Junior guard Gavin Grant followed up his 26-point performance against Northern State with 24 points Tuesday night as the men’s basketball team finished its exhibition season with an 87-76 win over St. Augustine at the RBC Center.

Grant, who played the point and ran the offense in the second half, scored 18 of his 24 points in the first half with senior guard Engin Atsur at the helm. Atsur, who didn’t play in the first exhibition game because of a sore Achilles tendon, played the entire first half.

Sophomore guard Courtney Fells said having Atsur in the game settled down the offense.

“Unfortunately, he’s kind of sore with his injury,” Fells said. “But playing with Engin is great. He’s a composed player. And he knows when situations are getting out of hand, and he’ll pull it out. The offense seems so much calmer.”

With Atsur at point guard, N.C. State only turned the ball over four times compared to eight in the second half. And the Wolfpack’s total of 12 was eight less than in the Northern State game.

“[Atsur’s] such a veteran, and he’s under control,” first-year coach Sidney Lowe said. “And you can just tell a difference in our offense when he’s running our show.”

But with Grant primarily running the offense, State scored 53 points in the second half as opposed to the 34 the Pack put up with Atsur in the game. Lowe said the offense changes to fit the type of player at point guard.

“They’re different style players,” Lowe said. “Engin is going to run the show and get everyone involved. And Gavin can do that, but Gavin’s looking to attack more. And we run plays for Gavin, also, when he’s at the point guard position because he has a height advantage at times against guys.”

Regarding Atsur’s health after the game, Lowe said “he felt fine,” but lacked in his conditioning.

“That was his first real action in a while,” the coach said. “He hasn’t been practicing that often. He practiced a little [Monday], but this was the first time he really got out there and got after it. He got a little winded out there — a little tired.”

Lowe added Atsur is not ready physically to play an entire game, and he said he expects to use him in a limited role for now.

“We’ll have to be careful with him. I don’t want to wear him down,” Lowe said. “We have some guys who have been working in that position that we feel we can put in there for a few minutes and give Engin a blow. It’s going to be important to us that we have him in crunch time situations, but he can’t play 40 minutes.”

In the halfcourt offense, State was more comfortable than it was in its first time out in a new system against Northern State, according to sophomore forward Ben McCauley. He said Lowe stressed the importance of patience after the team’s first exhibition game.

“We controlled the ball a little better,” McCauley said. “They were pressuring us like heck tonight, so we really had to be cautious of who were passing it to and how many times we would pass it before we got an open shot.”

Grant said he also saw improvement in the team’s play.

“I thought it was a lot better than the first time,” he said. “We were able to get a lot more open shots — guys made the extra pass. The guys weren’t in a rush. Today they just let the game come to them.”

One difference between Friday’s game and this one was the offensive play of Fells. Against Northern State, he was 1-for-10 from the field and 0-for-7 from the three-point line. But against the Mighty Falcons, Fells made 7-of-9 field goals and was 3-for-5 from behind the arc.

“The offense was running perfectly fine the first night. I just wasn’t able to knock down the shot because I was thinking about it all the time,” Fells said. “But tonight I just said, ‘It’s just a jump shot, and you know what to do. Just knock down the shot.’ And I was able to do that for us.”

From here State opens its regular season at home against Wofford on Friday.

McCauley, who scored 18 points in 33 minutes versus St. Augustine’s, said the team has improved during the exhibition games but still has a lot to overcome as the season starts.

“Obviously, there’s still a few things we have to work on,” he said. “I mean we’re still young — that hasn’t changed.”

And Lowe, who last participated in a game that counted for the Pack in 1983 when he helped the team to a national championship, said he is prepared for his first season after the team’s two exhibition games.

“It doesn’t matter if you play two, three, four or five [games],” he said. “It’s just time. It’s real now. I’m ready to go.”