NC State may have forgotten they had a basketball game today as they slept walked through the first half against Boston College and went into the break down 14.
The Wolfpack’s defense was horrendous. They allowed BC to shoot 50% from the floor and Ky Bowman and Jerome Robinson to combine for 50 points on the night. Markell Johnson allowed a ton of blow-bys, Omer Yurtseven was too slow to help and the entire defense just broke down.
Offensively in the first half, State was bad. The ball movement was slow, no one was attacking, and State couldn’t hit even when they got good looks. It didn’t help that Torin Dorn got his second foul with just 4 minutes on the clock and didn’t check back in until the 2nd half.
State did finally wake up and shot an amazing 70% from the field in the second half, but the defense never improved. They traded buckets back and forth until the Pack found their rhythm and reeled off a big run. Markell (10 pts, 6 assists) hit a few jumpers and laid down a devastating poster dunk that got the team going. Sam Hunt (13 pts) also hit a few big 3s and Yurt (20pts) finally got things going. But it was Al Freeman (21 pts) who hit shot after shot to keep this team within striking distance. None of that was enough. State just couldn’t get the stops they needed.
Honestly, I thought Keatts kind of strayed a bit from the coaching style we’ve seen all season long. When Dorn picked up 2 fouls he decided to go conservative and sit down for the entirety of the 1st half. I know he was trying to keep him from getting his 3rd, and it might have been ok if he was getting decent minutes from his bench, but he wasn’t. We try not to nit-pick and call out guys for bad individual performances, but today we must. Malik Abu really hurt this team today. They needed their senior to come in and give good minutes with Dorn on the bench. That didn’t happen. Abu again settled for long jumpers, missed free throws, mishandled rebounds, was out of position defensively and drew 3 fouls. All in 8 minutes of play. 1-4, 2 points, no rebound, no assists, 3 fouls and 2 turnovers in 8 minutes.
NC State was just outplayed today. They didn’t show up until it was too late. They were beat on the boards 39-31. They turned it over 12 times and only forced 10. They allowed BC 13 offensive boards to their 8. They let Ky Bowman and Jerome Robinson eat them alive. They did literally everything that they had to NOT do in order to win.
So that’s it for the ACC Tournament. NC State will have to wait until Sunday when the NCAA Tournament committee reveals their field of 64 to see if there will be anymore basketball to be played this year. We’re pretty positive that NC State will be in, but the seed won’t be pretty.
This just wasn’t the showing Pack fans expected from this team on this stage. Hopefully, it’s just a hard lesson that they needed to learn heading into the tournament that really maters.