Art’s Angle: A Dog Of A Crowd

If Carolina supposedly has the “wine and cheese” crowd, the N.C. State Wolfpack fans from here on in must be known as the doggy downers.

I guess that’s what losing 16 of the last 17 games to your arch rival will do to the home crowd’s excitement and confidence going in – even three days after State upset Duke on the same floor.

State’s crowd, in a word, was lame Wednesday night, giving its team virtually no home court advantage and not getting out of its seats in unison until the Tar Heels almost handed the Pack the game in the final 2 minutes.

State’s “bank building” (RBC, PNC, who knows which financial institution comes next) is a fabulous facility, with wide concourses on two levels plus club sections above mid-court that keep a lot of fans eating and drinking, if they are not watching their team get spanked again by the opponents in baby blue.

The crowd wasn’t anywhere near as nasty as those that used to turn Reynolds Coliseum into a madhouse. State may have restricted signs and discouraged negative cheers about UNC’s academic scandal, but it dawned on me that maybe their students can’t read the stories that said some Tar Heels can’t read.

I dunno.

And State has a pretty darn good basketball team with two all-stars in Trevor Lacey and Ralston Turner, plus plenty of size inside. But how that arena wasn’t going bonkers before tip-off (when it was still half empty), I will never know. Or care, for that matter. For the Heels, it was like playing in an empty gym.

In a past life, I used to refer to the un-renovated Carter-Finley Stadium as the concrete carcass in the fairgrounds. The carcasses must have moved a few hundred yards over to the basketball arena, because that crowd was deadsville.

If your team had lost 22 of the last 24 to its arch rival, would you come in with such a defeatist attitude? When Dean Smith’s Carolina clubs would beat Clemson like a drum every year in Death Valley, those fans still gave it their best until the inevitable outcome.

State center Kyle Washington said after the game that “we gave this one away.”

Huh. Mr. Washington, your team was down by 11 points with less than four minutes to play before Ol’ Roy proved he isn’t the same mathematician Smith was. All Carolina teams like to run and push the tempo – until they have a lead toward the end of the game.

In the old days, it was going to Four Corners. But now, it is figuring out how many possessions it would take State to catch up and reducing that number by holding the ball deep into the shot clock. Trouble with that style of play is it takes the Tar Heels out of their favorite rhythm, and as the clock runs down the other team knows who will wind up with the ball. Marcus Paige then gets bottled up and often ends up forcing something as the shot clock expires.

UNC failing to get a field goal in the last 4:38 of the game helped State cut the lead from 11 points to three in one 90-second stretch. Luckily, State kept fouling and the Heels made 10 of 12 from the line to salt away the 81-79 win and move to 3-1 in the ACC.

Carolina needs another go-to scorer in those situations, and it may turn out to be J.P. Tokoto, who defends like an octopus, runs like a deer and jumps like a kangaroo. He held Lacey to one field goal in the first half and kept State’s leading scorer from getting uncorked until late in the game. Tokoto can get his own shot in clock-expiring possessions, but the kind of shots he takes is still questionable.

Paige was fabulous in the building he now owns, not missing a three-pointer or a free throw on his way to 23 points, 9 assists and no (as in ZER-O) turnovers. He obviously needs to work on his 10-foot floater, because those don’t go down as regularly now that his long-range offense seems to be returning.

Williams is now 28-2 against the school he rooted against as a kid, including five wins with Kansas. His 10th victory in 12 trips to the expansive arena State now shares with the NHL’s Hurricanes was another growing experience for his team, whose bench came through again to contribute 19 points (even without the injured Joel Berry II, who is out a couple of weeks). But the Tar Heels had to give a nod to the theateresque State crowd, which opens its collective mouth more to eat club sandwiches than to cheer for its team or jeer the visitors from Chapel Hill.

Maybe one of these years, Wolfpack fans will rock the house like they do when Duke comes calling. But for now they are 4-12 in their off-campus home against the Tar Heels, who shot 56 percent and seemed in no trouble until they shot themselves in the foot in the closing minutes.

No thanks to the red-clad crowd that knew the end before the beginning.