New Year's 2016 +Addendum

Christmas

Had a nice visit with my sister and brother-in-law in Orlando. Productive following week at work. Very quiet with few interruptions - got quite a bit done.

The above was taped on the wall at work. Being the State Construction Office, most of us are engeeners engineres engeneres good with math.

Wolfpack in Review

Let's take a look at NC State Basketball and Football in 2015.

Basketball

In the 2015 NCAA Tournament (March Madness), State was the underdog team nobody wanted to play. We made it to the Sweet 16 including an upset of Number 1 Seed Villinova.



With only 1 senior starter graduating - for the first time since the 1980's and Jim Valvano - NC State was about to return to the basketball elite for the next season. Top 15 team for sure - maybe even better.

Then, in one week, it pretty much all went away. Star Trevor Lacy decided to turn pro and first off the bench forward Kyle Washington decided to transfer to another school for more playing time.

Just like that - we were back to our usual middle of the ACC potential. But, with guard Tracy Henderson ready to help take up the void and paired up with 'superstar potential' Cat Barber - we'd be OK.

Until the very first effin game of 2015.

Tracy injured his ankle - seriously torn ligaments. In fact, he's still on crutches - and is said to be barely able to walk without them. He will recover - it could have been a basketball career ending injury. Thankfully he wasn't permanently hurt. At this point, there is a real possibility of a medical red shirt and wait till next year.

So, Cat Barber has had to shoulder the load pretty much by himself. He's got a lot of great help - Bee Jay; Caleb and Cody; and Abdul Malik Abu al Boston. But without Tracy, we will be lucky to get back to the NCAA Tournament.

ACC season starts tomorrow - State at Virginia Tech. If we start off with a loss to VT - the season could get real ugly real quick.

Football

Don't drink the Kool-Aid

The players and coaches all went beyond hinting and pretty much said we should expect a break out year. An 8 - 4 regular season would be the minimum expectation with 10 -  2 or even better a real possibility.

I bought in to it.

Actually, if it weren't for abysmal play in 3 quarters - 10 and 2 really was within reach. The first quarter in the Louisville game, the second quarter in the Virginia Tech game, and the incredibly bad first quarter of the UNC game - put us in holes we were not able to dig our way out of. These 3 quarters we were pretty much awful. Outside of that - we outplayed the other teams.

We should have won the Louisville and VT games - period. We played Clemson close all game. UNC scored more points in the first quarter than we should have allowed the whole game. Only in the Florida State game were we out matched the whole game. A 9 - 3 regular season was there for the taking. We did the 'talking' instead of doing the 'taking'.

We were only outmatched by FSU - until the Bowl game against Mississippi State. The MSU game was, without a doubt, the worst performance of the entire year. Kind of summed up the let down of the entire season.

Instead of a breakout year - we regressed and ended up with a one game worse record than 2014.

And that, folks, is what it's like being a North Carolina State Wolfpack fan.

Don't drink the Kool Aid.

Addendum

State squandered a 14 point second half lead and lost to VT in overtime.