NC State (5-2)
	vs
	Stanford (7-1)
	Sunday, December 4th, 4:00pm TV: FSN

Stanford schedule to date:
Central Arkansas W 91-52
Fresno State W 75-59
Colorado State W 64-52
@ UC Davis W 70-49
vs Oklahoma State W 82-67
vs #5 Syracuse L 69-63
Pacific W 79-37
@ Seattle W 72-49

12/2/2011 1:40:14 AM

BATTLE OF THE BLOCK S

12/2/2011 1:55:52 AM

I hate sports.. however I'm close enough to shallow alto as with almost everyone I went to state with. Maybe we can start a key a Bentley day.

12/2/2011 2:13:10 AM

Stanford appears to be every bit as good as Indiana is and this game is on the road after traveling cross country. Tough to pick up a W in this situation, but we really need it after dropping the IU game.

Stanford's defense is top notch and they rebound well.

On offense they shoot well but they have a couple of glaring flaws: turnovers, getting shots blocked, and missing FT's.

They've played a lot of weak teams but in their two tough games they've crushed Oklahoma St and they hung with Syracuse.

Stanford is the early favorites to win the Pac 12, so stealing a win on the road would be huge for our fading NCAA tourney hopes.

12/2/2011 4:28:51 AM

Gott probably scheduled this game just so he could go visit his daughter.

12/2/2011 5:58:01 AM

We'll lose this and it won't be very close.

Stanford = 81
State = 65

12/2/2011 7:43:50 AM

^^^ Fading NCAA hopes? We've lost two games to two teams that will be tournament teams. Texas probably will be too. The ACC is weak, and we can definitely finish around 5th or so. I'm not saying we're going to make it, but that's a bit drastic at this point.

12/2/2011 8:06:22 AM

12/2/2011 8:17:43 AM

Quote :

"Gott probably scheduled this game just so he could go visit his daughter's friends"

Fixed.

12/2/2011 8:22:17 AM

we gon get raped.

12/2/2011 8:25:23 AM

I thought Gottfried's son was at Stanford

12/2/2011 9:04:56 AM

HUG BEAT THE TREES

12/2/2011 9:05:47 AM

we gon get raped got this.

12/2/2011 9:06:27 AM

I am cautiously optimistic about this game.

12/2/2011 9:08:35 AM

^^^^ I think you're right about his son. As others have said, this will be a tough game...but it'd be really nice to steal one on the road here.

12/2/2011 9:12:05 AM

iop1.

Would be a huge road win. i thought we would need 2 out of 4 between Indiana, Stanford, Cuse, and St Bonnie's to keep us off the bubble and in the NCAA. Last year the ACC only got 4 teams in so finishing 5th is not a guaranteed of getting in to the tournament, and i don't think the ACC will be much better than last year.

Howell bounce back

No Scoot Wood intentional fouls

And no miss FT down the stretch

plz2win

12/2/2011 9:22:24 AM

We're already out of the NCAAs if we lose this game. Write it down. It'll come to pass, just like all of fuckface's other awesome predictions.

12/2/2011 9:25:29 AM

dancing L, shut the bed, same ol shit, etc

12/2/2011 9:25:59 AM

gottfried's son plays TE at stanford.

12/2/2011 10:00:15 AM

iop1

plz2win

gopack

12/2/2011 10:08:03 AM

i'm predicting another entertaining loss

12/2/2011 10:24:56 AM

^this

12/2/2011 10:25:47 AM

Howell bounce back is a big thing. He had a terrible game with IU and hopefully has some push in him. But man, this will be tough.

12/2/2011 11:33:45 AM

Did I say we were out of the tournament? No. Am I being realistic about our chances? Yes.

We're obviously less than 50/50 to make the tournament... probably more like 35% at the moment. Let's look at the facts:

1) Texas and Vanderbilt are both bubble teams so splitting with them isn't a magic gateway to the tournament.

2) The ACC is not on the level of the Big 10, Big East, or Big 12 this year. We may not even be better than the SEC for god's sake. We can't rely on a strong strength of schedule in conference play because WE DON'T HAVE ONE.

3) We're almost 100% likely to finish between 4th and 8th in the conference this year. If we finish 6th-8th we're almost definitely out of the tournament. At 4th we'd most likely be in. 5th, we're probably squarely on the bubble. 8-8 won't cut it, 9-7 is the bubble. 10-6 (quite unlikely) wouldn't guarantee us a spot, but we'd most likely get in.

