eligibility status of some of our student-athletes has been adversely affected.”

Carolina also said five individuals contributed impermissible benefits to UNC players. Those individuals were Hakeem Nicks ($3,300), Omar Brown ($1,865), Mahlon Carey ($140), Vernon Davis ($20) and a person from Miami for whom UNC didn’t have a full name.

Cody Zeller, the brother of North Carolina’s Tyler Zeller, has decided to play basketball at Indiana and not UNC, according to  WTHI in Terre Haute, Ind. 

Zeller, who is 6 feet 10, also considered Butler, according to the station. He averaged 20.5 points and 11.1 rebounds last season.

Interesting moment at Duke Thursday in a graduate political science class. The professor, to make a point about the changing nature of the media, asked the group of 20-some students where they went for information on the Duke men’s basketball team.

Goduke.com, the school website, was the first answer. Then The Chronicle, the student newspaper. Then ESPN. And after some coaxing, DukeBasketballReport.com (which picks out reports of interest in Duke fans) and DukeBluePlanet.com, the official site of the team.

So what was missing? The News & Observer … The Durham Herald-Sun … WRAL … WTVD … Local radio shows. … Shoot, no mainstream local media was even mentioned (not even the Capital Sports Report). It was an interesting moment that highlighted how much consumer patterns are changing and how many options there are when it comes to media products.

Also interesting was that none of the options the students mentioned (except for ESPN) were sources that did unbiased reporting on their own, and of course ESPN will cover Duke but does not do so on a daily basis. An interesting moment, and a telling one as media habits change.