Barber’s 38 leads NC State to 99-88 win over Wake Forest

There was a part of Cat Barber that saw the scoreboard, saw the time on the clock and thought, “Why not?”

With 38 points already in the books for him and N.C. State one short of 100, Barber had a chance to make a little history on Saturday. Instead, he let the clock run out and settled for a 99-88 win over Wake Forest.

The Demon Deacons had already waved the white flag before Barber had the ball and about 12 seconds to tack on one more basket.

“I didn’t want to get (40 points) like that,” Barber said.

Barber settled for a career-high that capped what coach Mark Gottfried called a “good week” in what has been an even better season for the junior point guard.

Barber, the ACC’s leading scorer (24.1 points per game), had his high school jersey retired on Thursday night in Hampton, Va. and then he scored 30 points in the second half on Saturday to reach the 30-point mark for the fifth time in seven games.

“That was great,” Barber said of his trip home. “Coming in here and getting a win was the most important thing.”

Barber’s scoring outbursts haven’t necessarily equated to wins this season. N.C. State improved to 4-3 when Barber scores at least 30 points.

Barber has done his best to keep the Wolfpack (13-12, 3-9 ACC) competitive in the ACC. He has averaged 30.1 points over the past seven games and made 52.3 percent of his field goals (67 of 128) in the process.

“He’s playing as well as anybody in this conference for sure,” Gottfried said.

Sophomore forward Abdul-Malik Abu, who had 11 points and blocked four shots on Saturday, took it a step further and said Barber clearly deserved to be the ACC player of the year.

In a light moment after the game, Abu walked behind the gathered media around Barber and asked him if he was the ACC player of the year.

“Um, yeah,” Barber said.

Abu laughed and Barber just kind of shrugged. The Wolfpack needed a strong second half from Barber to pull away from Wake Forest (10-15, 1-12), which couldn’t snap any of its concurrent losing streaks.

The Deacs have lost 10 straight since a home win over the Wolfpack on Jan. 10. They’ve lost 11 straight in Raleigh to N.C. State and 21 straight ACC road games.

At Barber’s discretion, they avoided being the first ACC team to give up 100 points to the Wolfpack since 1991. As it was, N.C. State’s 53-point second half, when the Wolfpack shot 54.2 percent, amounted to its most points in an ACC game since 1992.

Barber did get some help on Saturday from freshman guard Maverick Rowan, who scored 20 points, and sophomore guard Caleb Martin, who made four 3-pointers and finished with 18 points.

But Barber, who was limited to eight points in the first half, proved to be the deciding factor against a Wake team that got 24 points from guard Codi Miller-McIntyre and 15 points and 21 rebounds from forward Devin Thomas.

On the first few possessions of the game, Wake doubled Barber off a high-screen with big man Dinos Mitoglou but after that coach Danny Manning decided to play straight man-to-man against Barber.

After weeks of zones, full-court traps, constant double- and triple-teams, Barber welcomed Manning’s NBA-like strategy.

“In the second half, I was like, I’m going to take advantage of it,” Barber said. “I decided to go to the rim and the results were good.”

When Barber wasn’t making his field goals (10 of 20), he was getting to the foul line. Wake was called for 32 fouls, compared to 18 on N.C. State, and sent Barber to the free throw line 20 times.

“He’s unguardable, realistically,” Abu said. “Either you foul him or he gets a layup.”

That’s what happened in the second half, even as Wake kept pace and had the scored tied at 79 with 6:46 left.

Abu scored five straight points to break the 79-79 tie and put the Wolfpack in control down the stretch. Barber iced the game from the foul line.

Barber entered the game shooting 86.9 percent from the foul line. He went 0 for 2 in the first half and then 17 of 18 in the second half.

Two more free throws and Barber would have gotten to the 40-point mark. He thought about adding the late meaningless basket, the students on the near sideline were encouraging him to go the basket while Gottfried was asking him to pump the brakes.

Besides good sportsmanship, Barber said there was another reason he didn’t go for 40.

“I feel like I’ll get it before the season is over,” Barber said.

This story was originally published February 13, 2016 at 2:16 PM with the headline "Barber’s 38 leads NC State to 99-88 win over Wake Forest."