4) Stanford and Syracuse are both significantly better than us. These are probably two losses. Now if we can win one of these games our tourney chances skyrocket. But if we lose both, we're not in good shape at the moment.

5) St. Bonaventure is significantly worse than we thought a few weeks ago. Now beating St. Bonaventure doesn't help much, but a loss could be lethal. This is definitely a bad game on our schedule.

6) The rest of our non conference games are all against shit teams. They will drag down our RPI, offer no help if we beat them, but could singlehandedly derail our season if we lose.

7) We are TERRIBLE defensively this season. We're one of the worst teams in the nation defending the 3 pointer. With a statistic like that you'd think we'd be successful at packing it in and not giving up 2's, right? Not true, our defense against 2's is weak also. You'd think given that we're a great offensive rebounding team, we'd be good at defensive rebounding you know since we're not playing any defense. Well, that's also not true. Our defensive rebounding is weak too so far. I bet since we're so weak in all those areas we must be generating a lot of turnovers this year, right? Wrong. We're not generating any turnovers either.

Our offense has improved by a huge leap, but our defense has regressed enough that it mitigates much of the progress we've made offensively.


This isn't me being negative. This is being factual. It's early and a lot can happen, but if you don't think our tourney chances took a big blow by going 1-2 vs. IU, Texas, and Vandy while the ACC collectively crapped itself in non-conference play then you are crazy.

We look good this season and I'll enjoy the season either way. That doesn't mean we can't be realistic about our tournament chances based on the information we currently have.



[Edited on December 2, 2011 at 12:18 PM. Reason : a]

12/2/2011 12:11:22 PM

face stfu!

12/2/2011 12:24:55 PM

my bad, i forgot this board really just exists for running things into the ground like "shut the bed" and "nc state shit".

Analysis not welcome.


It's like no one on this board has grown up since they entered college ten years ago.

12/2/2011 12:26:38 PM

It seems to me like the defense is about where it was last year with some occasional flashes of competence. To say it's regressed might be a bit much.

12/2/2011 12:28:21 PM

Christ people, that was a great post.

Although I do believe our defense, as bad as it may be, is better than last year.

12/2/2011 12:28:40 PM

While I can appreciate that face is being relatively realistic, I pretty much disagree with Oklahoma State being a tough game for Stanford. OK St really isn't good so far this year. The Syracuse score is pretty impressive, but then again I recall last year a pretty horrific NC State team hanging with Syracuse 'til the end and losing by a similarly small margin.


Should be an interesting game to watch in any case - we match up well with them stats wise. If we can eliminate some stupid ball handling mistakes and improve FG% I don't think there's any good reason we can't pull it off.

[Edited on December 2, 2011 at 12:44 PM. Reason : ]

12/2/2011 12:32:40 PM

You know i just looked at the numbers and I had forgotten how awful our defense was last year.

You're right we haven't technically "regressed" but we are about as bad as we were last year. I thought we'd improve quite a bit there since we didn't really lose anyone and Tracy was terrible defensively and at rebounding last year because of the knee injury.

Two years ago we were actually pretty decent defensively with Degand, healthy Tracy, etc.

Oklahoma St isn't a great team, but they're right around our level. Stanford wiped the floor with them on a neutral court...

We'll probably be about 8-10 point underdogs in this one.

12/2/2011 12:45:02 PM

I guess we're getting what we were told we'd get with the new coach

good-looking offense, but inconsistent, sometimes poor, defense

12/2/2011 1:02:33 PM

Our defense has been pretty disappointing so far. Granted, we have some roster deficiencies on the perimeter, but it shouldn't be this bad. We have plenty of length and our bigs should be very versatile defenders. From what I've watched, we gamble entirely too much on defense and get caught out of position. When we stop trying to block shots and go for steals, we've shown the ability to play pretty good defense for 35 seconds. Just seems to be a lack of focus that's causing our problems, but the potential is there for improvement. It's not a shocker that our best defenders are the players who spent the least time under Sidney Lowe, and our worst (CJ Williams) was coached by him for 3 years.

12/2/2011 1:12:15 PM

Face's posts in this thread are pretty much dead-on in my opinion. People trying to shit on him need to take it to the Chop thread.

