WRAL Sports Fan

WRALSportsFan

Remembering '83: Red-Hot Pack Rolls over Duke

By Tim Peeler, GoPack.com

Feb 24, 2008

Durham, N.C. — Dodging pizza boxes and an upset bid by home-standing Duke, N.C. State continued its February surge Wednesday night with a 96-79 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

“We’re playing about as well as this team can play, considering all that has happened,” said Jim Valvano, after watching his team get its fourth consecutive ACC game and its seventh win the last eight games. “I’m very proud of them.”

And there may be even better news on the way: senior guard Dereck Whittenburg, who was thought to be lost for the rest of the season when he broke his foot on Jan. 12 against Virginia, was in uniform and on the Wolfpack bench. He returned to practice this week and could be in the lineup as early as March 3, when the Wolfpack (7-4 ACC, 16-8 overall) hosts Maryland in the next-to-last game of the regular season.

It’s been an unexpected turnaround for a team that was 9-7 a little over three weeks ago, with few post-season prospects. That changed with Saturday’s victory over No. 3 North Carolina, and can only improve over the final three games of the regular-season.

“I think we have a great chance now,” said senior guard Sidney Lowe. “I think this win guarantees us an NIT bid. “I think if we win two out of these last three, plus the opening round of the ACC Tournament, that should get us an NCAA bid.

“I don’t know how they [the NCAA Selection Committee] pick the teams, so we are going to try to win all three of these [regular-season games]. If we can will all three, I don’t see how they could keep us out.”

If that happens, Lowe and fellow senior Thurl Bailey will get much of the credit. Bailey scored 26 points against the Blue Devils, just one shy of his career-high. Lowe, playing perhaps the best all-around game of his career, matched the best scoring night of his career with 23 points, added 12 assists and five rebounds, leading the Wolfpack to a 13-point first half lead and then killing the clock on Duke’s comeback attempt.

He also locked down Duke freshman Johnny Dawkins, who came into the game averaging 18.6 points against all opponents and 20.2 points against ACC competition, on defense, forcing the freshman to miss eight of his nine shots and holding him to just four points. It’s the first time all season that Dawkins, the only ACC player to score in double figures every game this season, was limited to single-digit scoring.

Lowe’s dozen assists allowed him to break his own single-season school record with 192 assists, topping his sophomore total of 184.