N.C. State has had a strong first six weeks of the season under coach Mark Gottfried, but both will face a dramatic change tonight. Gottfried will coach his first ACC game at 6 p.m. when Maryland visits the RBC Center in Raleigh.
With no nonconference games left, the next two months will determine if Gottfried can guide N.C. State to its first NCAA tournament berth since 2006.
"It's a process; it's gradual," Gottfried said of developing a team through a season. "You want to be playing your best basketball in February. We have gotten better in some areas."
Gottfried has prepared the Wolfpack (11-4) for conference play with games against Texas, Syracuse, Indiana and Stanford.
"We seem to be guarding better right now," he said. "We're a little bit better offensively and we're sharing the ball really well, but I still think there are a lot of things that we can do better."
The Terrapins (10-3) have a seven-game winning streak under Mark Turgeon, a first-year coach who also will be coaching his first ACC game.
N.C. State has shown steady improvement under Gottfried. C.J. Leslie is averaging 13 points; the Wolfpack's other four starters are averaging 12 points each. Forward Richard Howell is rebounding with authority in traffic, and guard Scott Wood is hitting 3-point shots regularly.
Still, Gottfried has dealt with growing pains in the season's first 15 games.
"We need to pay better attention to detail and how we want to defend," he said. "You go through a scouting report and sometimes you scratch your head wondering if anybody was listening to you."
The Terps are a much different team now than they were three weeks ago — and certainly much different than they were at the start of the season, when injuries and other problems limited Turgeon to only seven recruited players.
Sophomore point guard Pe'Shon Howard is back after missing the first nine games because of a broken bone in his foot, and Alex Len, a 7-foot-1 freshman center from Ukraine, regained his eligibility after serving a 10-game suspension for a violation of NCAA rules.
Len is shooting 78.9 percent (15 of 19) from the field and is averaging 14 points and eight rebounds in three games. Howard has handed out 18 assists in four games and is averaging 4.5 rebounds. Before the return of Len and Howard, Turgeon sometimes had to play as many as three walk-ons.
Turgeon said that if an upside exists to the tough first five weeks of the season, it is that players who normally would have sat on the bench got valuable playing experience.
"We're starting to look like a team," Turgeon said. "We're starting to run more. We weren't running — just because of the lack of depth. We're getting up and down the floor a little bit.
"We're still trying to change practice habits. We've got a young team and it's a process of getting them to understand what it takes to win at this level and be successful. We're trying to get better in all phases of the game."
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