With the NC State men’s basketball team’s NCAA Tournament hopes hanging on by a thread and the Wolfpack needing a win at home against a far inferior Pittsburgh team, an unlikely hero stepped up on both offense and defense in the Pack’s 77-73 win over Pittsburgh.
Redshirt freshman center Manny Bates had by far the best game of his career, scoring 13 points on 5-for-6 shooting, corralling 10 rebounds and rejecting five shots, as the young gun was everywhere for the Wolfpack all afternoon.
Typically a below-average rebounder for a player of his height and length, Bates was a dominant force on the boards Saturday afternoon. Standing at 6-foot-11 with a wingspan that seemingly stretches from sideline to sideline, Bates was boxing out, timing his leaps perfectly and pushing people around down low, as he finally showed off the strength he has built up since his redshirt year and grabbed a career high in rebounds.
“I’m just here to do whatever coach [Keatts] wants me to do,” Bates said. “Whatever he asks me, I’m trying to do it to the best of my ability. If he says ‘rebound,’ I’m going to rebound, so I just had that mentality of getting every rebound today.”
But perhaps the biggest and most important surprise of the game was Bates’ offensive game. Connecting on 5 of 6 shots from the field and shooting 3 for 5 from the free-throw line, Bates’ 13 points were a career high and came as two of NC State’s best scorers, redshirt senior guard Markell Johnson and redshirt junior guard Devon Daniels, struggled.
“Just seeing the ball go in, it builds my confidence every time,” Bates said. “So whether it’s in a game or a practice, I’m just trying to get better at that every day … Everybody sees me as a defensive player, so for me to get a career high in points today, it’s definitely just building my confidence more for down the line.”
One of the biggest plays of the game was a finish at the rim Bates didn’t have in his bag even just a couple weeks ago. With the Wolfpack clinging to a three-point lead after mounting a fast comeback, Johnson found Bates slashing to the rim, and Bates snagged the ball, took a step and laid it in with a reverse layup to give NC State its first two-possession lead of the game.
“I love the way Manny Bates played,” said NC State head coach Kevin Keatts. “I thought his play when Markell Johnson hit him diving down the lane and he finished with his left hand was one of the biggest plays of the game … He was great.”
A Manny Bates game wouldn’t be complete without deterring a few players from entering the paint and trying to score, though. The ACC’s leader in blocks rejected five shots as he led a Wolfpack defensive effort that limited Pitt to a sub-50% shooting percentage on layups. With a matchup against Duke and its star freshman big Vernon Carey Jr. just a couple of days away, if Bates can sustain this high-level basketball, NC State is going to find itself in a position to pick up another top-10 win and secure its place as a legitimate NCAA Tournament team.
