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Home / NC State Basketball / Thomas De Thaey Leaving NC State

Thomas De Thaey Leaving NC State

By on November 26, 2012
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PRESS RELEASE:
NC State sophomore forward Thomas de Thaey has decided to leave the Wolfpack basketball program head coach Mark Gottfried announced Monday.

DeThaey will return to Belgium to be with his father, who is ill, and to pursue professional basketball opportunities in his homeland.

“Thomas let our staff know Sunday that he felt it was important to return home to be with his family at this time,” Gottfried said. “I wish him the best.”

De Thaey, a 6-8 native of Dendermonde, played in 22 games as a member of the Pack with a career average of 1.7 points per game and 1.3 rebounds per contest.  In NC State’s season-opening win over Miami of Ohio, de Thaey scored a career-high 10 points.

BREAKDOWN:
There were rumors swirling that TDT was unhappy here at State and was thinking about heading home. Those rumors came to fruition today when NC State announced that he’d be heading home to Belgium and leaving the basketball team.

This hurts. Thomas was a talented player who hadn’t yet figured out ACC play, but was going to be a key reserve as the season went on. If State has one glaring weakness, it’s frontcourt depth. That weakness was just dealt another blow with this news. Now, State will need to lean on Jordan Vandenberg to handle all of the back-up center duties. Vandy has the talent and the body to be able to give good minutes for State, but he also has is still waiting for it all to come together. We’ll have more on this as the day goes by…

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  • MD

    have you watched a state basketball game in the last 3-4 years? good god, I can’t believe you claim that Vandy has any sort of talent at all. I hope you lose your job over this article. In no way will vandenberg be able to serve any purpose to this team nor has he ever

  • good2bjking

    Little harsh there, MD? State had a 7-man rotation before this news so it’s not like Vandy is going to be seeing a big uptick in minutes. We’ll be in deep doo-doo in games that Leslie and Howell get into foul trouble, which will happen several times this season.

    • BigDawg

      Although it could have been stated more elegantly, I agree with *most* of what MD has said. Vandy is just a 7 foot man, not a 7 foot athlete. I don’t know if it’s because he doesn’t practice hard or because he just isn’t cut out for bball, but he is not a super skilled player. If he would just learn to play good, solid defense maybe I could forgive him, but his mistake-benefit ratio is just too high.

  • http://twitter.com/DaveSaysSo Dave Allen

    Not surprised. I don’t believe he was going to get the minutes he thought.
    Didn’t see the floor at all against UNC-A and had barely played so far even when we were crushing PSU and UMASS. TJ will get the majority of the “Painter” minutes from last year. Vandy will be used sparingly. We just need him to defend and rebound. Plenty of scorers on this team already!

  • Dan

    If his father is that sick, then going home is the right choice. If he’s leaving because he doesn’t think he’s getting the minutes he deserves, then good f***ing riddance.

  • PackInsider

    Since we have a ton of new readers since we first started, our mission at PackInsider.com is to have a place to get informed and discuss NC State athletics in a positive fashion. Bashing players isn’t tolerated here. We’ve already had to delete way too many comments lately. If it keeps happening we’ll start blacklisting people from making comments. Sorry, it’s just the way we run things around here.

  • http://twitter.com/Wolfer96 Earl

    Well, I can’t say the news is surprising. There are only so many minutes to be shared on the front court. I’m sure that Painter and Tyler Harris saw this coming as well. No one at this level other than a walk-on wants to sit on the pine for 38 minutes a game. So I understand DeThay’s frustrations.

    I thought that Gott could have done a better job of playing DeThay and Vandy more minutes early in the season but he seemed to focus more on playing TJ. TJ is clearly the more polished scorer but not the defender that is sorely needed inside.

    Coming into this season, I was really hoping that either DeThay or Vandy could be that missing defender/banger down low. Now it will fall squarely on Vandy’s shoulders to come in off the bench to relieve CJ and Howell.

    Coach needs to think more long term and not short term results. If he does not develop Vandy now, it will be impossible once conference play begins. Let Vandy make his numerous mistakes but don’t take him out of the game. Force him to play through his mistakes until he learns his role and limitations.

    • http://www.facebook.com/bobfunck Bob Funck

      Not sure I understand your comment about “only so many minutes to be shared”…. As the PI article says, we were already too thin in the front court. TDT needed to be playing more minutes from the get-go, and the minutes were certainly available, especially when Rich and CJ get in foul trouble… now we have Vandy coming in off the bench as our only true interior backup? I smell serious trouble for this team… I see us losing a lot of games that we dominate for 30 mins, then get our guys in foul trouble… like last yr. Too bad, cuz we could have gone far this year… now I just dont see it happening.

      • http://twitter.com/Wolfer96 Earl

        What I meant was that between TJ, CJ, and Howell there were not many minutes left for anyone else. In coach Gott’s rotation anyhow. Look at the minutes that TJ has logged so far in each game. Does not leave many minutes for any other non-starters.

        I agree that DeThay and Vandy should have gotten more minutes but for whatever reason coach did not feel the same way.

        Now that Vandy is only backup left at center, he will get his minutes whether he is ready or not.

  • gopack

    does he want to leave wolfpack for that reason or there was another reason

  • Timothy

    De Thaey wasn’t really a frontcourt player to begin with so we’re not losing any true frontcourt depth. In the game against OK State, TDT stood out at the 3 point line and shot 3s, he’s not the physical down low player State needs off the bench, so I don’t think this is really a loss for the team, other then in practice.

  • peter

    Great to see the support the people give their players. vandenberg might as well read the article and not bother any more,

    then maybe MD might get a call up :)

    Good luck with that MD