Gross week for the Pack. A tough week from a scheduling POV playing on the road against your 2 biggest rivals in the same week, but State didn’t rise to the challenge in the least. For the first 7 minutes of the Chapel Hill game they came out with fire and passion. The next 73 minutes of ball this week was a dumpster fire.
I saw very little fire. Very little grit. Very little cohesiveness on offense or defense for that matter. Wes Moore’s teams hang their hat on defense and for 3 games now that defense has been Swiss cheese.
As a State fan I’d like to see more on court leadership from the guard position. Rivers has been passive IMO. Not so much passive in the aspect of hunting her shot or not, but passive as a leader. I want her to play with the upmost confidence, own the moment. She should be the leader of the team - she’s the primary ball handler, the lead on ball defender, the most physically gifted athlete on the court - I’d love to see that fire in her eyes where she won’t accept anything other than a win every game every possession. Mimi Collins and Madison Hayes are the 2 that bring that fire to the team but they also rely on others to set them up offensively. The Pack is missing some on court leadership.
The Pack is also sorely missing a bench. Zoe Brooks has flashed moments of brilliance this year but has seemingly hit a wall recently. Laci Steele had a 2 or 3 game flurry mid season where it appeared she was rounding into a nice contributor with a role and that too seems to have vanished. Maddy Cox has had flashes of potential and she hustles, but she hasn’t got enough consistent minutes to show if she can grow into a back up role.
I generally agree with Wes Moores philosophy of playing the percentages and a sagging man defense to make other teams beat us on mid range jumpers and 3s. However the last 3 games that has hurt State. Truth is between James, Brooks, Hayes and Rivers this team could press the ball more. The athletes are there to do it and push tempo. Sometimes I wish he’d flip that switch and let them go a little. The half court offense has been stagnant - primarily against zone but last night vs Dukes man it was all hero ball. All one v one. That’s not when State is at their best.
State is at their best when the ball moves side to side and in and out. When Hayes and Collins are getting spot up open jumpers and defenders are scrambling to help and rotate. State has to rediscover their identity.
Truth is, State was picked 8th in the conference and was unranked preseason. It’s already been a successful year. When the team is humming they can beat anyone. But they have hit a wall right now. This is the first true adversity of the season, how do they respond ?
That is a great post and you pick out many of the main problems with how NC State has played recently. I still have the UCONN game saved on my DVR, and when I watch it, I see a team that is fresh, excited and playing really well together. Our most significant and impressive wins of the season were in the first month. We've been sort of treading water of late until the last week, when the bottom fell out.
As you say, there's more hero ball than team ball the last three games. The early games in the season were beautiful displays of team basketball...but the Pack has just played darn ugly for most of February. Signs of a team in decline, both physically and mentally.
But we also have to give credit to the opposition: Georgia Tech hit some truly miracle shots and we survived in OT; in the UNC game, we chose to leave the perimeter shooters wide open and got burned repeatedly...and against Duke, we were just ice cold from the tip off and were never really in the game. Shooting improved in the second half but the damage was done early in that one, and we could never get enough stops to make a serious run, though we got as close as 6 in the 4th quarter.
I would love to see State pull out of this funk they are in now but I've seen this kind of drama play out before with NC State and it rarely ends the way all Pack fans would like it to. That game with Syracuse Thursday night looms large. Based on the conference standings, a loss to Syracuse Thursday would be damaging to any hopes of retaining a top 4 seed in the upcoming ACCT. Defeating the Orange would guarantee a top 4 finish...but a loss could drop us as low as 6th, depending on who wins the other remaining conference games.
I hope the coaching staff makes the players aware of all that is at stake in that one, if the players don't truly understand that we are in the last days of the regular season and that playing together is the way to achieve the team goals.
