Wolfpack goes blank on Saturday, and for a moment Monday morning

N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe obviously has more to worry about than the ACC media teleconference, but there was an awkward moment Monday morning when his phone line died in the middle of an answer to The News & Observer’s Joe Giglio.

Giglio asked about how hard the Wolfpack plays, and whether Saturday’s loss at North Carolina was an aberration.

“Um, I think this group will play hard. Saturday, that was just a game. I don’t know, it was a weird game. Guys seemed to be ready n the locker room, ready to go to and excited, with good energy,” Lowe responded.

“Initially, when we don’t hit a few shots early, our defense seems to suffer a little bit. Our energy goes down. And we can’t have that.

“We have to be better at overcoming that early drought of not hitting shots and picking up on the defensive end.”

Whoops! Not long after that, Lowe’s line went blank (Wonder if he has AT&T as his cell service?)

After a minute or so, he was back on the line. In the remaining time, Lowe touched on a variety of points involving the Wolfpack team. One was that State doesn’t seem to have great balance when it comes to scoring, and the return of Tracy Smith after an injury hasn’t bolstered the team as expected.

“I can’t remember the last time we had a game where everybody played well. We haven’t had that in a while,” he said. “Having Tracy back certainly helped but we need other people to play well for us. We’ve had a couple of times now where we would take three or four players who played the majority of minutes and they went 4 for 16. And we can’t do that.

“But with Tracy back we should be better defensively. I don t think we’ve taken advantage of that. I don’t think we’ve defended as well as we need. We need to get games where we have more than two guys playing well.”

Speakingly broadly, Lowe had an almost deflated tone in this news conference. He talked about how tough the Wolfpack’s schedule has been in ACC play, and how this team still has time to make a run, but if you listened to his tone of voice, you had a hard time believing this team is about to roar through the rest of the season.