Among the many factors in N.C. State's disappointing season is one everyone knew about from the start: point guard.

The preseason rotation consisted of first-year Wolfpack players Farnold Degand, Javier Gonzalez and Marques Johnson, and nobody expected it to be a position of strength.

Then Degand went down with a season-ending knee injury, and Gonzalez and Johnson have struggled in his absence. In recent losses to two teams with outstanding point guards, Boston College (Tyrese Rice) and Virginia (Sean Singletary), the Wolfpack was absolutely annihilated at the position that sets the tempo for every game.

N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe was the Wolfpack's point guard during the program's unforgettable run to the 1983 national championship. But this year, the old point guard was caught without a reliable new point guard on hand, and he has paid the price.

How did it happen? For a variety of reasons. Among them are bad timing, bad decisions and bad luck.

When former State coach Herb Sendek left for Arizona State in the spring of 2006, the Wolfpack actually had a commitment from one of the top point guards in the high school ranks. Chris Wright, like Lowe from the Washington, D.C., area, reconsidered the Pack after Lowe was hired but signed instead with nearby Georgetown. Wright was one of the top players off the bench as a freshman for the top-15 Hoyas this season before suffering a foot injury in January.

Meanwhile, Lowe's decisions to offer scholarships to Degand, Gonzalez and Johnson have not yet paid off. By many standards, the Wolfpack's point guard production this season ranks 12th in the 12-team ACC.

Neither Degand (a transfer from Iowa State) nor Gonzalez was a highly regarded prospect coming out of high school. The Wolfpack signed Gonzalez last spring, long after the high school senior class had been picked over for the overwhelming majority of its top talent. It's not unusual that he would suffer some growing pains as a freshman in the ACC, but it's not easy to project him as an outstanding player in the long run, either.

Sendek's staff initially recruited Johnson out of high school. He was a well-regarded prospect, but many schools backed off because of Johnson's insistence that he play point guard, rather than wing guard, which many coaches saw as his natural position. Johnson signed with Tennessee but quickly fell behind other players in the Volunteers' backcourt rotation, so he looked into his transfer options. Since signing with the Wolfpack and becoming eligible in December, he has not been able to establish himself as an ACC-caliber player.

Perhaps the most painful story behind the Wolfpack's point guard problems this season is that of Chris Warren. As a high school senior last year, Warren took a recruiting trip to N.C. State in the fall and at one point hoped to sign with the Pack. A relatively unheralded player from Florida, he never received a scholarship offer from State, and he ultimately signed with Mississippi instead.

This season with the Rebels, Warren — despite a smallish (5-11, 170) frame that scared off so many recruiters — quickly has become one of the most productive freshmen in the nation. He won the starting point guard job during preseason camp and hasn't looked back.

Through Mississippi's first 26 games (18-8) this season, Warren was the team leader in scoring (15.2 points per game), assists (4.7 per game), 3-pointers (2.8 per game) and minutes (30.7 per game). He was shooting 39.5 percent from the field, 37.4 percent on 3-pointers and 72.7 percent from the foul line. He also was second on the team with 28 steals, and he had a strong (121-71) assist-turnover ratio.

Lowe isn't the first college basketball coach to make talent-evaluation mistakes, or to miss on a key recruit such as Wright, and he won't be the last.

But nobody is paying for those mistakes at point guard this season any more than the old point guard himself.