RALEIGH — They’re called free throws, but there was nothing free about them Wednesday night as the NC State went dry from the charity stripe in a 67-64 loss to visiting Pitt.
The Wolfpack (15-8, 7-5 ACC), the third-worst free-throw shooting team in the ACC, went just 6 of 15 (40%) from the free-throw line and ended the night with a minus-12 disparity in that regard.
“You’re not going to win many games when you go 6 for 15,” NC State coach Kevin Keatts said of his team’s free-throw shooting. “You’re looking at someone who is very disappointed because those are so valuable in possession games. Tonight we didn’t step up and make our free throws, and that cost us the game.”
That wasn’t all the Wolfpack coach had to say on the topic. In almost every response, Keatts kept coming back to his team’s free-throw troubles.
“That’s just not good enough,” Keatts continued. “We have to step up to the line and make them. That was the biggest difference in the game. We won pretty much every category. We made more 3-pointers than them, we lost the rebounding battle, had 11 assists and six turnovers while they had nine and 10. It was an equal game. If I threw it out and said one team was 18 for 20 and one team was 6 for 15 (on free throws), that’s the ballgame. I can go back and watch tape and evaluate and say, ‘We could have made this possession’ or ‘We could have gotten this rebound here,’ but at the end of the day, we have to step up and knock our free throws down.”
There was no debating the coach’s assertion.
The Wolfpack had the better of nearly every statistical category against the Panthers (15-8, 6-6 ACC), but free throws were clearly the difference.
“It’s probably a different outcome if we step up to the line and we make them, but we didn’t and that’s a problem,” Keatts said. “We have to be able to make free throws going down the stretch. We’ve had plenty of games where we’ve won the game from the free-throw line, and tonight wasn’t it. I can be nitpicky about a lot of things, but … there’s not much more you can say.”
NC State did have other sturggles, finishing both halves with poor shooting stretches.
That is everyone but graduate guard DJ Horne.
Horne had 25 points for the Wolfpack and shot 50% from beyond the arc, making five 3-pointers while the rest of the NC State roster went 1 of 8.
Horne’s fellow guards struggled: graduate Casey Morsell had just five points, graduate Michael O’Connell had two and junior Jayden Taylor had none.
“I didn’t think he had it tonight,” Keatts said of Taylor. “Typically with him, he’s the guy who’s really causing havoc on defense, and he didn’t pressure the ball well. It was one of those games and guys have games like that.”
One silver lining was graduate DJ Burns Jr. looking more like the player who dominated at times last season. Burns had a season-high 19 points and helped to drag the Wolfpack back into the game with Horne.
“We knew coming in that we had the advantage there,” Keatts said. “Those guys are talented but not very big inside, so we wanted to go inside early and see if they would double us. It was good for us to see the ball go in the hole for him. He did a really good job being patient, and the one or two times they did trap him, he found people and made some plays off of that.”
Burns has struggled since the start of ACC play, averaging just over 10 points and under four rebounds, but the coaching staff has made it a point to help him rediscover his game.
“What we’ve done in the last couple of days is watch a lot of tape with him,” Keatts said. “He’s been waiting for the double team and he’s almost fallen in love with passing the ball, and so we said, ‘Go make your move early and then if they send someone at you then you make a play.’”
The Wolfpack did manage to take away the Panthers’ biggest weapon. Entering the game, Pitt had made the most 3-pointers in the ACC this season, but the Wolfpack held them to just five on the night.
“We were trying to run them off the 3-point line,” Keatts said. “This is the third team in a row that we’ve faced that can really shoot the ball from behind the arc, and they made just five 3-pointers for the entire game.”
While the Wolfpack can use those things as positives off which to build, the lesson of the game was clear.
“Make free throws,” Keatts said. “That’s it.”
The Wolfpack will be back in action Saturday when they visit Wake Forest with an opportunity to possbily get back into the fourth place in the conference.
