news-record.com

WINSTON-SALEM — And so begins N.C. State’s winter of discontent.

Arriving in town a day early to ride out the storm, the Wolfpack showed up late for its conference opener. Wake Forest, hardly the sharpest of teams this December, wore down State without much of a concept.

Wake has Ish Smith and Al-Farouq Aminu, and N.C. State doesn’t. Ultimately, that did in the Wolfpack on a cold ACC weekend.

State became the youngest team in the conference again over the long offseason, and Sidney Lowe became the league’s most frazzled coach. Watching him on the sidelines is a treat. But the look in his eye suggests he knows what his team is facing in the coming months.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Lowe said.

The 8-2 Wolfpack left its intensity in the downtown hotel. State will have to find its knowledge somewhere down the road. Such is the plight of Lowe’s young team, which managed to get younger as the game went on Sunday night.

Wake beat State with a fast start and a single flurry midway through the second half. That was all it took. The 8-2 Deacons didn’t shoot all that well, didn’t execute all that well, and all in all, didn’t play that well. But with State’s upperclassmen struggling, the Pack’s best-laid plans simply broke down.

“They came out with more energy,” said State’s junior point guard Javier Gonzalez. “They got the lead and never gave it back.”

Not that the Deacs didn’t try. With the intricate designs of Lowe’s game plan ultimately falling apart at the rim countless times in the second half, Gonzalez took it upon himself to play one on five. He scored 11 straight points, scoring 15 of State’s last 19 points.

Lowe came back to Raleigh four years ago with an NBA pedigree and mindset. He built an entire program around NBA plays, pick-and-rolls from every angle on the floor, high screens, clear-outs and one-on-five plays that seemed to befuddle veteran college coaches. This year loomed from way back in spring when a big recruiting class began to dwindle. Big-time players went elsewhere, Kentucky in one instance, military school in another. Freshmen in December usually get you beat, and the expressions on the coach’s face belie the frustration beneath the forced smiles.

State looked clueless at times, relying on athletic plays from any number of athletic players to smooth the learning curve. They come few and far between, which wouldn’t be so bad except State plays defense the same way. Defense requires a clue, and State goes too deep in freshmen to sustain the intensity to play Lowe’s style.

At least in December.

He resorted to running double-point guard offenses with both Gonzalez and Farnold Degand on the floor at the same time, countering Wake’s ill-advised box-and-one defense and somehow clawing back into a game State had no business being in after the slow start.

Then in the blink of an eye, it was over. Wake was blocking shots with its point guard, and State was missing point-blank shots with its big men. Suddenly, the best big man State has was 30 feet from the basket trying to break up a routine ball screen. When 6-8 center Tracy Smith picked up his third, fourth and fifth fouls in a minute and a half, the Wolfpack should’ve begun packing for the long road ahead.

Yet with Gonzalez no longer looking for help and Lowe no longer sticking to his best-laid plans, State came back. A team that looked without enough intensity or knowledge to make a game of it, whittled away Wake’s lead and watched while Deacon freshmen made bad decisions.

As it turned out, they only had one on the floor in the closing minutes. Lowe was running them in and out, searching for the elusive combinations he hopes will ultimately turn the Pack into a team. That didn’t happen Sunday night. It might not happen all season.

But it won’t be because Lowe stops scheming.

“When we go to the bench, we’re coming with freshmen,” he said. “Those guys are going to have to learn.”

The ACC season started over the weekend. Wake came out of it 1-0, and State left town 0-1. The difference was slight, but it was enough on the eve of winter. Lowe knows the hard part is yet to come when his freshmen begin to play longer and the howls around his program get louder.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com