Don’t say that you were surprised when NC State fell to Boston College immediately after their huge road win at UNC. If you were then you had disregarded the fact that they’ve lost the previous 9 games following a win over UNC. To be honest, we though we could disregard those stats.

See, we thought this team had turned the corner. We thought the defense had finally bought in. We thought we could finally trust this Wolfpack team. I guess we were wrong. Gottfried’s group came out and laid a massive egg. The defense was slow, lazy and not focused. The offense was sloppy, disjointed and not focused. There was a lack of leadership on that court this past Saturday and that is the most disturbing part of it all.

Tonight they look to change their course once again as they travel to Clemson to take on the Tigers. It was only a little over a month ago that the Wolfpack allowed Clemson to walk into their house and beat them like a drum 68-57. With a lot more on the line tonight, let’s hope the Pack can take care of these 3 keys to the game…

Stop the Guards
In their last meeting Jordan Roper and Rod Hall ate NC state alive. They hit 5-8 3pointers on their way to a combined 29 points. This time out the Pack will need to make sure this doesn’t happen. Lacey and Berber will be tasked in stopping this. But what should we expect? Who knows. Before the BC loss, in NC State’s previous three games they only allowed an average of 55ppg. Against Boston College (the last place team in the the ACC) they allowed 43 in the first half and 79 for the game. Unacceptable and downright embarrassing. They’ll need a little more ‘want to’ against Clemson.

Get Better Shots
If you remember correctly, the last time these teams met Malik Abu was on fire. He was scoring at will early on and went for 15 points and 12 boards. The problem was that he had no help. State shot an abysmal29% from the floor against Clemson, mostly because they were taking ill advised jumpers most of the night. Caleb Martin was 1-6. Barber was 1-6. Dez Lee was 0-4. Kyle Washington was 1-6. The only people that shot decent were Lacey, Turner and Abu, who all combined to go 15-35 (still not setting the world on fire, but passable.) With State really needing a win, they are going to need to be smarter on offense. Barber will be huge in this one. His ability to break down the Clemson defense and help State get easy buckets will be the difference in the game.

Lacey has been off and State desperately needs him to  turn it around. Over the past 2 games Lacey is 8-26. A number of those misses have actually been bad misses and even a few airballs. If the Pack wants to make a late season run they’re going to need Lacey to get hot and start scoring at a better clip. He’ll have an opportunity to shoot over top and get back in his comfort zone against a smaller defender in Jordan Roper (at 6’0). If Lacey struggles, so will State.

Run Your Offense
There are times (a lot of them) when this team’s brains just goes MIA. I know Gottfried preaches attacking and gives his guys a green light, but there has to be some sort of boundaries. State goes on huge stretches where they take awful shots, long 2’s with no rebounder in place and really get themselves into a hole. After a few possession of misses it’s like no one wants to shoot the ball and State goes into passive mode. This is when teams make giant runs against the Pack. This team needs to learn to get to the line a lot better. Outside of Dez Lee this team doesn’t have a run stopper. A guy that barrels his way to the hoop with his main intention being to get to the foul line. He encourages contact and invites the challenge at the rim, but he understands how to use his body. Barber doesn’t absorb contact well, Lacey doesn’t sell fould on his drive well enough and Raston, well, he usually tries to get contact, but his lack of balance in the paint never gets him the calls. This team needs to figure out other ways to score when shots aren’t falling. Gottfried has a very good, very effective offense, but State rarely takes the time to run the back cuts or the high lows that he has in place. Instead they constantly run corner’s for Turner to get open 3s and if that’s not open it’s one on one time for the guards. That type of play isn’t going to get your far in March and NC State is running out of time to change.