NC State, in pursuit of new beginning, dominant in season-opening win against Austin Peay
When last we saw the N.C. State men’s basketball team, at least in a game that counted, the Wolfpack had reached a merciful end to a miserable season. The Wolfpack won but three games last January, only once in February and none in March. The 2021-22 season, one of the worst in school history, ended with defeats in 11 of State’s final 12 games.
It was a season of dysfunction and disappointment, angst and apathy. Not even a late-season visit from rival North Carolina, which spared the Wolfpack from further embarrassment in a victory that nonetheless came easily, inspired N.C. State supporters to fill PNC Arena.
As a sparse home crowd underscored here on Monday night, it will take time — and a lot more winning — for Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts to restore optimism in the direction of his program. Nonetheless, State’s season-opener was about new beginnings, and moving past the anguish of last year. For one night, at least, the Wolfpack at last found reason to bask in a bit of positivity.
State’s 99-50 victory against Austin Peay will not be remembered for providing the Wolfpack with the most stern of tests, nor will it be remembered for its artistry or aesthetics — both of which lacked, at times. And yet it provided State with perhaps what it most needed: a clean, dominant, confidence-boosting victory against an overmatched opponent.
“This is the toughest game, in my opinion, in college — that first game of the year,” Keatts said after a performance in which he found reason to praise just about everything. “I don’t care who it is around the country, it’s so tough, no matter who you’re playing against, because you just don’t know.
“And you want to get off to a good start, which we did. I thought we played well, which is great, but you can’t say that for everybody. So it’s tough. And I’ve been on the other side of it at the first game, where we were able to squeak away with a win but we didn’t play well.
“I thought everything went as we planned tonight.”
More difficult tests await but, for State (1-0), one of them is simply proving that it is indeed headed in a positive direction in Keatts’ sixth season. A hodgepodge of parts that didn’t fit last year, the Wolfpack’s descent into the basketball abyss called into question Keatts’ ability to resurrect a program that for decades has been trying to restore the standard of the long-lost glory years.
That State made it look as easy as it did Monday night provided some measure of hope that perhaps things could be a lot better, after all, throughout the coming months. The retooled Wolfpack, with seven players in their first season in the program — four of them graduate transfers — played as though it had something to prove, which they do after an 11-21 season that was State’s third-worst since the formation of the ACC.
“It was important for us, as a team,” State sophomore guard Terquavion Smith, who led five scorers in double figures with 26 points, said of opening the season with a complete victory. This, Smith said, represented a “new start” and the performance of a “different team, new team.”
“We have a lot of players who play together and play for the front of the jersey and not the back,” Smith said.
The first five minutes portended what was to come. The Wolfpack during that stretch built a 17-6 lead — one that never again shrank into the single digits — while it imposed its will on both ends. Perhaps best of all for Keatts and his team, State scored in an assortment of ways, and with an assortment of players, old and new, throughout a fast start that it only sustained.
Smith, who is the Wolfpack’s most productive returnee, scored his team’s first points of the season with a long jumper from the right corner about 30 seconds into the game. Jack Clark, a graduate transfer from La Salle, scored State’s next five points before Dusan Mahorcic, another graduate transfer, from Utah, scored inside to extend State’s early lead to seven.
And so pretty much ended the competitive portion of the night. The Wolfpack extended its lead to 11 five minutes in and the 28-point halftime margin, when State led 49-21, was its largest of the first half. By then, the only question was whether Keatts’ team, which is reflective of this era of college basketball in which most teams are especially reliant on transfers, would retain its focus.
If the first four and a half minutes of the second half were any indication the answer was yes. By then, State’s lead had grown to 67-29. A 7-0 run from the Wolfpack prompted Nate James, the Austin Peay coach and former Duke player and assistant coach, to call a 30-second timeout. There was little, though, that James or any of his players could do to slow State.
“We try to make a statement every time we come out on the court,” said Jarkel Joiner, another of State’s graduate transfers. “We want to show you guys and the fans that we play hard. And we’re going to play hard until the end.”
Last year, none of the Wolfpack’s 11 victories came by more than 18 points. On Monday night, State led by that many with a little less than 12 minutes remaining in the first half.
Joiner, who led Mississippi in scoring last season, finished with 18 points, 12 of them in the first half. Smith, a preseason All-ACC selection and State’s returning leader in nearly every meaningful statistical category (scoring, rebounding, assists and steals) also scored 12 of his 26 points in the first half.
The combined performance of Smith and Joiner on Monday night perhaps offered State with its greatest reason for renewed optimism. Though they have not played much together, both guards have proven themselves at the highest level of college basketball. Smith, who flirted with entering the NBA draft last summer, was among the most productive freshman in the country last year. Joiner, meanwhile, averaged 13.2 points in the SEC and was first-team All-WAC before that.
It looked like Smith and Joiner had been playing together for years, instead of months.
“Yeah, see — you can’t tell,” Smith said, smiling. “It’s a new team.”
They led the Wolfpack in scoring Monday and also combined for 13 of State’s 19 assists. Another encouraging number for State: 30.8. That’s the field goal percentage it allowed, which perhaps indicates that defensive fortitude and hustle will not be as optional for his State team as it was for last year’s version.
Even considering the level of competition — the Governors of Austin Peay (0-1) won only 12 games, themselves, last year and were picked to finish ninth out of 14 teams in their first year in the Atlantic Sun Conference — State turned in the kind of dominant performance in its season-opener that it lacked all of last season.
With almost 13 minutes remaining in the second half, after the Wolfpack extended its lead to 42 points, the small home crowd even erupted into a loud ovation after Smith made a 3-pointer. Fouled on the shot, he turned it into a four-point play. By then the result had been long decided and the small smattering of boos that Keatts received earlier in the night, during introduction, were a distant memory.
The crowd’s enthusiasm, its energy, only grew while State’s dominance continued. “Energy” was among the first words Keatts used in praise of his team in the moments after the game ended. It was a relentless kind of energy, one that suggested this group would play with more life than the one that limped along a year ago.
This, Keatts said, “is a good bunch. They’ve bonded both on and off the court.”
The victory Monday provided the Wolfpack and its supporters with what they most lacked much of last season: hope.
This story was originally published November 7, 2022 at 10:04 PM.
