Just one of the myriad benefits to being coached by Tony Bennett is that he’s perhaps the most level-headed coach I’ve ever covered.
What’s your message to seniors who had never won here … “Well, they’re not going to win here” - Bennett laughing. He’s in a good mood.
— Ben Swain (@TheBenSwain) February 13, 2016
His teams take on that workmanlike steadiness, and that prevalent attitude is why I don’t think Saturday’s result will affect the team we see tonight.
NC State is 13-12 overall and 3-9 in the ACC, but they can be feisty, as wins by 16 over Miami at home and by 17 at Pitt will attest. They’re a young team (freshmen and sophomores make up five of their top seven) and lack depth — projected starting guard and WVu transfer Terry Henderson tore ankle ligaments seven minutes into NCSU’s first game and is out for the year — but they’re doing what they can to hang every night behind the efforts of junior point guard Cat Barber.
Barber is one of my favorite players to watch in the ACC for the way he seems to create controlled chaos on the offensive end of the court. He takes almost 30% of State’s shots and free throws, and has scored almost a third (25.3 of their 76.2) points in ACC games. Mark Gottfried doesn’t run an offense so much as he rolls the ball out to midcourt and implores Barber to go create things, and it works. Barber is great at winding into the lane and getting baskets or to the line (he’s taking 7.3 FTA per game in ACC play), or setting up three point tries for freshman Maverick Rowan (13 ppg, 33.7% 3PT in ACC games) or Caleb Martin (34.7% 3PT, 9.9 ppg). If someone misses, three bigs all in the top-15 in the ACC in offensive rebounding percentage – Abdul-Malik Abu (13.6%), BeeJay Anya (11.6%) and Lennard Freeman (10.7%) are there to clean it up.
State boasts the third-worst defensive efficiency (112.3) in the league because they’re gamblers (yielding a lot — more than a third of their foes’ shots — of threes) whose bets don’t work (State forces turnovers on an ACC-low 14% of possessions). BeeJay Anya is still capable of defending the rim (blocking 10.7% of shots) and the same trio that crashes the offensive boards keeps them respectable (67.7%) on the defensive glass.
NC State’s fulcrum is Barber. I would imagine we’ll treat him the same we did Kay Felder against Oakland: by single covering him with a variety of guys (but mostly Malcolm) and making him work for the points he gets over 40 minutes (and he’ll play close to it). State’s offense is basically propelling Barber at the basket and getting either a basket in the lane (most likely) a foul call (next) or a kicked out three (not always their best bet). It’ll be important for our bigs to stay vertical when challenging his shots, which can be tough — he’s good at contorting his body around the basket. In addition, we’ll have to do a much better job on the offensive glass than we did against Duke. State’s three bigs don’t stop going after misses.
On offense, I’d like to see London Perrantes return to a more prominent role, but I’m mostly just hoping for a continuation of what we saw in the games leading up to Duke: good ball movement leading to good shots and aggressiveness early in the shot clock.
Verdict:
I think Barber gets his but has to work hard for them, and that the rest of this State offense struggles to find openings. On offense, State’s the kind of team that allows plenty of room for drives and passing lanes, and we should be able to return to our recent run of efficiency. ‘Hoos get back to winning.
