The difference was like night and day.
In Thursday’s first round game of the ACC tournament in Greensboro Coliseum, N.C. State shot 24 percent in the first half and trailed by a point going into halftime.
The second half though proved to be all the difference as the Wolfpack outscored Clemson 44-29 en route to a 67-53 victory.
“Well, I tried to tell my team we had them right where we wanted them at halftime,” Clemson coach Cristy McKinney said.
In the first half, State hit just seven field goals, shot 1-7 from three-point range, and a meager 57 percent from the free-throw line.
However, a change in second-half strategy helped to bring about a change in the outcome as the Wolfpack hit 15 field goals and shot a blistering 60 percent after the break.
“Coach Yow always wants us to be aggressive on offense and penetrate and attack Clemson just like they did to us in the first half,” Marquetta Dickens said. “I think it really benefited us in the second half, I think that’s why we scored a lot more than we did in the first half.”
The aggressive play led to eleven second-half Clemson fouls, which put State in the bonus and on the free-throw line with nine minutes still left on the clock.
State, on the other hand, limited Clemson to 20 less free throw attempts in the game, which all came in the second half.
“The difference was as a team, we picked up our intensity. Our defensive level rose as coach wanted it to,” Ashley Key said.
While State did give up five more points to Clemson in the second half, it managed to eliminate the Tiger runs, which put them in a position to hold the lead for most of the second half until the margin became too great to overcome.
“We struggled all year to play for 40 minutes,” McKinney said. “If you look at our last several games, we’ll be in it at halftime, do a pretty good job and then we give up 45-50 points in the second half of every game.”
Clemson started the contest up 6-0, and later strung together a 10-0 run in the first half. The second half though, State turned the tides on the Tigers, and put together an 11-2 run in the first four minutes of the second half. Six minutes later, a 19-5 run made the lead all but insurmountable and killed the Tigers’ hopes.
“Second half, we really turned it around,” coach Kay Yow said. “The players did a great job on both ends. They really executed so much better in the second half and got to the spots on the floor that we needed to get to-to be at our best in scoring.”
According to Yow, the first game in the ACC tournament is usually the toughest one to play.
“We seemed a little tight,” Yow said. “Not quite ourselves that first half, and I thought we loosened up some and really got the ball moving on offense much better and still continued to play really good defense.”
