How individual attitudes prevented NC State basketball from making March Madness run earlier
DALLAS — One big question surrounding the NC State basketball team's March Madness run is why now? Where was this Wolfpack team in January and February, when the team was middling in the ACC and nowhere close to the NCAA Tournament's bubble talk?
To Mohamed Diarra, it's pretty simple. The Wolfpack weren't a true team yet.
"I think that was more like individual," Diarra said Saturday. "I think there was some people not happy about their situation, some people don't like how they play, some people was mad but I think right now, everybody's on the same page."
Diarra isn't pointing fingers at anybody. He admits he had the same attitude at points. What athlete wouldn't want to be the star player scoring 20 points a game leading their team to success? Diarra certainly does, but that's not what the Wolfpack needed out of him.
"Sometimes I got a moment of doubt," Diarra said. "Sometimes I think about maybe I should score more. That's no more."
A big part of Diarra's role is rebounding, specifically cleaning up the glass that his fellow big man DJ Burns doesn't always get to. Diarra — who has had double-doubles in each of the last four games — is the more athletic big, able to move quicker to the ball than Burns. Everybody has a job, and Diarra knows what his is.
"I'm not here to shine," Diarra said. "I'm just trying to play basketball; win more than I can. When my teammates get shine, it's cool and I'm glad for them. DJ, I help him a lot. I help all of my teammates. My job is to help people."
Seeing the fruits of the team-first mentality has also boosted NC State's collective confidence. That's gone a long in in taking a struggling team out of the gutter and into the spotlight, one game from a Final Four.
"We can feel it every time we play, every game we play, we're gonna play the same way," Diarra said. "We create all this toughness and that's why we made it this far. The defense, during the season I don't think we play this way a lot, so right now we're gonna play this way."
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This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Individualism prevented NC State basketball from peaking sooner
