In case N.C. State fans are wondering, Herb Sendek is having a tough season at Arizona State. The Sun Devils just lost a tough game at home to UCLA, 73-72 in overtime, and are now 9-12 overall and 1-8 in Pac 10 play.
Sendek was 8-22 his first season at ASU in 2007 but followed that with records of 21-13, 25-10 and 22-11.
The sixth annual Hoops 4 Hope game was held Sunday at Reynolds Coliseum, and despite some poor timing, appeared to be a success.
N.C. State had a good crowd at Reynolds and the Wolfpack women’s team put on a strong performance, rallying from a big deficit before falling to Florida State, 76-69. The game raised $53,000, according to The News & Observer, for the Kay Yow Cancer fund.
This is a worthy cause, and you have to commemorate NCSU for continuing the game and honoring their late coach. But the game was overlooked in a market consumed with the NHL All-Star Game. Women’s basketball doesn’t get much attention in the market, from media or fans, and this was a prime showcase for the game and a great cause. It just seemed unfortunate that the game wound up being played at a time when many had their attention focused elsewhere.
N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe obviously has more to worry about than the ACC media teleconference, but there was an awkward moment Monday morning when his phone line died in the middle of an answer to The News & Observer’s Joe Giglio.
Giglio asked about how hard the Wolfpack plays, and whether Saturday’s loss at North Carolina was an aberration.
“Um, I think this group will play hard. Saturday, that was just a game. I don’t know, it was a weird game. Guys seemed to be ready n the locker room, ready to go to and excited, with good energy,” Lowe responded.
“Initially, when we don’t hit a few shots early, our defense seems to suffer a little bit. Our energy goes down. And we can’t have that.
“We have to be better at overcoming that early drought of not hitting shots and picking up on the defensive end.”
Whoops! Not long after that, Lowe’s line went blank (Wonder if he has AT&T as his cell service?)
After a minute or so, he was back on the line. In the remaining time, Lowe touched on a variety of points involving the Wolfpack team. One was that State doesn’t seem to have great balance when it comes to scoring, and the return of Tracy Smith after an injury hasn’t bolstered the team as expected.
“I can’t remember the last time we had a game where everybody played well. We haven’t had that in a while,” he said. “Having Tracy back certainly helped but we need other people to play well for us. We’ve had a couple of times now where we would take three or four players who played the majority of minutes and they went 4 for 16. And we can’t do that.
“But with Tracy back we should be better defensively. I don t think we’ve taken advantage of that. I don’t think we’ve defended as well as we need. We need to get games where we have more than two guys playing well.”
Speakingly broadly, Lowe had an almost deflated tone in this news conference. He talked about how tough the Wolfpack’s schedule has been in ACC play, and how this team still has time to make a run, but if you listened to his tone of voice, you had a hard time believing this team is about to roar through the rest of the season.
Alissa Czisny, reason enough for red-blooded American males to watch figure skating, is back as America’s best female skater after taking the U.S. Figure Skating Championship Saturday night in the sold-out Greensboro Coliseum.
“It’s pretty exciting to come back after thinking about quitting,” Czisny said, “and being able to find my love for the sport again. I love to skate and I want to share it with everybody.”
Third after Friday’s short program, Czisny skated a near-perfect, fluid, energetic long program routine to hold off last year’s champion Rachel Flatt, who made two minor errors in her long program.
Czisny, who has struggled with confidence in the past, appears to be back after finishing 10th in the U.S. championships last year. She also won the U.S. title in 2009 but had struggled until beating the world’s best recently at the Grand Prix final.
“She has so many things you can’t teach,” former men’s champion Scott Hamilton said. “She has a beautiful presence on the ice. You can develop it but what she brings with her spinning and her artistic sense is really amazing.”
Even before the end of her long program, Czisny was smiling as she knew she had nailed it. “What else could you want in a woman figure skater?” Hamilton asked. “Alissa Czisny has it all and she just delivered it. What a comeback.”
Mirai Nagasu, on the other hand, faltered in the long program after leading going into Saturday night. Small errors throughout dropped her to third.
Flatt, competing last, was third after the short program and couldn’t overtake Czisny. “She put together a good routine but two mistakes are too many to hold off a performance like the one delivered by Alissa Czisny,” Hamilton said.
Czisny, who leads the U.S. team to the world championships in Toyko in March, finished with 191.24 points, while Flatt had 183.38 and Nagasu had 177.26.
The men’s champion, with favorites Ryan Bradley and Jeremy Abbott fighting it out, will be determined Sunday. The event closes with a skating spectacular performance Sunday night.
The ultra-successful All-Star Weekend in Raleigh was a testament to two critical factors when it comes to professional sports – facilities and vision.
Raleigh had the foresight to commit to building the RBC Center before it had a hockey team, which was a key reason the Hartford Whalers moved south. Pro teams follow the money, and money often means a swank place to play with friendly rent.
Raleigh’s big mistake, as the weekend also highlighted, was the failure to build the arena downtown. Then-mayor Tom Fetzer led the decision to go to cheaper land at the Fairgrounds, even though the downtown renaissance was already underway. The expectation then was businesses would grow up around the new arena, but that hope has never materialized. Meanwhile, the downtown area was the focus of three days of partying for the weekend.
