NC State traveled to Winston-Salem last night and got the same treatment that most teams get there these days. A loss. It was a weird loss; for not-completely-clear reasons, Julius Hodge was benched for the first quarter of the game, but then came out and had by far his best game of the year. Hodge says he was benched because he was taking care of academics (which is mighty commendable and something you never would have expected from him as a freshman). I find it hard to believe that Mr. Summa Cum Laude would bench a player for taking care of schoolwork though, so clearly Hodge isn’t telling the whole story. Whatever really happened, it took balls for the the embattled Sendek to sit his star and it showed some heart for the gangly Hodge to come out and play a great game.
All that drama aside, State played fairly well, but still lost. It may be that if they’d had Mr. Elbows And Knees for the whole game (and he had been just as motivated), they would have pulled it out. Instead, they trailed the whole game and lost their seventh conference game of the season. While it’s never fun to lose, there are only a half dozen or so teams in the country that could reasonably expect anything different from their visit to Joel Coliseum.

At this point, State is in a three-way tie for eighth in the ACC with Virginia and Florida State. The Pack already lost to each of those powers, so they are really in tenth. Not what the Pack faithful expected. As you probably know, Sendek is in a large tub of hot water with the fans stoking the fires.
For Wake, the win moved them to 8-2 in the conference and in a three-way tie with Carolina and Duke. The Deacons have already beaten each Tobacco Road rival, so they are really in first place right now.
In a game the other night that nobody noticed, UVA beat FSU behind a last-second (more or less) three-pointer by Devin Smith. The shot gave the Cavaliers their only lead of the game. If the story sounds familiar, it should. Last season, Virginia crapped the bed in the first half of the conference season and then won a string of games at the buzzer to save Pete Gillen’s job and nearly earned an NCAA bid. Neither of those things will happen this year, but it’s good to see the team show some pride.
For his part, Smith not only leads the team in scoring and hit that big shot, but he’s also now apparently the marketing director. He sent an email the other day to the entire student body asking for their support for this weekend’s game against Virginia Tech. Here is a response in the student paper. It’s thick with sarcasm, but basically the guy’s backing Smith up. I wouldn’t say that that was the best way to go about doing it, as not everyone’s going to pick up on the sarcasm, but it’s good to see the students support the team. Sort of.
There is a pretty good slate of games this weekend, headlined by Duke traveling to Maryland and Carolina visiting UConn. Maryland, sounding like a jilted lover, says they ARE TOO Duke’s rival. Duke yawned and cleaned up after the post-UNC game bonfires. The Carolina game in Hartford is the ACC’s last good non-conference game and a chance to shut the pro-Big East yahoos up.
Virginia Tech plays at Virginia in a rematch of the game that really got the Cavaliers’ tailspin turning. The Cavs seem to have pulled out of the death spiral, but a loss in this one would call anew for an immediate firing of Gillen.
NC State travels to Georgia Tech in a critical game for each team. The Yellow Jackets need to continue to win the games that they should win and the Pack is just plain desperate (did I mention that already?).
Florida State goes to Wake and Miami travels to Clemson in the weekend’s yawners.