Sophomore NC State Forward Jericole Hellems took a scary fall yesterday with 28 seconds left in the Wolfpack’s game in Wake Forest, eventually being taken off the court in a stretcher, transported to the hospital to check on injuries to his head and lower back.

Wolfpack nation received good news today.

Hellems has been released from the hospital in Winston-Salem, and has returned to Raleigh in “good spirits.”

I appreciate All the love WPN has showed me. I will be okay the Lord has me and I know I’m blessed. Thank you again to all that reached out. ❤️🐺

— Jcole.4 (@JericoleHellems) December 8, 2019

Jericole Hellems Update:

Jericole has been released from the hospital and has returned to Raleigh. He is in good spirits and will follow up with NC State physicians over the next several days. Coach Keatts will update Jericole’s status later this week.

— NC State Men's Bball (@PackMensBball) December 8, 2019

While these two updates don’t explain the seriousness of Hellems injuries, it does reveal that he is doing okay.

Some things are much bigger than basketball.

Pray for Jericole.

Photo Credit

NC State’s Men’s Basketball team beat Wake forest 91-82 on the road yesterday, improving to 7-2 on the year, and picking up their first ACC win of the 209-20 season.

Even though NC State didn’t pick up any votes in the AP or Coaches Poll this week, after the victory over the Demon Deacons, the Wolfpack is ranked 24th in ESPN’s BPI rankings, which is 5th best in the ACC.

It’s worth noting that archival UNC is sitting in 39th, which is their lowest ranking since 2014.

According to ESPN’s BPI ranking, the Wolfpack’s offense ranks 7th nationally, and their defense ranks 85th.

As of right now, the BPI picks NC State to finish with 20 wins, and the 4th most ACC wins.

Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media in his post game press conference after NC State’s 91-82 victory over Wake Forest today. You can watch it here, or check out the bulleted breakdown below.

• Our guys did a tremendous job of coming in here on the road and getting a good road win.
• We played really good basketball the last 4 halves…dating back to the second half of the Memphis game and then the entire Wisconsin game.
• Six guys in double digit figures…shows you how balanced we are.
• Manny Bates was tremendous.
  • 8 points and blocked a lot of shots.
• Happy with what we have with our rotation.
  • Everybody that’s playing in the game is contributing.
• We’re going to get our first ice cream of the year (Road Win). So, I’m excited about that.

On historically struggling to win at Wake Forest…

• We’ve had some success in here. My last 2 out of 3 years, we’ve been able to win.
• It’s a tough place to play.
• Had a chance last year, but we were without Markell Johnson.

Success from 3…

• We shot the ball well from 3.
  • 12 for 22.
• Was a little mad because I thought we passed up on some shots that we could have made.
  • Jericole had a 3 in the corner that I thought he should have taken.
  • Same thing with C.J. Bryce.
• We’ve been putting a lot of work on making shots.
• We expected when we came into this game that we could see a mixture of man-to-man and that 3-2 matchup, so we spent a lot of time the last few days on making shots from behind the arc.

Jericole Hellems…

• If you guys would do me a favor and obviously keep Jericole Hellems and his family in your prayers, it would mean a lot to us.
• I didn’t see what happened.
• I was able to talk to him, and I told him to hang in there. He was talking. He was communicating with those guys. After I leave you guys, I’m going to go by and check on him.
• It was hard for me the last 28 seconds of the game, because it was hard for me to focus on the game knowing that we had one of our kids hurt.

Where they are at now…

• I love the way we’re playing.
• With this team, it has been a little bit slow developing roles.
• They’re starting to understand their roles and how to play.

NC State had 6 players score in double figures this afternoon in a 91-82 victory over Wake Forest. The Box Score is below.