NC State Wolfpack’s offense by committee may still need a go-to guy
The answer, on Wednesday, was Jayden Taylor, for the second straight game.
The question was, as it will be all season, is who’s going to carry the scoring load for N.C. State.
But two games is a trend, not a conclusion, and Taylor knows it might not be him again for a while. It could be anyone.
“Everybody on this team can score,” Taylor said after the Wolfpack moved to 3-0 with an 82-70 win over Coastal Carolina. “Tonight, I just kind of got it going. Everybody can have a night like that, to be honest. We have a deep team with a lot of talented guys. On any given night anybody can do that.”
With only a few familiar faces back from last year’s history-making squad amid the usual influx of transfers, this is unquestionably the longest, deepest and most athletic of any of Kevin Keatts’ teams at State, one potentially capable of becoming uncommonly disruptive on defense.
In the Wolfpack’s three wins, eight different players have scored in double figures. Jayden Taylor in the last two after a game-high 19 in Friday’s too-close-for-comfort win over Presbyterian and 22 against the Chanticleers as freshman Trey Parker joined the group with 13 and Dontrez Styles with 10.
“I think we’re going to have a group that on any given night, you might have Marcus Hill, you might have Brandon (Huntley-Hatfield), you might have someone else,” Keatts said. “I think (Taylor) played well tonight and the other night, but I don’t think this group needs him to have the D.J. Horne role. I think we’re going to have a lot of guys getting 12 to 15 points a game. It just depends on the night.”
Sharing the wealth is fine, but that leaves one role unfilled. There are defenders and rebounders and passers, but if and when the Wolfpack does play a close game — and that probably won’t be for another two weeks, until the rematch with Purdue in San Diego — who’s going to take the last shot?
Two years ago, it was Terquavion Smith and, as the season wore on, Jarkel Joiner; last year, it didn’t take long for D.J. Horne to become the go-to guy in pressure situations. But for all its myriad and diverse strengths, there isn’t an obvious stone-cold bucket-getter in this group.
Maybe it’s Taylor, who seemed more comfortable as a defender and secondary option last season. Maybe it’s Marcus Hill, the Bowling Green transfer who averaged double digits there last season. Maybe it’s Styles, the UNC and Georgetown transfer from Kinston, who’s capable of backing down smaller players. Maybe it’s Michael O’Connell, who certainly has a history of historic shotmaking.
There’s still time for someone or multiple someones to emerge, and the injured Louisville transfer Mike James has yet to have a chance to make his case, but who that would be, and who wants to be that player, is not apparent at the moment.
What N.C. State has instead, and lots of it, is depth. Keatts played 11 guys in the first half and freshman Paul McNeil became the 12th in the second. Ten of those players scored, seven recorded at least one assist and eight played 14 minutes or more.
That allowed the Wolfpack to force 19 turnovers on eight steals and press and pester Coastal Carolina into 30-second, 10-second and five-second violations — while also committing two three-second violations of its own. Nobody’s perfect.
The Wolfpack let Presbyterian hang around within single digits last week and needed a halftime attitude adjustment to pull away from Coastal Carolina in the second half. There remains room for improvement.
“I hope it doesn’t take until the first game of the ACC tournament again,” Keatts quipped, but Taylor wasn’t joking about where the Wolfpack can go, especially on defense.
“We have a lot of things in our back pocket we haven’t shown yet,” Taylor said,
That includes what N.C. State will do when the game comes down to one minute or one possession or one shot. That time will come soon enough.
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This story was originally published November 13, 2024 at 10:18 PM.
