Unpredictable Pack still a hard team to figure
N..C. State has played 31 games this season, winning 21 times, giving Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts a good handle on his team heading into the ACC tournament.
At the same time, Keatts still faces something of a crapshoot, game to game.
Will Markell Johnson be one the best players on the court, or only average?
Will Braxton Beverly be banging in jumpers or bricking shots?
Will C.J. Bryce be a factor or mostly invisible?
Will Devon Daniels contribute off the bench or be mistake-prone?
Keatts likes to say every college coach faces similar questions and Clemson coach Brad Brownell, whose Tigers face the Pack on Wednesday at noon in the ACC quarterfinals, has some of his own. But for Keatts it’s an offensive guessing game, game after game.
After the Pack’s 63-61 loss at home to Georgia Tech last week, Daniels said, “Basketball is a game of who’s hot and runs.” True enough, and it’s the “who’s hot” part of the equation that can be so perplexing for the Pack.
Torin Dorn has been pretty steady this season and is the Pack’s leading scorer (13.7 points a game), but he’s a senior. He’s also from Charlotte, which could put a little extra zip in his play in the tournament this week.
Sophomore center DJ Funderburk, if not in foul trouble, is a battler inside. He’ll get his points and rebounds.
But Johnson can score five points in one game and 25 in the next, as the junior guard did this season. Bryce scored 21 points against Pittsburgh and four the next game, against Syracuse. Beverly can be baffling.
“We’ve got a lot of pieces but I feel like we’ve got to all come together and lock in as a team,” Funderburk said.
The Pack became one-dimensional in the loss to Georgia Tech, firing up 3-pointer after 3-pointer against the Yellow Jackets’ zone. N.C. State was 8-for-35 from the arc. As Daniels said, “We got stagnant at times, settled for jump shots.”
Dorn did knock down a 3-point jumper from the key with 6 seconds left in regulation to give the Pack the lead, but Georgia Tech countered with a three-point play by James Banks III and escaped when Bryce’s last-gasp 3-pointer found rim.
Things were a lot better Saturday at Boston College in the last regular-season game. The Pack finished 9-for-26 on 3s in a no-sweat 73-47 romp over the Eagles, Keatts saying it might have been his team’s best defensive effort of the season.
Beverly, who missed all seven of his 3-pointers and did not score against Georgia Tech, knocked down three of his first four on Saturday as the Pack built a 17-point lead in the first half, often turning defensive stops into transition baskets. Bryce, who had two points against Tech, had 14 against the Eagles.
Such are the swings that make the Pack so unpredictable. When N.C. State edged Clemson in late-January at PNC Arena, Beverly had missed nine of 11 shots, including all four 3-pointers, until the final seconds.
And then he made one. A buzzer-beating 3. The Wolfpack walked off a 69-67 winner.
The Pack hit nine 3-pointers, going 9-for-24, while the Tigers were 0-7 from the 3-point line. That, and some missed free throws at the end by Clemson’s Marcquise Reed, proved to be the difference.
“It was a very competitive, tough game, which you expect when Clemson plays N.C. State,” Brownell said after the loss that dropped the Tigers to 1-5 in the ACC..
It should be again Wednesday at the Spectrum Center. The Tigers (19-12, 9-9 ACC), seeded ninth, have made a late-season surge. The Pack (21-10, 9-9), the No. 8 seed, is coming off an impressive road win at BC.
Many prognosticators believe the Wednesday winner could lock up an NCAA Tournament berth. The loser could sweat it out on the NCAA bubble.
“We need to be strong in the ACC Tournament,” Funderburk said.
And more so for the Pack, consistent.
This story was originally published March 11, 2019 at 10:13 AM.