It'll be interesting to see what Gottfried tries with the defense going forward if we continue to struggle on that end of the court.

12/2/2011 1:13:41 PM

^^
CJW's defense has been excellent with the exception of the IU game. Can't say that for others. Howell and Painter have been particularly bad almost every game.

12/2/2011 1:19:19 PM

Regardless of the truth and accuracy of face's opinions/facts/posts - he still comes across as a Negative Nancy which is never appreciated by a team's fan base. It's just the wording that makes him come accross as a glass half empty kind of guy. This is not to say that he might be right, but most folks hope he's wrong and will want to err on the side of doing better. What tips the scale further is when the non-appreciation comes up - he attempts to call everyone kids - which always ends well.

12/2/2011 1:23:45 PM

rally has always been melodramatic and reactionary as fuck

See: Mike Vick is a golden god, etc.

12/2/2011 1:25:50 PM

Will this game be online anywhere?

12/2/2011 2:19:44 PM

Quote :

"Did I say we were out of the tournament? No. Am I being realistic about our chances? Yes."

12/2/2011 2:28:51 PM

^^ if u check packpride, a cool dude with the handle of frankcal ALWAYS has a good justin.tv feed. He has 2-3 channels, justin.tv/frankcal20, /frankcal22, and /frankcal25

12/2/2011 2:41:25 PM

bronco's 1st post ftw

12/2/2011 2:45:45 PM

Question for Face

Why does it always seem like Wood's field goal attempts are low for a shooter like him?

With his quick release and ability to take the contested 3, what are his pro prospects?

12/2/2011 2:52:36 PM

He's never really demonstrated the ability to shoot off the dribble so he's pretty much relegated to coming off screens or when the defense loses him in transition. Every other team knows not to leave him off a double team or to rotate out to him if there's penetration.

He really should just start taking more contested threes probably. He has enough height and is a good enough shooter that a defender being on him shouldn't lower his % enough to make it a "bad" shot.

NBA prospects are tough to say. He's got the height and shooting ability. His defense actually might be just barely good enough to make a roster. I'd say its a little less than 50-50 really. He won't be a starter or anything but there are a lot of shooters who make the end of the bench to come in for end of the quarter/game situations or just to give the 2nd unit some scoring punch on occasion.

I'm sure a lot of people won't agree with me, but there are plenty of Matt Carroll, Adam Harrington, Dell Curry type guys who have played in the league based almost strictly on 3-pt shooting ability.

If I had to guess I'd say he starts off as a D-leaguer that may get a call up to the NBA at some point. If not he's certainly got options overseas. I wouldn't anticipate him ever getting a multi-year deal.

[Edited on December 2, 2011 at 3:10 PM. Reason : a]

12/2/2011 3:06:07 PM

If he was 6'10", he could have a ten year career

at 6'6", he's not getting that shot off very often, unless he plays with a superstar that demands doubles

[Edited on December 2, 2011 at 3:08 PM. Reason : x]

12/2/2011 3:07:49 PM

Quote :

"or when the defense loses him in transition"

This is really the only time he gets open, which puts further emphasis on our defense drastically improving.

12/2/2011 3:08:21 PM

if we could be marginally better on defense and stop making some of the bad decisions/turnovers we made against IU we should be able to win this game. With that said, I think we'll keep it within 15 points but will trail the entire game and lose 85-72

12/2/2011 3:35:13 PM

face, buddy, we've played 7 games buddy. all of them against tourney teams from last year or tourney teams from this year. and we are 5-2

relax. we got this.

12/2/2011 4:07:12 PM

bronco

solid 1st post.

12/2/2011 4:28:07 PM

We've played 7 teams.

1 was good, 2 are bubble teams, 2 were okay, and 2 were bad.

That is definitely a large enough sample size to know what we're working with.

We would need to improve quite a bit to make the tournament. It can be done, but it's an uphill battle.

It's too early for the RPI to mean anything, but for some perspective we're 75th. We need to be top 40. We're better than the 75th best team in the country right now, but we're not in the top 40 as of yet.

12/2/2011 5:18:30 PM

I'll be there

12/2/2011 9:30:39 PM

Quote :

"bronco's 1st post ftw"

seconded

12/2/2011 9:59:27 PM