Halfway through its ACC opener against visiting Pittsburgh on Saturday afternoon, the N.C. State men’s basketball team led by 34-26, and it looked like 2014 couldn’t have gotten off to a better start for the Wolfpack.
Unfortunately for State, college basketball games are 40 minutes long, and the second half proved to be disasterous for third-year head coach Mark Gottfried’s bunch. The Pack allowed the Panthers to shoot 63 percent from the field in the second half while shooting just 29.6 percent itself in a 74-62 loss.
On Tuesday, the road gets no easier for the Wolfpack as it hits the road to take on ACC newcomer Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish entered the conference with a bang on Saturday, defeating No. 16 Duke in South Bend, Ind.
That is just the tip of the iceberg for the Pack. Next Saturday, the Pack welcomes to PNC Arena the Virginia Cavaliers, who went on the road and shut down Florida State 62-50 on Saturday in a game that was more one-sided than the final score suggests. A week later, State travels to Cameron Indoor Stadium to meet Duke.
Even Wake Forest, which the Pack visits in between UVa and Duke on Jan. 15, looks formidable after knocking off UNC-Chapel Hill on Sunday evening. Basically, State couldn’t have asked for a tougher stretch to start conference play.
Freshman point guard Anthony “Cat” Barber struggled in the loss to Pitt, going just 2-for-10 from the field and finishing with nine points, seven assists and four turnovers.
Sophomore Tyler Lewis, hailed last season as State’s point guard of the future, played a season-low five minutes on Saturday and didn’t score. There was even a brief spell in Saturday’s game against Pittsburgh when Gottfried chose to put junior guard Desmond Lee in at point guard, instead of Lewis.
Barber is a better player than Lewis, and he has established that this season. But conventional wisdom says that when a player is struggling, you take them out. Gottfried has done well in his two-plus years in Raleigh, but it’s still puzzling as to why he doesn’t use his depth to his advantage. He might be wise to keep Lewis in the rotation, in case Barber goes down with an injury or gets into foul trouble.
Turning attention to Tuesday’s game, the Pack will need all hands on deck if it wants to sneak out of South Bend with a victory. The Irish lost senior guard and leading scorer Jerian Grant for the season due to an undisclosed academic issue in December, but it didn’t seem to affect them against the Blue Devils, as Notre Dame shot 52.6 percent from the field. Senior center Garrick Sherman leads the Irish in both scoring and rebounding, averaging 14.4 points and 7.6 caroms per game. He will be a load for the Wolfpack interior to contend with.
State’s sophomore forward T.J. Warren continued his stellar play against Pitt, scoring 23 points and grabbing eight rebounds. Both figures are right around his season average, and he leads the Pack in both categories. Barber is State’s next-leading scorer with 12 points per game, and he also averages 4.7 assists.
It’s all but a given that Warren will continue to score a lot. He is this team’s undisputed leader. But the Pack has the most success when other players step up. For example, in a road win at Tennessee on Dec. 30, Barber scored 12 points and junior swingman Desmond Lee added 10. In a home win over Northwestern on Dec. 4, both senior center Jordan Vandenberg and freshman forward Lennard Freeman scored in double figures.
Who is going to step up today? That, Wolfpack Nation, is the million-dollar question.
