Freshman Lorenzo Brown led the way with 13 points and six assists and Scott Wood came alive in the second half of the basketball team’s 77-67 win over Fairleigh Dickinson on Saturday. The victory put the Pack back in the win column after it suffered its first loss of the season against No. 16 Georgetown in the finals of the Charleston Classic last Sunday.
Wood finished the night with 12 points, all during a seven-minute outburst from behind the arc to open the second half and give his team a 52-38 lead with 13:15 to play.
Senior point guard Javier Gonzalez added a pair of three-balls of his own a few minutes later to give State its largest lead of the night at 60-44 with nine minutes remaining. State held on down the stretch to prevail by the final score of 77-67.
The Pack clung to a 10-point lead at halftime thanks in large part to a 12-2 run about halfway through the game’s opening 20 minutes. The run was led by sophomore center DeShawn Painter, who picked up eight of his team’s points during that run and finished with 12 on the night.
State survived career-high efforts by Fairleigh Dickinson’s Terrence Grier and Mike Scott. Grier notched a career-high 23 points, while Scott missed a triple-double by one assist, as he finished with 11 points, 10 boards and nine assists.
It was a tale of two halves in terms of field goal shooting, as the Pack outshot FDU in the first half, converting 45 percent of its field goal attempts while limiting the opposition to 32 percent from the floor. Over the game’s final 20 minutes, Fairleigh Dickinson flipped the script, holding the Wolfpack to 32 percent shooting from the field while coming alive on the offensive end, with 47 percent shooting.
Despite no assists from freshman point guard Ryan Harrow, the Pack finished the game with 17 assists on 23 made field goals, compared to 12 assists on 27 makes for the Knights.
Along with Harrow, fellow freshman C.J. Leslie was also quiet. Neither of the highly-touted recruits started the game, and the two combined to play 41 minutes, score 12 points, and record one assist.
Up next for N.C. State is Wisconsin, which started the season ranked No. 24, but has fallen out of the rankings after dropping two of its first six games. The Badgers lost by three to UNLV in mid-November and are coming off a seven-point defeat at the hands of Notre Dame in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
The trip to Madison, Wis., for the ACC/Big 10 Challenge will be one of the Pack’s first two true road tests of the year, both of which will take place in the next seven days. Following the road matchup with Wisconsin, Coach Sidney Lowe and Co. will head to the Carrier Dome Saturday to take on Syracuse, which is undefeated and was ranked No. 10 in the nation in the latest polls.
