It’s officially halfway through the college basketball season, and NC State men’s basketball is nowhere close to looking like a contender. At 9-7 with a 2-3 conference record, the red-and-white looks far from the team that won an ACC championship last season. Its most recent failure came against UNC-Chapel Hill. But if anything is clear from Saturday night’s bout, senior guard Marcus Hill is by far the Wolfpack’s best player.

Hill transferred to NC State as a highly touted scorer from Bowling Green. As the No. 1 choice on the Falcons, Hill led the Mid-American Conference in scoring with 20.5 points per game and was named to the All-MAC First Team. Recording 19 20-point games and three 30-point games, Hill proved himself as one of the best interior scoring guards in the nation and a true offensive threat.

But on the Wolfpack, Hill is no longer the No. 1 option. Instead, Head Coach Kevin Keatts seems to view senior guard Jayden Taylor as the go-to guy.

Against Texas, the Wolfpack was down by two points with 54.3 seconds left. With the time running down and the play clock nearly at zero, Taylor took a midrange jumper that bounced off the rim. Luckily for the Wolfpack, Texas missed a free throw to give it one final chance at redemption.

Keatts called a timeout to draw up a play to tie or win the game. The play in question? A Taylor isolation that resulted in a blocked layup followed by a Texas dunk that secured the game. Hill, who was 7-11 from inside the arc with 16 points, didn’t touch the ball a single time in the final 60 seconds.

Fast forward to Saturday’s match against UNC where Hill was the only NC State player to score in the first 10 minutes. Hill recorded 20 points on 10-19 shooting to go along with nine rebounds, including a career-high six offensive rebounds. He was the hardest working player on the court at all times and was playing with an unmatched confidence.

NC State found itself in a similar situation to the Texas game. Down 63-61 with just 20 seconds remaining, graduate guard Michael O’Connell called a timeout to allow Keatts to draw up the game-tying or winning play. Surely, Keatts would allow Hill to take the final shot as he was by far the most consistent scorer on the floor. But instead, the Wolfpack ran a ball screen, but the play broke down. In a last-ditch effort, O’Connell gave the ball to Taylor, who drove down the lane for the game-tying layup that was blocked in the final seconds.

Once again, the play wasn’t drawn up for the most consistent scorer. Instead, it just used him to receive the inbounds pass.

Now, all of the blame doesn’t fall on Taylor. This team was poorly built from the beginning. It was expected that the Pack would look drastically different in the offseason after losing four of its top five players, but Keatts seemingly kept the team together by both reaching into the portal and raising players off the bench.

The red-and-white lost a defensive menace and excellent rebounder in Mohamed Diarra, but senior forward Ben Middlebrooks has been a true glass cleaner and has already set a career-high in blocks through just 15 games played.

DJ Burns was simply an anomaly. We’ll probably never see a player with that combination of size, strength and footwork wear a red-and-white jersey ever again. Burns was an offensive juggernaut who made opposing teams completely alter their defensive tendencies when he was on the floor. Senior forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield was brought in from Louisville to take his place. Now, it was never expected that the big man would match what Burns did last season, but Huntley-Hatfield hasn’t been the same player that he was at Louisville and eventually lost his spot in the starting lineup to Middlebrooks.

O’Connell was a big reason for last year’s postseason success. As a reliable sixth man, he didn’t have to be a primary scorer. Sub in, help facilitate the offense, move the ball around and maybe knock down the occasional 3-pointer. But now, O’Connell seems to have lost that swagger he found last March. He’s still an excellent facilitator but doesn’t seem to have the confidence or ability to be the scorer that Keatts requires in his new offense.

But the biggest difference? No one has filled the hole DJ Horne left behind — he was a microwave scorer who could give you 25 points on any given night. Yet, through 16 games this season, not a single player has reached 25 or more in one night. The closest player? Hill.

“He’s buying in,” said Keatts after the loss against UNC. “He’s starting to understand what we’re looking for.”

If Keatts is looking for points, Hill has done nothing but provide, leading the Wolfpack in points per game with 13.3 while also averaging 3.9 rebounds and the second-most assists per game with 2.2. He’s led the team in scoring seven times, including the last three games. He’s recorded double-digits in nine straight games. Why not make him the No. 1 option?

“The biggest thing for Marcus is he thought for this team, he had to score, score, score with his ability to get paint touches,” Keatts said after NC State’s win against Rider. “He had six assists tonight. You’re always rewarded when you make the right play, and that’s where his growth is.”

There’s no argument about making the right play, but Hill does have to score for the team to succeed. In games against Power Four opponents, the Wolfpack is 0-5 when Hill scores 14 points or less. His scoring output is integral to the Wolfpack’s victories but isn’t being utilized to his full potential.

Hill is not a perfect player by any means. Though a prolific interior scorer, he isn’t consistent from beyond the arc, making just six of his 24 shots from 3-point range. He’s also not a great interior defender. But Hill has proven that he can be the top-scoring option moving forward. You can’t rave about a player and then not even put the ball in his hands with the game on the line, especially when the current system and play calling isn’t working.

Things need to change quickly for NC State to have any chance at its third straight NCAA Tournament berth, and that means leaning into Hill’s playstyle. Make him the microwave scorer that the team so desperately needs. Last year, the team saw success when it fed Horne and let him go to work. Why not do the same for Hill?