RALEIGH -- With eight losses in its first 15 games, including the nonsensical variety to Mercer and Fordham, Georgia Tech isn't the kind of team a resurgent N.C. State was expected to lose to in ACC play.
Shouldas and couldas don't count in the standings, though, only the results. With 22 points from Glen Rice, the Yellow Jackets handed the Wolfpack a humbling 82-71 defeat Wednesday at the RBC Center, in one of the first setbacks of an otherwise relatively smooth first season for coach Mark Gottfried.
Gottfried warned his team before conference play, if it didn't focus on every game, it would lose a game to a team it might not expect to - especially in the opening stretch of the season against Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Boston College, the three teams projected to finish at the bottom of the conference.
"I think we can play a lot better than we did tonight," Gottfried said. "That was one of our poorer performances."
N.C. State (12-5, 1-1) fell behind by 11 points in a lackluster first half and then fell apart midway through the second half in a sequence that saw C.J. Leslie go to the bench at 13 minutes, 20 seconds with his fourth foul and Gottfried pick up a technical foul 68 seconds later.
"We came out a little soft in the beginning," Wolfpack junior Scott Wood said. "I think we tried to pick it back up, but by that point, they were already in their groove."
After an 11-0 run by Georgia Tech, N.C. State found itself down 56-40 with 11 minutes left. Fifteen points from Richard Howell weren't enough to get the Wolfpack back in position to make a run in the final minutes.
The Yellow Jackets (8-8, 1-1) entered the game as one of the lowest-scoring teams in the country (247th, 64.5 points per game) and one of the worst in turnover margin (308th, minus-3.3). Georgia Tech had five players finish the game in double figures.
"It's the ACC, I don't care who you play," Wood said. "Go ask Duke, they played them tough. It doesn't matter."
Instead, it was N.C. State that had problems taking care of the ball, with eight first-half turnovers, and finding points.
N.C. State erased an 18-point deficit in a November win against Texas but couldn't gain any traction in the second half against Georgia Tech.
It couldn't dig itself out of the hole it created at the end of the first half. The Wolfpack led 26-21 with 7 minutes left in the half before the Yellow Jackets closed the half with a 19-3 run, including 11 straight points during one stretch, to take a 40-29 lead at the break.
Down 62-50 with 6:20 left, senior C.J. Williams had a 3-pointer roll in and out that might have ignited the crowd.
Mfon Udofia's 3-pointer with 2:50 left put Georgia Tech up 72-57 and ended any realistic chance of a comeback.