Also due a heaping amount of credit is Jim Cain, the Raleigh product who was the Carolina Hurricanes’ president at a time when the future of the franchise was no given. Cain’s name hasn’t come up much in the reports on the weekend, but he was essential to what happened this weekend.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman promised an All-Star Game in five years if the Canes hit 12,000 season tickets, and Carolina announced on May 31, 2001, that it had sold 12,309 season tickets. A late push by Harris Teeter, which bought 1,000 season tickets, put Carolina over the goal.
“People don’t have to talk about this franchise anymore as a franchise that doesn’t care about hockey,” Cain said at the time. “We’ve got a great community here, a great fan-base and a great organization.”
The NHL hemmed and hawed on its commitment but finally delivered this weekend. The wait was longer than it should have been but wow, was it worth it.
WTVD’s Mark Armstrong is a native of Canada and has a real passion for hockey, and his reports so far this week, with the All-Star Game in Raleigh, have been stellar. Armstrong did a cool feature on Canes’ star – make that All-Star – Jeff Skinner, with a one-on-one interview with Skinner and a funny interview with a local girl who asks about taking him to the prom.
The North Carolina game is always a crucible for N.C. State, a test that football coach Tom O’Brien has embraced. But the men’s basketball team produced an embarrassing effort Saturday that highlighted the deficiencies of this Wolfpack team.
State has talent, but that’s not enough. Whether Ryan Harrow is on the bench or not with the flu, there is no excuse, none at all, for lazy play. College basketball players, whether playing their rival in the Smith Center on ESPN or playing Delaware State before a small crowd, should give their all. UNC did that Saturday, and great coaches like Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski get maximum effort from their teams.
That’s not the case with N.C. State. Carolina roared out to a 19-6 lead early in the game thanks to a 15-2 rebounding advantage. That’s simply an outrageous imbalance. One of the rare mistakes the Tar Heels made in the game is they once had six players on the floor, which was comical given that UNC seemed capable of winning this game with only four.
But there were little moments that were telling. Carolina’s Kendall Marshall zoomed right down the middle of the NCSU defense untouched, missed a shot and there were two Tar Heels to rebound. Richard Howell got caught in a double-team, and as ESPN astutely pointed out, not a single Wolfpacker rushed to get the ball. You could see it clearly on the replay – with Howell in trouble, his four teammates just stood there.
State never moved with crisp efficiency on offense, preferring to hope a player could beat his man and get a basket.
And as for overall hustle, you just didn’t see that from State. Harrison Barnes once beat two Wolfpack players to a loose ball. Late in the game, C.J. Leslie made almost no effort for a loose ball as two Carolina players went after it.
The only conclusion you can draw is N.C. State is simply a lazy team. They have some guys who play hard – Tracy Smith, Lorenzo Brown, Ryan Harrow – but not enough. By game’s end, UNC fans were chanting, “Not our rival!” Right now, that’s the case. This was a ridiculous performance from N.C. State, and it’s school, and fan base, deserve better.
With the NHL All-Star Game arriving, Dana McCall of GoGoRaleigh.com took a long look at his native city. Whether you’re from Raleigh or a recent addition, McCall’s insightful piece is a good reminder of how much there is to do in the city and why it’s a worthy place to host an All-Star Game.
You think that might be the last time that idiot students yell “over-rated, over-rated” at Harrison Barnes?
It’s the most foolish chant in college basketball. Nothing good can come from it. Do they really think it will do anything but inspire the player, especially one that is used to being the center of attention.
The Hurricane fans yelled “over-rated” at Barnes over and over again as he stood at the free throw stripe with 5:57 to go. He calmly hit two free throws in a one-and-one situation to put the Heels up 63-62.
Then with just 1:04 left, Barnes, who went just four of 11 on the night, swished in a pressure-filled 18 footer from the left side to tie the game at 71-all.
Then with time running down in the shot clock and the game clock, Barnes knocked in a three from right corner to give Carolina a 74-71 victory tonight.
While not living up to the All-America hype, Barnes has consistently come through in late-game situations.
“He’s not afraid to take it,” UNC coach Roy Williams said of the clutch shooting. “He thinks he’s going to make it every time.”
By the way, the “over-rated, over-rated” chat is even more foolish when it is used against an opposing team. If you win the game, you have minimized your team’s victory by simply winning a game against an overrated team.
For more on the Miami game, please click here.
The most amazing story so far as the NHL All-Star Game approaches is Luke DeCock’s read on Chopper Harrison in Tuesday’s News and Observer. Harrison, as longtime Canes fans remember, was a Triangle radio personality who became an unrelenting fan of the team when it first arrived in the state. Harrison, 59, is now battling cancer.
He was known for his wild hair and effusive personality, and the Canes loved being on his show and talking hockey. In 2001, he even slept in a sleeping bag on top of the RBC Center, DeCock recalls, in an effort to promote the market’s push for an All-Star Game.
Harrison could be abrasive, but as DeCock points out, “Whatever one thought of his antics at the time, he cared about the Hurricanes when no one else did, a lone voice in a market all too willing to ignore the team.”
Harrison will even be on 96 Rock once again this week as the game approaches. He’s no longer trying to be a radio personality and but is glad to go by his given name, David Martin, and grateful to be remembered as the game approaches.
“I’m not Chopper Harrison anymore,” he told DeCock. “I’m David Martin. I was so into myself when I was doing radio. God has blessed me. He really has. I may have this stupid disease, but he’s blessed me, he’s made me appreciate – it’s like he opened up a door and said, ‘You did it your way, now let me show you what life is all about.’ “