With an undersized team taking on a front-court, dubbed by some college basketball analysts as one of the best in the nation, UNC-Pembroke’s Braves turned to a zone defense early in an effort to take N.C. State out of its game, but the Wolfpack worked through early struggles to defeat the Braves 76-41.

“We were expecting a little bit of zone because of the size difference,” senior forward Gavin Grant said. “That was really smart on their part, and it took us out of our game a little bit. Once we picked up our defense and punched it inside a little bit, it opened up for us.”

“We were missing a lot of shots,” redshirt sophomore point guard Farnold Degand said. “We were 3-for-13 in the first half, but we were running our offense. We just weren’t making shots. In the second half, we made an effort to get some easy baskets.”

Coach Sidney Lowe said it was nice to see Pembroke play a zone defense.

“We ran different things against it, and we finally found something that worked for us,” Lowe said. “Our guys made some pretty good decisions with it. It was nice to go against a zone to give us some work.”

Lowe praised the Pack’s patience on offense in dealing with the zone.

“We moved the ball around,” he said. “We didn’t take that first quick shot we saw. We still looked inside, and we played inside-out. That opened up the shots for us. When teams are playing a zone like that, when you get opportunities, you want guys to get out there and knock it down.”

Degand said the team was comfortable going up against the zone defense from the start of the game, but the missed shots hurt State’s attempts to work through it.

The Pack led 32-22 at halftime.”We’ve been running that stuff in practice, so we knew what to do,” Degand said. “It was just a matter of knocking down shots and not settling for what they wanted us to take and imposing our will.

Our plan every game is to get the ball inside because we’ve got great bigs. They made a valiant effort tonight to keep us from getting the ball inside. So we had to stretch it out.”

Redshirt sophomore guard Trevor Ferguson said State wasn’t getting the ball to its post players enough in the first half.

“Coach Lowe made that an emphasis and said we really needed to work the ball inside-out,” Ferguson said. “Once we got a couple of baskets — Brandon made some great shots inside — everything opened up from there.”

After halftime, State outscored Pembroke 44-19, going 5-of-12 from three-point range to break the game open.

Grant said the team would probably see more zone defense this year than normal because of the “talented” big guys State will employ down low. He said the Pack needs to work on its zone offense as the regular season gets underway.

“We did all right; we got the open shots. We just didn’t make them,” Grant said. “With more practice and more repetition, we’ll be OK.”

Freshman forward J.J. Hickson led the Pack in scoring with 11 points on 5-for-5 shooting. Grant and redshirt sophomore forward Brandon Costner each added 10 points. Ferguson led the team with eight rebounds.

State opens its regular season Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. when it hosts William & Mary.Pack adjusts to zone defense, wins at home