Another Game, Same Old Story…NC State Couldn’t Shoot & Couldn’t Stop Georgia Tech, Falling 62-87

At this point, all you can do is shake your head.

The NC State Men’s Basketball team went to Atlanta today as 1.5-point underdogs. A victory against the Yellow Jackets was nearly necessary for the Wolfpack to have a chance to make the 2025 ACC Tournament. Prior to today’s game, NC State had only a 23% chance of making the tourney.

Vegas was too generous with the line. NC State was decimated 62-87 today in Atlanta.

Once again, the Wolfpack couldn’t shoot the basketball, which is par for the course this season. Georgia Tech held NC State to 37.7% shooting on the day. The Wolfpack is now shooting 42.7% on the year. To put that into perspective, that’s the second-worst single-season field goal percentage at NC State since the 2000-01 season, with two games left in the regular season. The worst shooting season in that span was in 2021-22 when the Wolfpack shot 41.3%.

In many of NC State’s losses this year, even though they shot the ball poorly and lost, they at least managed to be halfway decent at second-chance points and points off turnovers.

Today was just bad all around for the Pack in Atlanta.

Georgia Tech was +19 in second-chance points and points off turnovers.

The Wolfpack did manage to shoot four more free throws, making two more, but their free throw percentage was 5.1% lower.

Seniors Dontrez Styles and Ben Middlebrooks were the only two NC State players to score 10+ points, with both scoring 13 points. Styles was 4 of 12 from the field, and Middlebrooks was 5 of 6. Styles did make 3 of his 8 three-point attempts.

Middlebrooks shot the ball efficiently, but the other four starters (O’Connell, Taylor, Styles, and McNeil) shot a combined 28.6% from the field.

Keatts gets mad when people pick on Michael O’Connell, but he was rendered scoreless today, shooting 0-5 from the field in 28 minutes of play. NC State was -22 when he was on the court, which was the worst +/- on the team.

The Wolfpack’s head coach in his postgame press conference continues to point to a lack of NIL funding as an excuse for the state of the program. I’m not against NIL, but I’d have a hard time believing that NC State’s Basketball NIL funding ranks 16th in the ACC. If this is the roster Keatts was able to build with NIL funding after winning an ACC Title and advancing to the Final Four, that number will definitely be lower after this season’s results. Keatts made a good point after the game today, that things will be different next year, with schools being able to invest up to $20.5 million in revenue sharing. My question would be, if this is the roster that he constructed with the funds available this year, why should I be optimistic about what he can do with more money available next year, when every other school will have more money as well?