Welcome to this week’s edition of the “Wolfpack Week in Review.” Here you’ll find a colorful and possibly opinionated recap of all the things that happened this week in the world of North Carolina State sports. The week is from Wednesday to Wednesday because we live in a crazy world where few things make sense.
New Football Players!
The Wolfpack wrapped up their 2016 recruiting class by signing 23 scholarship players last Wednesday. I won’t go into much detail about the class itself because you’ve likely already read a million articles breaking it down, but Dave Doeren has undeniably increased the level of talent that is coming to NC State. Thaddeus Moss, Kelvin Harmon and C.J. Riley could all quickly impact a downfield passing game that was not up to par last season. A lot of guys in the class, including these three, are high-major recruits that top football powers wanted. State beat out LSU, USC, Nebraska, Florida, Miami, UCLA, Texas A&M, South Carolina, Ole Miss and others at one point or another during the cycle. That’s a fine list of schools right there. State also stuck in it until the end for several super good football players. The Pack was likely runner-up for 4-star WR Cornell Powell, 4-star WR Diondre Overton, and 5-star human bulldozer Dexter Lawrence. These are moral victories and those are the darned worst, but it shows that the number of high level recruits willing to consider NC State is increasing and you have to crawl before you can walk.
Side note: All three of these players went to Clemson so you can blame Dabo Swinney for this. Screw you Dabo for being so very very good at your job!
Lost To Duke In The Round Orange Ball Sport
State fans were infuriated by Mark Gottfried’s oft-repeated postgame spiel about the team being “almost there” and “not a bad team.” Nobody wants to hear that when almost every game ends with the same depressing result. But now that the ACC season is 11 games old, some simple observation would tell you that he’s right. The record is trash obviously, but when you look at the results of each individual game you see the Gottfried really is spot on. This year’s NC State basketball team really is a team that is perpetually “almost there.” This was illustrated once again on Saturday when they came up short in Cameron Indoor Stadium (It’s a stadium that’s indoors! Revolutionary!). It was the ninth conference loss for the Pack and also the ninth conference loss where they were competitive and had a chance to win. State battled back from a double-digit first half deficit and took a 50-49 lead with 16:28 to go in the game. That was the point where an average three point shooter entered “playing against NC State” mode. This time it was sub-32 percent Luke Kennard, who drained six of 11 from downtown. He was already hot, but he hit two big shots immediately following State taking the lead. Kennard, along with future star of the “I Hate Grayson Allen” 30 for 30, largely carried Duke offensively, collectively scoring 54 of the 88 points. On the NC State side it was Cat Barber having pretty much your standard Cat Barber game. He shot 8-14, scored 26 points, and did everything his body would physically permit him to do in his attempt to carry State to the win. Barber is the best player in the ACC and there is not a single argument you can use to prove that statement untrue. The Pack played pretty well overall and came up just a few plays short which is the theme of the season and goes back to Gott’s rhetoric.
Duke also relied heavily on free throw shooting. The sky is blue. Water is wet. Brick walls are hard. Excuse me while I go bang my head against one of them. The Blue Devils shot 1-8 from the field in the final 10 minutes of the game. NC State shot 7-13 through the same 10 minutes, yet the 12-point lead Duke had entering the final 10 only decreased to eight by the end of the game. Playing in Cameron is so much fun. Abu had a really nice game, notching another double-double with 16 points and 17 boards. Caleb Martin fouled out in just 10 minutes and then irritated Duke fans for the rest of the game by refusing to take a seat. Petty? Yes. Hilarious? Most definitely. The Pack’s next game comes at home on Saturday against Wake Forest, whose basketball season also looks to be a wash.
There’s Only One Wolfpack
NC State got into a little bit of a legal spat with a tiny school in New York called Keuka College over the nickname Wolfpack. NC State threatened legal action over Keuka’s use of the name claiming that it infringed on NC State’s trademark, and Keuka subsequently elected to change their name instead of fighting a legal battle versus a much larger foe. It’s easy to understand how both sides felt the way they did about the name, given that the Wolfpack is the best mascot in all of college sports (obviously that’s not actually why there were hard feelings, but the point stands). It’s even cooler when it doesn’t have a space in it, Nevada.
Image credit: NC State Basketball
The Armchair All-Americans 