CHAPEL-HILL – Last Saturday against Virginia Tech, the NC State men’s basketball team forgot to bring its offense in an abysmal 47-24 loss in PNC Arena. Tuesday night in the Dean Smith Center, the Wolfpack forgot to bring its defense.
UNC-Chapel Hill (18-4, 8-1 ACC) had its way with a porous Wolfpack (16-7, 4-6 ACC) defense, as the Tar Heels wrapped up a season sweep over NC State with a 113-96 win at home. Carolina completely outclassed the Wolfpack in every facet of the game, particularly imposing itself on the glass and outrebounding the Pack 41-27.
Now NC State sits in a tough place just over midway through its ACC schedule. The Pack is two games under .500 in conference play, and lacks a signature conference win to help boost its NCAA Tournament resume following a three-game stretch against top-15 teams.
“If you look back at our schedule, we probably just played the toughest part of our schedule,” head coach Kevin Keatts said. “That’s a tough schedule for anybody. We just now obviously have to lock in and get better and improve on some things that we’ve got to work on.”
Sure, the Wolfpack beat No. 7 Auburn at home in December, but the Tigers have fallen off since then and are no longer even ranked in the AP Top 25. According to the KenPom rankings, Auburn, ranked 14th, is NC State’s best win by a big margin, ahead of Clemson who checks in at No. 45.
Including those two wins, NC State has just six wins over teams currently in the top 100 of the KenPom rankings, and only Clemson and Auburn reside in the top 50. The Pack did have a close loss to this very talented Heels team in January, and took KenPom’s top team, Virginia, into overtime, but close losses don’t get you into the NCAA Tournament.
“We’ve just got to bounce back,” sophomore guard Braxton Beverly said. “It’s not the end of the season. We live to see another day. We’re still in the races for the ACC Tournament, national championships. We’ve got to keep getting better and keep going with it.”
The final eight games of ACC play are much kinder to the Pack than the first 10, as NC State only has two games left against teams currently ranked in the AP Top 25.
The good news there for the Wolfpack is that reaching .500 in the ACC is certainly an attainable goal, and that usually means an NCAA berth. The bad news for the Pack is that it doesn’t yet have that big ACC win, with most of its resume-building opportunities in the rearview mirror.
The Wolfpack can still make the NCAA Tournament, but not with the duds its had the last two times out. At this point last season, the Pack was 6-4 in ACC play with wins over No. 2 Duke, No. 19 Clemson and No. 10 UNC.
Now, NC State sits at 4-6 in conference and all of its wins are against teams in the bottom half of the league. The Pack just played the hardest three-game stretch of its season against Virginia, Virginia Tech and the Heels, and came up completely empty, with only one of the games being even slightly competitive.
Keatts, however, isn’t letting the slower start to conference play get the team down.
“We talked about the first nine (games),” Keatts said. “If you look at last year, we’re one game behind where we were in the first nine. Last year at this point, before this game, we were 5-4. We’re 4-5 now. We still feel confident in that group, and that locker room feels confident that we still have enough games in the ACC to put ourselves in a good spot. We’re playing for the next eight. We’ll take them one at a time.”
The Wolfpack has to get better if it wants to make the big dance again, and it has to get better now. With eight ACC games left, and five of those against teams in the bottom half of the league standings, the Pack doesn’t have much room for letdowns.
“We’re a good enough offensive team that we can win some games,” Keatts said. “Now we’ve got to clean it up and do the intangibles.”
