WRAL Sports Fan

Devils have to sweat the small stuff

By James Alverson
Sep 16, 2012

The presence of recuperating Blue Devil Blair Holliday stole the show during Duke's game against in-town rival North Carolina Central on Saturday, September 15, 2012 in Durham, NC (photo by Jack Morton).

Duke had no major problems with North Carolina Central on Saturday night at Wallace Wade, but not many people really expected them to either. The Blue Devils got another solid night out of Sean Renfree, who didn't turn it over, and took it to Central 54-17.

In the five years David Cutcliffe has been at the helm of this Duke program, I'd have to say this is his most talented team to date. Renfree shows signs of brilliance in each game, Stanford was a tough test for sure, even Matt Barkley at USC found that out the hard way this week, but Renfree has been very respectable in the other two games the Devils have played this season. I'm not sure he'll face another defense as good as Stanford's this season, which comes as good news to him and Coach Cutcliffe as well.

The Blue Devils made some off-season position changes to move some guys around and get their best athletes on the field more. That included moving multi-talent guys like Brandon Connette to a wide receiver spot as well as placing him in the wildcat package at the quarterback role, moving him around, finding different ways to get the ball in his hands. He even played a little safety for Duke in the second half, a position that he's learning as he goes.

Connette is maybe the most notable example of an off-season position change working out for the better, but other guys like Desmond Scott's transition from running back to slot receiver have been just as critical to the Devils early season success. Scott

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NCHSAA nearly had a very dark day

By James Alverson
May 3, 2012

James Alverson

Any time adults get involved in youth sports ... you can bet a mess is on the way. That's not to say that parents should not be involved in their kids athletic careers, and administrators shouldn't put rules in place to protect kids that participate in athletics, because they should, but when parents and administrators get too focused on "winning", the political battles that ensue can ruin kids chances to just play the games.

Today was a near disaster for the North Carolina High School Athletic Association. Six member schools floated an amendment that had to be voted on by all member schools with little to no time for debate that would have expelled three parochial schools from the association. The amendment caused a very divisive situation where there was really no need for division. Why?

The only reasons even posited before the vote, as NCHSAA Commissioner Davis Whitfield questioned outloud before announcing the results of the vote, were "Because they have no boundaries? Because it's perceived that they recruit? Because they haven't been upstanding members of our association?"

All of those accusations are huge misconceptions of what these parochial schools actually are. There are boundaries (tuition and realistic travel distance), they don’t recruit (pretty much all successful athletic programs are accused of this at some point), and they follow all of the same rules other member institutions follow except their eligibility rules are even more restrictive

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Refusing to right a wrong teaches the wrong lesson

By James Alverson
Feb 19, 2012

James Alverson

When the NCHSAA 4A State Basketball playoffs begin on Monday, the brackets will not be correct.

Typically the association puts out a detailed bulletin pre-season known as “The Handbook” that contains all of the rules for eligibility, and playoff qualifications for the year. The handbook goes through pain-staking length to make it very clear what qualifies a team for the playoffs and detail precisely how the seeding process is done, all in an attempt to remove any hint of subjectivity or discretion on the part of any “selection committee”.

This year, for some inexplicable reason, the Association chose to not follow its’ own published rules that it had voted on, passed, and published to the full NCHSAA membership, particularly those concerning wild card berths for the boys 4A playoffs.

As has been detailed on HighSchoolOT.com, wild cards are selected by reportable winning percentage. Panther Creek’s reportable record for a playoff berth is 11-12, High Point Central and South Caldwell (two other teams in the playoffs qualified by wild card) are reported at 10-14 and 10-13 respectively.

Nowhere in the playoff selection and seeding process outlined by this year’s handbook does it say that one wildcard will be selected from the “East” and one from the “West”. In fact, team’s aren’t even divided by region until after the 64 qualifiers have already been selected, so how could you determine where the line for East and West is, but

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BCS got it right, this time

By James Alverson
Jan 3, 2012

As unpopular as it may be, the BCS got it right. This time they did anyway.

