The NC State Wolfpack once again came up short, falling 68-58 to the Clemson Tigers Saturday afternoon at Lenovo Center.
It’s been the same story all year for the Wolfpack (9-12; 2-8 ACC) who haven’t won a game since Jan. 8.
Despite the record, NC State has been in nearly every game this season. They compete hard and there’s a lot of things they do well on a nightly basis.
But they just can’t get results.
“I don’t want moral victories, but I give our guys credit for the way we came out and fought against a really good team given the adversity that we went through,” said NC State coach Kevin Keatts. “That being said, we just have to figure it out. We have to get better and we have to figure out these stretches. Our defense is still doing a great job of carrying us mostly through these games and obviously it looks like when we get in trouble, we don’t score the basketball.”
The Pack has now lost six in a row and eight of their last nine. Their only conference wins are an overtime victory over Florida State and a one-point win over Notre Dame.
They have four one-possession losses and led for the majority of their last game against No. 2 ranked Duke before they got overwhelmed.
“If you look at these last two games, you’d say we’re right there,” Keatts said. “We’ve gotten better, we just didn’t win a few games that could have gone the other way earlier. If you win those games earlier and then play Duke and Clemson the way you do, now you say, ‘Wow, they’ve got a chance.’ That being said, we have been in every game because our hearts are always on the line and our guys show up every night. Sometimes it just comes down to maybe the other guys just having a few more better players than we do and we just have to keep figuring it out and keep plugging.”
For a while, this game too was close with 11 lead changes from tipoff, but the Pack took their last lead 5:44 into the second half and Clemson (18-4; 10-1 ACC) never really looked back after that.
NC State had the opportunity to really do some damage as the Tigers went cold for a nearly seven-minute stretch coming out of halftime, but they just couldn’t get anything to drop either, a problem that has come up for this team time and time again.
“Our team’s fighting,” Keatts said. “We played against a very good Clemson team, obviously they were coming in 9-1. Our guys have been putting the work in, but we have these four to five minute stretches that are really, really hurting us.
“We have all the fight in the world, we just struggle offensively at times to get us over the hump and win games. We’ll figure it out. I don’t know when, but we’ll figure it out.”
The 3-ball actually showed up for the Wolfpack today, but the shooting from the paint was weak even despite a heavy edge in offensive rebounds. In fact, the Pack shot better from 3-point range than they did from the field overall.
Even without one of their bigs – as senior forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield was unavailable for the game – NC State still outrebounded Clemson 38-28 and 13-4 off the offensive glass.
However, the Pack had just eight second-chance points and 24 points from the paint total.
NC State’s also a defensively sound group and held Clemson to just 68 points, which was their fourth lowest total this season, but they forced only five turnovers on the Tigers while committing 12 themselves.
Senior guard Dontrez Styles led the way for NC State with 24 points, shooting 6-for-8 from beyond the arc, but no other Wolfpack player even reached double-digits.
“There were a couple of bright spots if you want to look for any of them,” Keatts said. “We’ve been asking for a little consistency from our group and it looks like Dontrez Styles is starting to play really good basketball.”
Styles has been a mixed-bag this season – with some standout performances but a lot of stretches of quiet basketball – but he’s reached double-digit points in each of his last three games.
Next up on the docket for the Wolfpack is a trip to California where they’ll take on both Cal and Stanford before returning home on Feb. 12 for a showdown with Louisville.
