Defensive woes cost NC State in loss to No. 9 Duke

Walk into the locker room after NC State’s 79-64 loss to No. 9 Duke at PNC Arena on Monday night, and it did not take long to find out what went wrong. 

“Our defense,” graduate forward DJ Burns said in front of his locker postgame, surrounded by TV cameras and repoters.. “That’s pretty much the theme of the night as far as why we lost.”

In the first half, it was the Wolfpack’s inability to grab a defensive rebound that hurt the red and white. NC State held Duke to just 33.3% from the field, but the Blue Devils logged 12 offensive rebounds to pour in 13 second-chance points. 

Duke did not do anything special to gain a seven-rebound advantage on the offensive glass. It seemed to just be more aggressive, which helped bail the Blue Devils out of a poor shooting half. 

The visitors from Durham led by 3 at the half with the second-chance points aiding the Blue Devils in front of the Wolfpack, despite NC State’s 48.1% shooting in the opening half. 

Graduate guard Casey Morsell thought the Wolfpack was leaking out trying to run in transition instead of keeping five guys on the defensive end, which allowed Duke to maintain possession. 

“It’s simple, we just didn’t put a body on them,” Morsell said. “They were crashing at a high rate. I think we were trying to run and get easy baskets on the offensive end instead of just finishing possessions on the defensive end.”

Duke was somewhat efficient with its offensive rebounds against NC State in the first half. It shot 4-of-11 from the floor after an offensive rebound, including a TJ Power three-pointer that gave the Blue Devils a 4-point lead. 

The offensive rebounds kept Duke afloat, despite its struggles from the field to buy the Blue Devils nine more shots than the Wolfpack. Burns could not put his finger on why Duke found so much success there.

“I guess they noticed that was the one place they could get ahead of us,” Burns said. “They did a good job of attacking that weakness at that point.”

While the offensive rebounds were the story of the first half, NC State’s defenders did not stay with their man in the second half, at times. Duke took advantage of wide-open shots as a result. 

NC State was able to take a 46-45 lead with 12:10 to go, but Duke was able to go on a 15-4 run with easy baskets to jump out to a 60-50 advantage. The Blue Devils never relinquished their grip on the lead after that — they just grew warmer from the field. 

Duke was able to knock down 10 of 11 shots to maintain the 10-point advantage down the stretch before it grew it to as many as 16. 

Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts was not pleased with his team’s defensive performance at that moment in the game. He thought the Pack went away from the scouting report, at times, and it showed.

“To be honest with you, we had some defensive breakdowns that we had not allowed the entire game,” Keatts said of the miscue’s during Duke’s back-breaking run. “We gave up an offensive rebound where I thought we stood and watched. We didn’t switch a screen and [Kyle Filipowski] ended up making a three.”

The Wolfpack’s defensive miscues hurt against the more-than-capable Blue Devils. Duke shot a blazing 62.5% clip in the second half en route to a 46-point outburst in the final 20 minutes. 

That did not sit well with anyone wearing NC State on its shirt. 

“We didn’t execute enough on the defensive end with stopping them, slowing them down,” Morsell said. “And they took advantage of it.”

Following the game, Keatts talked with the team for a longer than usual period of time. He had a message about playing error-free, especially at this time of the year. 

“One of the things we talked about is at this point you’ve got to become mistake-free because as we get down the stretch, the more mistakes you make, you’re going home,” Keatts said. “That’s what happened to us. We made some mistakes that we shouldn’t have.”

The Wolfpack made the mistakes. And as a team that hangs its hat on defense, that does not track with what it has done in the past. 

But in the past two games, the same thing has happened: the Pack shoots well, but it can’t keep the other team at bay on the defensive end. North Carolina fired a 41.4% clip from the field in the second half to send NC State out of Chapel Hill with a loss on Saturday. Duke replicated that a little over 48 hours later. 

The defensive gaps in the game have hurt the Wolfpack, and now it has NC State sitting on the border between playing on Tuesday or Wednesday in the ACC tournament in eight days.  

“It’s a good basketball team, but when you’re playing against a good basketball team, you can’t have those breakdowns,” Keatts said. “And obviously that’s what happened to us in the second half.”