Facing catastrophe, DJ Burns scores twice in final 15 seconds to deliver an NC State win
The bad thing about playing Notre Dame, for any ACC team save Louisville, is there’s almost nothing to gain and everything to lose. The Irish, in a rebuilding year, are entirely a no-win proposition for their opponents.
The good thing is that even on a night when N.C. State was historically bad offensively — flirting with the Kevin Keatts-era low set in that game against Virginia Tech — it only took two good plays from DJ Burns in the final 15 seconds to turn a potentially catastrophic loss into a sigh-of-relief escape.
Burns tied the score at 52 from down low with 14.3 seconds to go, Notre Dame missed the front end of a one-and-one and Burns faked his way to the rim for an unobstructed teardrop with 0.6 seconds to go for a 54-52 win.
Disaster, averted.
“Everybody in the world knew it was going to 30. Everybody,” N.C. State guard Jayden Taylor said. “That’s an easy two. Everybody knew it was going to 30. Nobody can stop him. That was the play: DJ Burns.”
Burns had struggled all night, whether single- or double-teamed, and he was hardly alone in that respect, but the Wolfpack still went to him on the two biggest possessions of the game, and he delivered on both. It was still the second-worst shooting performance of Keatts’ tenure — 19-for-66, 28.8 percent, N.C. State’s worst shooting percentage in a win since 1996 per ESPN — but the Wolfpack did enough on defense, on the glass and in the final three minutes to scrape it out.
“We found a way to win a game when DJ Burns didn’t play well, DJ Horne didn’t play well, neither Jayden Taylor nor Casey Morsell played well,” Keatts said. “When the score was tied, I wanted to get him the basketball. I knew he’d deliver for us. Give him credit. He didn’t play well and he sat on the bench, and then he made a great play.”
With Notre Dame still flying high from an unexpected thumping of Virginia, the Irish came out flying at both ends of the court, jumping out to an 18-6 lead while successfully smothering Burns and limiting the Wolfpack to innumerable long 2-point jump shots.
The Wolfpack finally got some traction on defense to cut the lead to eight at the half, but it was a thoroughly stagnant offensive first half that left N.C. State in a difficult position. And it did not get better: The Wolfpack missed 22 of its first 25 shots to open the second and had only five assists on the 19 baskets it did make.
“We work too hard to lose confidence,” Taylor said. “Even when shots aren’t falling, we know we can make them. That’s going to happen some nights, and nights like this show what kind of a team we are.”
N.C. State dominated the glass with 17 offensive rebounds and played well enough on defense to win comfortably on any other night, even if electrifying freshman Markus Burton did get loose for 18 points despite Taylor’s full-court attention. Down 11 with eight minutes to go, the Wolfpack’s pressure started rattling the Irish enough to open the door. And Burns, at the end, went storming through it.
Burns was benched in favor of Mohamed Diarra and Ben Middlebrooks for big chunks of the game, with Michael O’Connell giving the Wolfpack a lift off the bench as well. But Keatts still went to him twice late, knowing Notre Dame wouldn’t double-team him there and risk giving up an open shot.
In the final seconds, N.C State fed him the ball at the free-throw line, facing the basket. His pump-fake sent Kebba Nije flying past, leaving a wide-open lane to the basket for a little flip up and over the rim. Burns made it look easy.
“If he was guarding me, he wasn’t going to understand how much time was on the clock, and whatever shot I took was going to pump-fake him,” Burns said. “I didn’t expect him to jump that high. He jumped with everything in him. He gave me the opportunity.”
The four late points were enough to give Burns a team-high 13, while Taylor added 12.
N.C. State may not have picked up any huge nonconference wins, but it successfully avoided any bad losses. All three – BYU, Mississippi, Tennessee – were excusable at worst. There’s something to be said for doing no harm, but it leaves precious little margin for error without something on the other side of the ledger to balance out any missteps.
Those opportunities will come soon enough — as quickly as Saturday against Virginia, at home, even if the Irish knocked some of the luster off that one — but there are two teams in the ACC that pose a different kind of threat. A loss to Louisville or Notre Dame, even on the road, could prove potentially disastrous without a counterweight. Those will neither be frequent nor easy in the ACC this season.
Those were the stakes against Notre Dame. It wasn’t so much a good win as a good not-a-loss, but it’s still an ACC road win and the Wolfpack is still 2-0 in the league for only the second time in the past nine seasons.
“We found a way to win a game in the 50s,” Keatts said. “That doesn’t happen for us.”
N.C. State led for all of 0.6 seconds and won anyway. But the Wolfpack will take it, and run. Not walk. Run.
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This story was originally published January 4, 2024 at 12:04 AM.
