NC State’s first-half defense dooms Pack in Syracuse loss

NC State coach Kevin Keatts walked into the postgame interview room following his team’s 87-83 loss to Syracuse on Tuesday night at PNC Arena, and it did not take long for him to voice his frustrations. 

The Wolfpack put itself in a 15-point hole by halftime, and the Orange were able to control the entire opening 20 minutes with a 55-point barrage. That, in turn, ended up dooming the red and white, even though it outscored the visitors clad in orange by 11 in the final period. 

“Very disappointing loss and I think that’s frustration on my end,” Keatts began his press conference with. “The frustration comes because of the first half. We have been a really good defensive team the entire year and to give up 55 points in the first half is just not acceptable. That’s not NC State basketball, that’s not what we’re about.”

“I don’t want a moral victory,” he continued. “You can look at the second half, and we played a great basketball half, but we should never put ourselves in that situation where we start the game and we don’t understand scouting reports and we give up eight threes to one guy.”

About those 8 triples, which were the main cause of NC State’s halftime setback. Syracuse’s Chris Bell began the game unconscious from three-point distance as he made his first 8 attempts, most of which were wide-open looks. 

It started early since Bell hit the Orange’s first three buckets of the night, all three-point attempts. He was able to hit two more soon after to get 5 made treys just six minutes into the contest. Bell’s sniping from deep came at back-breaking times for the Wolfpack, including ballooning the Syracuse lead to 15 with just over three minutes left in the first half. 

Bell, who had hit more than 4 three-pointers in ACC play just once before Tuesday night, was able to replicate his 8 triples he hit against Louisville earlier this month. He was able to slip free from multiple defenders, and he heated up from beyond the arc. 

But when the second half rolled around, Bell was held in check — just a little too late. He did not record a point in the final 20 minutes and took just two shot attempts, even though he was on the floor for the entire half.

What changed? Keatts was pretty blunt about that.

“I reshowed them the scouting report,” Keatts said. “He doesn’t dribble. I haven’t seen him dribble all year long. … We had no sense of urgency to get to the shooter. But at the end of the day, we did a great job in the second half, so we should have done a great job in the first half of taking away his shots.”

Though NC State was able to dig itself out of the deep hole in the second half, the 15-point advantage was too much to overcome. The Wolfpack missed the game-tying shot by graduate guard DJ Horne, who scored a game-best 32 points, with two seconds left, which all but ended the contest. 

For graduate guard Casey Morsell, the team did not come out as sharp as it needed to be, and it doomed the Wolfpack.

“It came down to details, little things and we couldn’t capitalize in the end,” Morsell said. “But it all started in the first half. Everybody’s responsible, everybody played their role in us being down in the first half. That’s what came back and made a difference in the second half.”

NC State has made it a habit of falling into deficits before miraculously coming back in the second half to survive. It did just that at Clemson on Saturday afternoon after the Tigers blitzed the Wolfpack in the middle eight minutes of the half, but the red and white found a way to comeback from a double-digit deficit. 

Keatts, the Wolfpack’s seventh-year coach, was not happy with the deep hole that NC State ended up in at halftime. He made it clear that it was not OK for the Pack to try to rely on a second-half comeback, though he noted the contests where NC State has trailed by single digits at halftime were a different story. 

But the opening 20 minutes did not go over well with Keatts.

“I’m frustrated because of the fact of our start,” Keatts said. “I love our guys, and we’re playing hard and we’re doing everything we’re supposed to. We were in the mix and we were right there where we needed to be. It’s just not acceptable from where I sit to have the start that we had tonight, and that won’t sit well with me.”

The Wolfpack, which entered the night 75th in the NCAA’s NET rankings in need of a winning streak down the stretch, might have caused an issue for a potential at-large berth into the tournament. Now, it appears, the Wolfpack has less room to work with as it enters a challenging stretch. 

NC State hosts Boston College on Saturday before it goes to Florida State and North Carolina. Then it will close the season with a home finale against Duke and a road trip to Pittsburgh. It is not an easy stretch, and now the Wolfpack might not be able to drop many more games.

“We still got a lot of good games left on our schedule, so we definitely don’t want to put ourselves out of it now,” Horne said. “But we know that the margin for error is smaller now and we have to lock in for these last couple of games.”

But for now, the Wolfpack is going to search for an answer to the 55-point first period of play by the Orange. And it will begin on the practice court.

“You can’t dig yourself in a 15-point deficit in the first half and then expect to somehow win,” Horne said. “We gotta get back in the lab and we have to fix a lot of things — and it starts with defense.”