Technician Online

March 9th, 2007

Grant not making excuses heading into Virginia game

Tanner Kroeger
Sports Editor

TAMPA Fla. – Gavin Grant called his team “The Six Pack” after last night’s win over Duke. He acknowledged N.C. State’s extreme lack of depth, a vice that this tournament could be poised to exploit.
Coach Sidney Lowe played eight players in the Duke game – senior Justin Clark only saw three minutes, and freshman Dennis Horner only played 14.
The five players who played 30-plus minutes yesterday now have to turn around and face an up-tempo Virginia team, which features two of the ACC’s most athletic guards in junior Sean Singletary and senior J.R. Reynolds.
But Grant isn’t making any excuses. He knows if you’re alive in the ACC Tourney, you’re playing every day. And any talk about his team being inexperienced, well, the junior forward has an answer.
“Lack of experience you say? Experience is out the window now,” Grant said. “These guys have played an entire ACC season.”
And when it comes to the Cavaliers, he’s right. Fortunately or unfortunately, State has plenty of experience with Virginia this season – the only problem is it can’t seem to beat the conference’s second-best team. State opened its ACC schedule at Virginia and hung with the home team, until falling late 67-62.
The game in Raleigh, however, was a different story. State failed to score 60 points for the third time, at that point in the season and suffered the Virginia sweep, 71-58.
Grant knew last night that his team’s game plan would be simple.
“Everyone knows they have great guard play,” Grant said. “[Reynolds and Singletary] are averaging like 44 points. Our game plan is going to be to stop those two, and offensively we’re going to try to get it to Ben [McCauley] and Brandon [Costner].”

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Men's ACC Tournament. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.