I'm confident there will be lots of red in the blue seats Sunday.
That must have been Miami's best shooting game of the season last night. Until the 4th quarter, almost everything they were putting up was going in, from both short range and long range. I hadn't really watched much of Miami until last night and I kept wondering how they lost by 40+ to Duke and had lost so many games.
Says a lot about the character of NC State, tho: on nights when you're not shooting well and the other team is hot, you have to come up with ways to counter that to get the win and that's what they did last night. After a string of games when the Wolfpack Women looked like a well-oiled machine.
Well I will say Duke routinely trounces the bottom half of the league whereas State plays much more competitive games for whatever reason. Partly I think State doesn't lock in on defense against lesser opponents and luckily it hasn't bitten them yet, but I wish they had more results like against VT and BC where they just take full control and get the back ups some burn.
Another part I think is just the style of play. Duke loves to get up in you and press up on you, speed you up and force you to play fast. Bad teams and teams without good athletic guards can get super flustered in those situations and just not ever get comfortable. State doesn't play that way. Wes has always preferred making other teams hit jumpers, going under screens as a general rule, not fouling, not forcing action. He wants to dominate the glass and not be giving up shots at the rim or at the free throw line. That sort of more passive style of defense sometimes works against us I think when a team is hot. But I won't argue with it, rebounding wins games, and Wes certainly knows how to win games. There are times when I wish we'd extend our defensive pressure a little more, particularly against lesser opponents.
But...if you are a Wolfpack men's fan as well then you know the negative of pressing up on teams at times too. Can be a foul fest and lay up line against quality guards.
Also I did hear that Miami's team had been sick and wasn't 100% in that game.