MAUI OUCHIE: What went wrong in NC State’s 85-74 loss to Seton Hall?

Well, that wasn’t exactly what we were expecting NC State’s national coming out party to look like.

The Pack was simply outplayed by a scrappy Seton Hall team that, let’s be honest here, wanted it more.

NC State was outrebounded 37-30, turned it over 13 times and was held to 42% from the floor and 33% from 3. Seton Hall turned it over 14 times, but shot 52% from the floor and 32% from 3 point range.

Honestly, to me, the story of this game was NC State’s defense. It was bad.

State was getting beat off the bounce all night.
The small, lightning quick guards of Seton Hall were dicing up State’s bigger, longer guards. If the bigs helped, it was a dump off for a bucket. If they didn’t it was floater in the lane. Quadir Copeland , Tre Holloman and Paul McNeil Jr were reaching, gambling and just contantly out of position, instead of locking in, getting low and using their length to their advantage.

Inside, NC State was punished, not so much by bigger bodies, but by a group of gritty guards who were quicker to the ball than NC State. Their starting guards had 25 rebounds combined…I mean, hell, Adam Clark a 5’10 junior had 4 of those rebounds.

There really isn’t an excuse to for this. They wanted it more. They were hungry for an upset and NC State just seemed lackidasical and not really up to scrap. Hate to say the word, but yeah, they were playing soft.

All of that said, I think you had a combination a being jet lagged and yes, being a little overconfident, which really put a microscope on some of the personnel problems that NC State is likely going to face. Which brings us to…

This team needs to figure out how to play together and start to find their identity 
You have two undersized bigs in Lubin and Williams, both back-to-the-basket type guys. Both guys can go and get you a bucket, but when you have both on the floor, the lane gets pretty clogged up. And when the lane gets clogged up,  you neutralize a lot of Quadir Copeland and Tre Holloman’s value (which is getting in the lane and creating). So NC State seems at a crossroads.

We saw it a lot tonight, the guards trying to create in a ton of traffic, which was leading to turnovers and contested shots.

It seems as if the Pack needs to find ways to spread the floor a little more when they are going to use Q and Tre to create, but I’m not sure what that looks like. Using Jerry Deng and Darrion Williams as your 4/5? I don’t know, Deng was non-existent on the boards with 0 rebounds in 8 minutes, and Williams hasn’t exactly been a rebound eater himself.

If you can’t do that, then you do have two quality back-to-the-basket bigs who you could pair with shooters (Holloman, Able, McNeil) and play inside out (especially with Williams), but that’s really not Wade’s style. However, it wasn’t Keatts’ style either, and he realized his best chance of winning was playing inside out with DJ Burns.

Not all shots are good shots
I won’t pretend to know what Will Wade and his staff categorize as a good shot, but the Paul McNeil Jr and Jerry Deng green lights might need to be checked. It’s awesome to have elite tall shooters, but these guys are firing up 3s with hands in their face. Call me old school, but I haven’t seen many great teams out there who take shots like that without penalty. Work the ball around, make the defense move and eventually you’ll get that same look without a hand in your face. I hope we start to see just a little more patience, a little more trust in their teammates, and a little more basketball IQ in terms of shot selection. I think NC State made it easy for Seton Hall. They were a great defensive team, they worked hard, but NC State bailed them out by settling for shots they wanted us to take.

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Look, this is the first loss. Seton Hall is going to be a good team. This is a staff that is going to examine this loss and come up with some answers. But there were clearly some issues exposed tonight that NC State is going to need to figure out…and fast. They play again tomorrow at 2:30 PM against a team equal to or better than what they just saw today.