Q&A: N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe

Q&A from N.C. State basketball coach Sidney Lowe’s news conference on the morning before Saturday’s 8 p.m. opener at New Orleans:

Q: What about New Orleans concerns you? The only have three guys back, but some of them are pretty talented.
A: Yeah, the three guys they have coming back (Kyndall Dykes, T.J. Worley and Jaroslav Tyrna), especially two of them, played a major part in their win here last year. Confidence wise, they feel good about themselves, and they had some success here in that one game, and we’re playing in their building, so you know they’re going to come out with a lot of confidence. And they’ve added some players that we don’t quite know about yet, because they haven’t played an exhibition game.

Q: How much is that a challenge for this game, finding a scouting report (on the newcomers)?
A: That was a very difficult thing. Very difficult. So you try to use all your sources that you can, and then you try to watch film from last year knowing the personnel is a lot different at a lot of those positions. But us coaches, we don’t change a lot, so he (Joe Pasternack) has got his system and he’s been doing it for a long time.

Q: Coach (Monte) Towe has been kind of reluctant to talk about facing his former team – he (talked) last year. Can you talk about what going back there means to him?
A: I’m sure there’s mixed emotions. And not so much the game itself, but I just think the atmosphere, going back to New Orleans, having been there during that tough time with Katrina, it’s an emotional thing for him. . . .As far as the game itself, we know where his heart is on that one.

Q: How do you envision the point guard rotation going? Is Farnold (Degand) going to be ready for a full game in and out, or is he going to have to ease into a real game situation with the knee?
A: We have to watch his minutes. Whether he comes off the bench initially or whether he’s starting, we’re going to have to watch his minutes. I don’t think he’s ready to log long periods of time. But I also feel that Javi (Gonzalez) has earned to play his minutes as well.