NC State held practice at Lenovo today (10/9) and opened it to the public. It was a normal practice, not something special put on for the viewing audience. After the practice they gave Coach Gainey a mic to speak to the crowd. He smiled and yelled,

WOLF!

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He’s a keeper.

He said that 2,000 people had RSVP’d to attend, but they didn’t know the actual number of attendees. There was a surprising number of people there for a Friday afternoon.

Injury report:

Starting with the bad news. Coach Vasiljevic has a torn Achilles tendon and is in a cast. He is not expected to play at all this season. But he was on the sidelines contributing as best as he could during practice. He seemed in good spirits when we spoke.

My Takeaways:

• Practice was non-stop. As Coach Gainey previously mentioned, that is intentional for conditioning. There was one short water break, plus some coaching moments where they sat and listened.

• During the defensive drills, you immediately noticed the physicality. The defender was in contact with the ball handler and fighting through screens. Excited to see that during a game.

• Shah Hall – The most impressive play of the afternoon was by Shah Hall. During a short scrimmage, he blocked a 3PT shot, then chased it down before it got out of bounds and tipped it to Paul McNeil for an easy layup. As we have heard, he’s a heck of an athlete and can really, really jump.

• Paul McNeil – At one point he had a lightly contested 3PT shot and chose to drive around the defender and take it to the basket. He looked good doing it. At another point, he stepped out and blocked a 3PT shot.

• Christian Hammond – Really nice stroke. Shot 3PT well, took it to the basket well, and hit his free throws.

• Emeli Yalaho – He handles the ball well. At one point he recovered the ball and drove it the length of the court for a score. At another point there was no open pass available, so he drove around while being closely defended until there was a pass available.

• Lubin and Evans played together.

• Hall and Evans played together.

• Robert Jurkovic hit a 3PT and looked like he could do it at any time.

• Ven Lubin missed his only 3PT attempt I noticed. But drove into the lane and made a nice 12 footer.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only BTP-er in attendance, so I thought I’d put an article out to share your reaction to what you saw.