RALEIGH — Fortunately, N.C. State freshman guard Scooter Sherrill plays hoops a bit better than his coach, Herb Sendek, dances.

Sherrill’s much-anticipated Wolfpack debut Saturday in the annual Red-White intrasquad game and some fancy stepping — well, sort of — by Sendek, were the highlights of an emotional day on which the Pack retired the number of 7-foot-4 Tom Burleson, the N.C. mountain boy, who teamed with Shelby’s David Thompson to lift the Wolfpack to the 1974 national title.

The appearance in the new Entertainment and Sports Arena by Burleson, Thompson and all the other Pack players whose jerseys have been retired over the decades— or their surviving family members — made for some memorable moments.

“Anytime you can link past greatness with the present, it’s special,” said Sendek.

Sendek’s dance routine, in which he joined with popular ESA half-time regulars, Mean Gene and Slappy, for some impromptu on-court entertainment, was not so special. Sendek managed to show less rhythm than the average goal post.

“On a scale of 1 to 10?” asked a giggling Sherrill? “I’d have to give Coach about a negative 10 on his dancing ability.”

But Wolfpack fans gave Sherrill about an 8 for his first public effort in a Pack uniform. That effort included 10 points, with a couple of 3-pointers. Sherrill shot a conservative 4-for-6 on a day when some of his older teammates bombed away without conscience. He added two rebounds and two assists.

Most of the time, though, Sherrill just got out of the way of Red teammate Kenny Inge, a powerful senior who scored 26 points and yanked down 11 boards. The White team, which was supposed to be trying to stop Inge, pretty much got out of his way as well. The big guy powered Red to a 70-59 victory.

“Kenny’s about to make some big money (in the pros),” said Sherrill, who revealed that he couldn’t believe how good Inge was when he started playing with and against him regularly this summer. “He’s the man. We’re gonna jump on his back and ride him this season.”

Sherrill was supposed to be on the White squad opposite Inge until Friday. That’s when 6-5 freshman walk-on Will Roach was injured. Roach’s injury left Red with only two forwards — Inge and freshman Michael Bell — and prompted Sendek to “trade” Sherrill to the Red team for fellow freshman Trey Guidry. Sendek’s thinking was that the 6-3 Sherrill was better suited to play some small forward than the 6-2 Guidry.

The late swap cost Sherrill a starting role. Instead of joining Clifford Crawford in the white backcourt, he was watching veterans Archie Miller and Anthony Grundy when the action — two wild 15-minute segments — got under way.

Cries of “Where’s Scooter?” went up almost immediately from the red seats.

But soon Pack fans got their wish. Sherrill quickly replaced Bell at forward, which meant he was matched up with sophomore muscleman Damien Wilkins, who has roughly 40 pounds and four inches on Sherrill.

“He’s a big man,” said Sherrill. “The biggest I’ve guarded. But I wasn’t backing down any.”

Sherrill’s first official shot in a Pack uniform was a 3 from the left corner. He squared up and swished it, just as he did a few hundred times at West Rowan High, sending a near-capacity crowd into a frenzy. There would not have been a bigger cheer if Wolfpack quarterback Philip Rivers, the other famous yearling on the State campus, had suddenly strolled into the ESA.

Sherrill’s second shot — another 3 — found the bottom of the net cleanly two minutes after the first.

The Triangle papers have apparently contained a few stories recently that have expressed the idea that Sherrill can’t shoot, but his stroke seems to have recovered nicely from a prolonged slump on last summer’s All-Star circuit.

“I didn’t have much time to shoot last summer,” explained Sherrill. “But now I’m working on it a couple of hours a day. It’s feeling good.”

Sherrill said the quick 3s were big for his confidence and helped gain the confidence of his new fans.

“Oh yeah, they were real big,” he said. “Because I was real nervous coming out of that tunnel — when I heard that wolf howling.”

Sherrill wasn’t kidding about the nerves.

The Wolfpack players were introduced individually prior to the game, with each having the ESA floor to himself for roughly 15 seconds. Bell made the most of his time in the spotlight, performing a Mary Lou Retton-like somersault as he made his way on to the floor. Another freshman, Marcus Melvin, literally boogied his way from the tunnel to midcourt.

“I’d planned all day to do something like they did,” Sherrill said. “But when the time came, I was just too nervous.”

Sherrill settled for bounding onto the floor with arms upraised in an impression of an official signalling a 3-point shot. Then he punched the air a few times and jumped around like he was on a pogo stick.

It wasn’t a somersault, but, hey, the crowd loved it.

“I just wanted to show them how excited I was,” said Sherrill.

Sherrill played it cool in the second half. His third and fourth 3-point tries on the day rimmed out, but were right on target. He nailed a fadeaway jumper for his seventh and eighth points, then took a long pass and gathered it in for a layup over walk-on Brian Keeter for his final scoring contribution.

“That’s what I like —the uptempo game,” Sherrill told reporters. “That’s what we did in high school and that’s why I came here.”

Defensively, Sherrill did a solid job — even against Wilkins. But he did make two mistakes on the day.

The first was when he strolled over to press row during warm-ups to sign an autograph for a young admirer. He wound up having to sign a hundred. The second was when soph Crawford faked Sherrill into the air and then blew by him for a rousing dunk.

Crawford may be Sherrill’s biggest roadblock to immediate playing time, but Sherrill says he and the former Winston-Salem Parkland star, whose team beat Sherrill’s in the 3A state championship game in 1999, are great friends.

“Crawford makes sure he shows me his championship ring at least once a day,” said Sherrill, who is sporting a shorter haircut than Rowan fans used to see. “But he’s still my boy. We’ve been friends since we matched up in the finals.”

Sherrill’s parents made the trip to see him, as did well-wishers like Pat Maddox, the mother of Florida State gridder Nick Maddox, who used to be Sherrill’s AAU basketball teammate. And Sherrill even got to meet the legendary Thompson, who occupied a prime seat under a basket.

Sherrill reports that school is going as well as hoops.

“We’ve got study hall every day and that helps,” he said. “But the academics are really a whole lot easier than I thought they’d be. It’s almost fun. Right now, things are about as good as they could possibly be.”

Now if only Sendek could learn to dance.