Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Lowe explains collapse at Clemson

After N.C. State's 60-50 loss to Clemson on Tuesday night, coach Sidney Lowe explained some of the things that caused the Wolfpack to collapse after leading by 19 points in the first half.

Lowe said the N.C. State players had a lot of open shots that they just missed. He said Clemson center Jerai Grant took away some of the Wolfpack's low-post game by blocking shots.

He said he used a lot of his timeouts in the first half trying to break the run that got the Tigers back into the game and was trying to hang onto his remaining timeouts in the second half.

Here is a transcript, provided by Clemson's sports information office, of some of Lowe's comments:

“After we had a good start, Clemson just became more aggressive. They
turned up the defense and started going for the ball a lot more. They got
more physical with us. We stood around too much; we didn’t come around and
get the ball from the dribbler like we talked about. They just turned up
the intensity. It’s a game of runs. We made a run at the beginning and
then they made runs that we just couldn’t stop. We talked about not giving
them the game by not taking bad shots or turning the ball over and making
them play defense. I thought we took a couple of questionable shots, but
we had a lot of open shots that we just missed inside. Some were
questionable (whether they got hit or not) but we just didn’t do our job
tonight.”

On Clemson’s comeback:
“They don’t have a clear cut superstar, but they know how to play hard.
This isn’t a young team; they have plenty of guys that have been here
before. They know what type of effort they needed to give to get back in
the ballgame. It showed a lot of character and a lot of toughness. They
did whatever they had to do to win the game. I saw one guy body-block
Scott Wood. They did what they had to do to get back in the game. When
you’re down like that, you do whatever you have to do, and they did it.”

On today’s game compared to Sunday’s game vs Miami:
“We made shots Sunday. We were able to score. When Miami made a run, we
were able to make a shot to keep ourselves in it. Today, we had trouble
scoring. Their defense was good and they took some things away. Jerai
Grant was on the inside, taking that away and blocking shots. Once again,
we had five shots on the inside and he blocked at least two. We just
couldn’t get that one basket we needed to break the momentum and I was
running out of timeouts. I used them all in the first half, trying to stop
that run, and I was trying to hang on to them in the second half.”

Ken Tysiac

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for coming out, Sid. Enjoy your extended vacation.

Anonymous said...

In other words, "I'm not surprised we lost, we gave a good effort, I still get my check and am going to have a steak dinner to celebrate only losing by 10."

SID IS A LOSER when it comes to coaching. He has lost at EVERY LEVEL. When he loses there isn't a lot of emotion. COMPLETE BUM!

Anonymous said...

We have an excrutiatingly young team. Individually, each player is good, they just have to carry themselves through for the entire game. Winning by 19 in the first half only to lose by 10... it hurts. You can't blame everything on the coach, it's just the easiest scapegoat.

Longtime State Fan said...

Sidney Lowe is hardly a "COMPLETE BUM!" Show some respect, Anonymous said...

With that said, it has become clear that Coach Lowe does not have teaching skills required to mold young college players. He knows the game as well as anyone, I think. But he has shown that he cannot teach young players the game.

As a longtime State fan, I'm thankful to Coach Lowe for taking our program over when we couldn't find anyone else. But I think it's time to move on. Hopefully the next coach can teach the game as well as scheme it.

It wouldn't surprise me to see him have some success at the NBA head coaching level in the future. But I don't see a bright future for him at State.

Through it all, however, I will remain respectful of the man. He was a great player back in the 1980s, and he will always be an important part of our history.

Anonymous said...

Longtime State Fan with all due respect Sidney is an awful coach. He has had 5 years to build the program that was handed to him by an incompetent AD who screwed up the coaching search.

Sidney was a great player but he is an awful coach, just because you are good at something doesn't mean you can teach it to somebody else. He was PG and has had awful PG and doesn't seem to coach them up at all. With him and Monty Towe PG shouldn't be an issue, but it is.

And he was an NBA head coach and was awful there too.