N.C. State’s break from the conference grind against Seton Hall, the tenth place team in the Big East, proved to be anything but a pleasant retreat from the toils of the ACC as it fell 83-65 at the RBC Center Wednesday night.
The No. 15 Wolfpack’s out-of-conference defeat was the first loss to an unranked team and the first home loss of the season. State (15-4, 4-2 ACC) followed up the past week’s highs of scoring 92 against Wake Forest and taking Duke to the wire with its second lowest point total of the year.
“I can’t remember any game that we absolutely [were never close],” senior forward Ilian Evtimov said. “I remember every time we were down we came back and made it a game even if we lost. I remember being up and losing but, never being dominated the way we were tonight.”
State saw the lead once in the early minutes of the game and spent the rest of the night trailing by as much as 24.
“We’re certainly very disappointed in our performance tonight,” coach Herb Sendek said. “They played well. They were well prepared, but they didn’t do anything that much different than we’ve seen in the past. We give them credit … we were not a good basketball team tonight.”
After the first half, the issue needing to be addressed was rebounding as the Pirates outrebounded the Pack 22-8 and led 40-27. But State came out flat all-around, shooting 23 percent from the three-point arc and 32 percent from the field in the second half.
“We’re not doing a great job rebounding right now,” junior guard Engin Atsur said. “That’s an area that we have to work on. They got most of their shots back, and you can’t win games like that.”
The Pirates jumped out to a 49-30 lead early in the second half. After a personal foul was called on Tony Bethel near midcourt, an arguing Sendek walked out on the court and was quickly given a technical foul by referee Karl Hess.
“Whatever topic you want to pick, we’re not going to give ourselves a high grade,” Sendek said. “Our half-court defense was poor, our half court offense was poor, our first half effort was poor, our rebounding was poor … it’ll be up to us to try to get better.”
Seton Hall point guard Donald Copeland would continue to calmly sink both free throws and led all scorers with 22 points. The closest the Pack could narrow the lead to thereafter was 14.
“We were just too far down to get off the mat,” Sendek said. “We just never got a run. We seemingly never hit back-to-back shots or did something where we could get one foot back in the door.”
Players began fouling at the 5:09 mark as they tried to climb into a game they were never in. Seton Hall made it impossible by nailing 90 percent from the stripe and getting the ball into the hands of Copeland, who knocked down 15 out of his 16 attempts.
“What hurt us a lot is the fact they kept scoring and we just didn’t get stops, and when they missed, they got the rebounds,” Evtimov said. “Before you know it, it’s a 15-point game, and it’s hard to come back from that.”
Tony Bethel led State in scoring with 15 points as he hit four three-pointers, and Cameron Bennerman added 13.
Despite the Pack scoring 11 more points in the second half than in the first half, it came at the expense of hoisting 21 three-point attempts and only making five in the final half alone.
“When you’re down 20, you’ve got to do something, you’ve got to take some risks,” a scoreless Atsur said. “It just didn’t work.”
The loss comes at a critical point in the season with 10 games remaining – all of them against ACC foes.
“This is a very ugly, embarrassing loss,” Evtimov said. “We can’t take two in a row, we have to go over there [Clemson] and get a ‘W’ and get some confidence and get back into the flow.”
