‘Nobody played well’: NC State bottoms out at Syracuse, sunk by another slow start
Just 11 days ago, after a fiery win over Wake Forest, Kevin Keatts all but banged his fist on the table when he said he was tired of people talking about how N.C. State wasn’t tough enough, even if that wasn’t actually being widely questioned at the time.
How about now?
It might not have seemed an issue after the home loss to Virginia Tech, bad as it was. Certainly not after the comeback to force overtime against Virginia, although scoring 15 points in the first half wasn’t a great look, even against the Cavaliers. And perhaps in isolation, Saturday’s no-show loss at Syracuse could be dismissed as an aberration after the Wolfpack made a late run to make the final score respectable.
But it is unquestionably the latest in what has become a trend.
From 5-1 in the ACC to 5-4. From entering the NCAA tournament conversation to exiting it completely. From flying high to bottoming out.
“We’ve got to fix our mistakes, for sure, and just come together as a team, as one,” N.C.. State guard D.J. Horne said. “We’re still trying to figure out how to do that right now, and the sooner we can do that, I think the quicker we can get out of this slump, these slow starts, and get back into the win column.”
There’s a lot that goes into so-called toughness, ephemeral as the concept may be, but not letting one loss become two become three is certainly a part of it.
That’s what’s happened in the 77-65 loss at Syracuse, and the Wolfpack looked exceptionally fragile, physically and mentally. Not only did the Wolfpack have no answers for Syracuse guards J.J. Starling, Judah Mintz and Chris Bell, it turned the ball over on its first three possessions, not that it would shoot any better when it did hold onto the ball after that.
“I thought this was our worst game we have played the entire year,” N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said. “We didn’t have pop, we didn’t have juice. I didn’t know what to explain it. Maybe it’s our travel. Maybe we were just flat a little bit. This is one of those games where coaches talk about burning the tape and not looking at it. Typically you would lose a game like this by 30. Because we do have some pride in our locker room we found a way to play a little better in the second half. But it was a game that I didn’t think anybody on our team had a good game.”
Keatts shook up the starting lineup by inserting Ben Middlebrooks and Mohammed Diarra over D.J. Burns and Dennis Parker Jr., but Burns was ineffective coming off the bench in the first half and Middlebrooks and Diarra were benched for almost all of the second. Keatts said afterward it was a failed attempt to send a message after the Wolfpack’s poor rebounding against Virginia.
The Wolfpack did show fight in that game, finding a way back against the Cavaliers. Coming back from 18 down to the Orange was apparently too much to ask in short order. The closest N.C. State got against Syracuse was nine, and that in the final two minutes, although it certainly could have been worse.
“I’m not going to keep walking into the locker room and saying, ‘Great fight, great energy.’ That’s what’s expected,” Keatts said. “But it was one of those days when just nothing went right. Nobody played well.”
N.C. State had fewer field goals (six) than offensive rebounds it allowed (seven) or turnovers it committed (eight) in the first half, scoring a paltry 22 points three days after the blight at Virginia.
Horne led N.C. State with 15 points and Casey Morsell added 14, but Syracuse won the backcourt battle decidedly. Starling had Syracuse’s first 10 points and finished with 26 while Mintz scored 14 of his 20 from the line, with more free-throw attempts (20) than the entire N.C. State team (11).
Suddenly, it’s less about rebuilding momentum for N.C. State than it is rebuilding a season. Things could very easily and quickly go off the rails, if they haven’t already. It’s one thing to have a bad shooting night; it’s another for a team that once prided itself on taking care of the ball to throw it away so often, for a team that once prided itself on defense to give up so many easy buckets.
This has grown into the first real adversity this group, with all these new players has faced, and it has become the turning point of this season, one way or another.
The Wolfpack still has a chance to get things pointed back in the right direction, with three straight home games coming up against Miami, Georgia Tech and Pittsburgh, but those are anything but gimmes, and N.C. State has lost the mojo it had when it swaggered away from the Wake Forest game, not to mention its lofty perch in the ACC standings.
Keatts said the Wolfpack would normally practice Sunday after arriving early in the morning from Syracuse, with only two days to prepare for Miami on Tuesday, but the team will get the day off instead to regroup.
“We definitely have to find a way to get out of this slump, get out of this hole,” Horne said. “We all feel like we started out to such a good season to let it go to waste now. That’s really just the main focus right now.”
It’s officially season-saving time for N.C. State — if it’s not already too late for that.
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This story was originally published January 27, 2024 at 9:14 PM.