It may not be the sexy TV match up that Oklahoma State and LSU sounds like it would be. It may very well be another "dreaded" defensive game (which I actually think would be refreshing given this bowl season thus far), but the best two teams in the country will be playing each other in the National Championship Game.

That is said not to take anything away from Oklahoma State, who had a phenomenal year, or Oregon, a team that also had a great season, but the BCS gave us # 1 and # 2 on the field at the end of the season.

Yeah, I know, they played each other in November. Yes I realize that LSU won the game that had it been played on a muddy, cold and nasty field in the Big Ten 20 years ago might be lauded as one of the greatest games ever.

You can make the argument that Alabama missed its opportunity to win the national championship when it lost to the Bayou Bengals at home in overtime, but I think you'd be missing the larger point.

They played each other. Alabama lost by three points in a game that realistically they should have won. A questionable call on an interception on the goal line and several missed field goals were the difference between Alabama and LSU swapping places in this argument that people have carried on well into the bowl season.

People look at it and say they don't want to see a rematch because the thought of Oklahoma State and LSU scoring touchdowns

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Ryan Harrow improving on defense is key for Pack

By James Alverson
Jan 20, 2011

Ryan Harrow (12) takes a jump shot during the Duke vs. NC State game on January 19th, 2011 at the RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Freshman NC State point guard Ryan Harrow is making an impact this season for the Wolfpack. Before the season, many NC State fans looked at this year's recruiting class with Harrow, Lorenzo Brown, and C.J. Leslie as the "Saviors" of NC State basketball team this year. I believe there is no question that these guys have a tremendous amount of talent, absolute raw ability that has benefited the NC State team this year.

It has been completely necessary to have a guy like Harrow at the point this year as the Javi Gonzalez soap opera continues to spin. Hard to tell if Javi really cares about this basketball season all that much, or if he just cares too much about it. I will spare you the agony of me sitting here and playing sideline psychotherapist. But Gonzalez is not having the season he had last year, to say the absolute least, and his benching in the second half against Duke seemed like a long time coming. Sidney Lowe definitely had a long leash with his senior, but Harrow has played well on the offensive end for the Pack this year. When he is penetrating and dishing to teammates, working off screens by Tracy Smith particularly, NC State is at their best. It creates open shots for teammates, and even better than that, allows for some easy shots under the basket.

However, State still has a long way to go. The inexperience this season has hurt the Pack in some games they could have won. Defensively the effort has not been there for the Pack this season, save

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Where did they go wrong?

By James Alverson
Sep 27, 2010

In a contract year, John Fox better be quickly finishing any remodeling projects in his home. With his Carolina Panthers on to their second starting quarterback and off to an 0-3 start, it is time to take a quick look at where things went wrong for the Panther franchise.

Hitching your wagon, in a contract year no less, to a rookie quarterback in the NFL has hardly ever been a good idea, and yesterday's ugly 20-7 loss to Cincinnati certainly did not put out any fires in the Panther's front office. Jimmy Clausen's two fumbles of exchanges from center were just a micro-chasm of the way the Panther's handled their off-season moves, particularly in the handling of the Julius Pepper's free-agency.

The Panthers have firmly planted themselves in the discussion of teams that fit the category worst in the NFL. Any number of things have sent the franchise down this road and starting a rookie at quarterback is hardly the first step in the progress down that path.

Letting a talent like Julius Peppers walk out of your franchise without getting anything in return was step number one to sending the Panthers falling into NFL obscurity (if there is such a thing). So a top 3 (in the league) defensive end walks out of your franchise, you get nothing, and you have to draft someone to replace him. As good as Everette Brown was in the pre-season, he's still second on your depth chart, and Charles Johnson and Tyler Brayton, while good, do not dictate the double teams that Peppers

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