Alex Zachman
Graduate student guard Allerick Freeman makes a push for the basket in the second half of the 81-76 loss against UNC Greensboro at PNC Arena on Saturday.
Despite an abysmal second half, the NC State men’s basketball team had a chance to tie the game with a minute left in a tight loss to UNC-Greensboro at PNC Arena Saturday. However, graduate guard Allerik Freeman turned the ball over, and the Wolfpack fell 81-76 for its first home loss of the year.
Al Freeman led NC State (8-3) with 17 points despite shooting just 4 of 13 from the field, joined in double figures by senior forward Lennard Freeman (16 points, 6-of-6 shooting) and freshman guard Braxton Beverly (16 points), who got the start at point guard with sophomore Markell Johnson suspended indefinitely for a violation of the student code of conduct.
The strong defense that has been a hallmark of head coach Kevin Keatts’ early tenure was nowhere to be found against UNC-G (8-3). The Spartans lit the Pack up from beyond the arc, shooting 50 percent on the day, and NC State was only able to force 13 turnovers.
“As a coach, I’m very disappointed today for a couple of reasons,” Keatts said. “I think it was our first time in our 11th game that I think we didn’t do a great job following the scout report. … Obviously on the defensive end, knowing we had to do a great job taking their threes away and we did a poor job. We gave up 12 3-pointers in the game. Also, they’re one of the best offensive rebound teams in the country, getting 31 percent of their misses back, and we didn’t do so well in that area, giving up 10 offensive rebounds. I’m disappointed; we’ve got to get better.”
The Pack started the first half well, pulling away after the first few minutes and maintaining a double-digit lead. However, back-to-back threes for the Spartans cut NC State’s lead to 33-28 with 6:34 to play in the opening half.
UNC-G’s momentum continued from there, as the Spartans ended up ripping off a 13-1 run to take the lead, as the Pack struggled to contain UNC-G’s shooters and could not get anything going on the offensive end. The Pack rebounded to take a 40-38 lead to the half, with Al Freeman getting a shot to fall at the buzzer.
“For the first half, we went out there and we were listening to the scout,” senior forward Abdul-Malik Abu said. “The coaches put out a good game plan for us and we knew the things that could hurt us out there. The let up is just disappointing for all of us, because we feel like this is a game we should have put away in the first half but here we are.”
UNC-G came out ready to go in the second half, ripping off an astounding 18-2 run over the first six minutes and change to take a 56-42 lead. The Pack was listless over this stretch, getting absolutely nothing to fall at the offensive end and letting the Spartans impose their will against NC State’s defense.
“We did everything right for 16 minutes of the first half,” Keatts said. “The last, I would say, four or five minutes, we had some breakdowns. In the second half it was more of the same. We’ve got to do a better job coming out of the locker room. We’ve been a team that has been able to make some great adjustments at halftime and it’s worked, but for whatever reason we didn’t have it today.”
Beverly cut the deficit to seven with a 3-pointer with 2:55 to play, and within six with another 3-pointer with 20 seconds left. UNC-G then turned it over and fouled Al Freeman from behind the line with 10.2 to go, and he made all three to make it a three-point game.
The Pack then had a chance to tie it after the Spartans missed consecutive free throws, but Al Freeman’s turnover with one second left forced the Pack to foul and effectively ended the game. The team, however, knows a game is more than one play and it needs to put itself in a better spot going forward.
“We could have put our heads down when we were down double digits in the second half,” Abu said. “We kept crawling inch by inch. He had the ball down three. It’s a game of possessions; it can go either way. We just felt that we could have put ourselves in a better position than to let it be one possession.”
The Wolfpack will look to bounce back with a home game against Robert Morris Tuesday at 7 p.m.