NC State basketball is focused on ‘the next opportunity’ with North Carolina on the horizon

Even though NC State has lost four of its last six games, Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts is not panicking. The red and white, which sits 80th in the NCAA NET rankings, has a trio of Quad 1 games to end the season — a tough stretch, but what the seventh-year coach has embraced. 

The Wolfpack has No. 9 North Carolina up Saturday afternoon before it faces No. 10 Duke in the penultimate game of the season Monday night in Raleigh. But NC State is not looking past its weekend game with the Tar Heels. 

NC State, the current eight seed in the ACC with a trio of regular season contests left, has its full attention on a one game at a time mentality with its at-large hopes in the balance. 

“We’re just concentrating on the next opportunity,” Keatts said Friday morning at the Dail Basketball Center. “This one happens to be a really good one because it’s a Quad 1 opportunity — it moves the needle. But we don’t ever think that we’re out, the reason being that we do have three opportunities left to help us and then you also have the ACC tournament.”

North Carolina is the first team up on NC State’s remaining schedule, and the Tar Heels coasted past the Wolfpack 67-54 at PNC Arena on Jan. 10. 

In the first meeting of the year, NC State did not shoot the ball well. The Pack had a 27.3% mark from the field, including a 10% clip from beyond the arc at just 2-of-20 from deep. 

Wolfpack graduate guard DJ Horne scored just 6 points on 2-of-16 shooting from the field, including an 0-for-3 mark from deep. Since that day, Horne has scored in double figures in 12 of the Pack’s 13 games with a pair of 30-point efforts. 

Keatts thought North Carolina played well defensively in that matchup, but it was also a combination of the Pack’s offense missing attempts it has not as of late.

“I thought DJ Horne wasn’t DJ Horne at the time when you look at his stats,” Keatts said. “He didn’t have a great game. We did some really good things. I thought DJ Burns had a very effective game, especially early. They did play really solid, but I thought we missed some shots that we would normally make or have been making lately.”

While NC State didn’t shoot the ball well against North Carolina in the previous meeting, the Tar Heels found success through a balanced attack and domination of the glass. 

Carolina star RJ Davis paced the Heels with 16 points, while forward Harrison Ingram scored 9 points with 19 rebounds to lead the team clad in blue to a win. 

But since then, NC State has experimented with a new lineup that features junior forward Mohmaed Diarra, the team’s best rebounder. He has averaged nearly a double-double over the last five games in the starting lineup with 10.4 points and 9.6 rebounds a night. 

Keatts thought Diarra’s ability to impact the game could mitigate Ingram’s ability to clean up the glass this time around. 

“In inserting him into the lineup, we’ve become a better defensive rebounding team and even offensively at times,” Keatts said of Diarra. “That was one of the areas that we really struggled and early on we were really struggling, particularly in that Carolina game. I think he helps close the gap in that.”

Though Diarra will be looked to lead the charge in the rebounding department, Keatts added that the team’s guards will need to step up in that category as well. 

That will be a task for the Wolfpack guards, which will have its hands full with North Carolina’s supporting cast. Davis is the star, but Notre Dame transfer Cormac Ryan is able to score in bunches (he had 18 points at Virginia on Feb. 24), while point guard Elliot Cadeau sees the floor very well to set up the rest of the team. 

“Certainly we’ve got to do a good job with him, but there’s so much more than just RJ,” Keatts said. “You can’t have him go off and then Cormac Ryan’s hitting shots. Throughout the last four or five games they’ve had four or five guys really step up and play well. … The tough thing about them is you can’t focus on one guy.”

NC State is sure to have its hands full with North Carolina, but this challenge will give the Wolfpack a chance to earn another signature win this season. 

And despite NC State’s NCAA tournament hopes hanging by a thread, Keatts thought the Wolfpack has a chance to improve its resume Saturday.

“It’s a great opportunity for us,” Keatts said. “In the world of our conversations of quads, it’s a great opportunity. It’s a good rivalry game. … We just gotta go play. I don’t know if it’s ‘Hey, go have fun because we’re the only ones that believe.’ But that’s the only ones that need to believe anyway. Our guys are going to go in there, have fun, and take advantage of our opportunity and play NC State basketball.