Big game tonight for the Pack. Such a big game for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, Engin Atsur’s senior night. With all due respect to Bryan Nieman and Braxton Albritton who have been a great part of the team, the one that the fans will remember the most tonight is Engin. His first three years in the program accumulated 4 NCAA tournament wins, including a sweet 16. That is the most in a three year stretch since we went to back to back Elite Eights in 85 and 86. He came in as a freshman and was a starter in his first year. He’s always been a scrapper and team leader. He will be missed.

To add to the drama is perhaps our last best chance to finish with a non-losing season and reach the NIT. To finish with a winning regular season, we have to win one of our last two games, OR win two games in the ACC tournament.

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Tough loss for the basketball team tonight in Chapel Hill and best wishes to Coach Lowe to get better. It sounds like he was just taken to the hospital for fluids and precautions, so hopefully he will be back on his feet soon.

But, wanted to share some good Pack news today. The baseball squad earned a tight win over NC A&T 5-3. Freshman Sam Brown and a host of other pitchers got their first action on the hill, but probably most importantly Eryk McConnell got put in a typical 9th inning save situation with the game on the line and came through for save #2.

Looking ahead to the weekend the Pack gets their first real tests……..

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Hold on to your seats, tonight will be a wild ride! We are about to head into a very unfriendly atmosphere! Can we win? Yes! Will we? Maybe….

Keys:
*Stop Hansbrough - Just like last game, get him frustrated, put a body on him, deny him the ball, and make him foul
*Control Lawson - Courtney Fells main job tonight will be deny Lawson space.
*Shoot Well - We come in 2nd in the ACC in shooting percentage, we much have another dominate effort tonight
*Win the Boards - We must win the boards on both sides of the floor.
*Control the Temp - We must force them to play our game, just like we did in the RBC Center. We CANNOT let them start running and get some open dunks to get the crowd going.
*Keep the Crowd Quiet - If we allow the crowd to get into the game, it will be a long night
*Did I mention Shoot the ball well?

There are a lot of factors that will have to fall into place for the Wolfpack to fly home down 40 on cloud 9 tonight. However, it isn’t impossible, we have already knocked off a team in first place in the league twice, and kept another team from jumping up there again. We know what upsets taste like, but we know what defeat taste like too. We must keep the energy, we must shoot the ball well, and we must remember that there will be a crowd in Reynolds ready to storm Hillsbrough street after another upset!

Look for another surprise outing by the fantastic 5, and look for Sid to go deeper in his bench earlier to throw some different looks at the heels and keep them on their heels.

Go Pack!