NC State’s losing streak grows to 9 games, ACC Tournament hopes continue to become steeper challenge

Hours before NC State and Louisville took the floor at the Lenovo Center on Wednesday night, the Wolfpack’s players felt a vibe that was just off from usual. The team’s shootaround earlier in the day didn’t have encouraging signs as the Pack rode an eight-game losing streak.

Both senior guard Breon Pass and freshman guard Paul McNeil felt like the team wasn’t “locked in” during the final preparations for the Cardinals. And that bled over into the nationally-televised game, which ended in a 91-66 Louisville win. 

“It’s about preparation. Our preparation coming into this game was not that good,” McNeil said. “Shootaround was OK, it wasn’t great. It could have been great. Just little things like that carry over into the game and you can see what happened.”

Pass, the only player that has been on the roster for four seasons, had a similar feeling. 

“Today, I didn’t feel like we had a good shootaround or we weren’t prepared enough mentally,” Pass said. “I just feel like this is one of the games where you have to keep pushing.”

NC State coach Kevin Keatts, however, didn’t feel like a shootaround vibe was going to tell the story of the game. He said that he’s had teams have a bad session in the hours before a game and still win by 20 when the lights came on.

And the Wolfpack’s eighth-year coach didn’t think his team’s latest shootaround was its poorest pregame showing of the year. 

“I didn’t know if it was the most-energetic one we’ve had,” Keatts said, “but I don’t think it was the worst one we had.”

But Keatts did stress that there are a few hours in between shootaround and tipoff that the team has to use to lock in, which didn’t appear to happen leading into the bout with Louisville. 

No matter if the shootaround played a factor or not, NC State didn’t seem ready in the early stages of the game as Louisville blitzed the Wolfpack with an 11-3 run in the first four minutes. That early deficit proved to be too much as it only ballooned from there, eventually getting to as many as 28 late in the game. 

The Pack had a chance to make it a game late in the first half, but after cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 9, Louisville scored the last 5 points of the half. The Final 20 minutes didn’t appear to feature much of a competitive game as the Cardinals scored 50 to coast past the Wolfpack. 

NC State’s 25-point loss was its worst margin of defeat this season and it marked the most lopsided result inside the Lenovo Center since Clemson won by 25 on Feb. 25, 2023. The Wolfpack has lost nine straight, which is the program’s longest such streak since the 2006-07 campaign. 

The team’s slide as NC State in jeopardy of missing the ACC Tournament just one year after it ran the table with five wins in as many days to claim the title last season. The Wolfpack is currently tied with Miami for last place in the league standings and the bottom three teams will not be invited to Charlotte next month. NC State is two games back from Notre Dame, the team currently last in the field.

Is missing the conference tournament creeping into the player’s minds? Yes. 

“I’m definitely worried, seeing where we stand in the rankings,” Pass said. “But you gotta control what you can control all the time. Just keep playing, keep showing up every game and keep playing hard.”

While Pass was honest postgame, Keatts wanted to reaffirm that “anything can happen.” He used that phrase multiple times across his press conference that spanned just under 10 minutes. It was a mantra that worked in last year’s miraculous postseason run and he seems to be looking to channel that same magic for the final seven games of the season. 

“We have to shake this one off,” Keatts said. “We have to go back to work and we’ve gotta get better. It’s a seven-game season, but it’s one game for the way we prepare. That’s what we’ve gotta do. Anything is possible. The one thing last year taught me is anything can happen.”

While last year’s run proved a team can click late in the year to win games, NC State’s roster construction is vastly different. Instead of being able to rely on an elite scorer like the Pack has had in the past, including DJ Horne last year, the Wolfpack needs three or four players to play well at the same time. 

So far, the Pack’s roster has been too inconsistent to have that happen. 

“We just haven’t been able to get consistent play from anybody,” Keatts said. “That’s the toughest part about it. We need some of our older guys to take us to the finish line. … We just haven’t gotten that yet.”

Keatts believes his team has what it takes to click and begin winning games down the stretch. But instead of having the luxury of an automatic bid to the ACC Tournament, where the Pack turned its season around last year, it needs to begin that process as soon as possible.

And that begins with the Wolfpack’s home date with Boston College on Saturday afternoon.

“If you get playing basketball at the right time, then anything can happen,” Keatts said. “We’ve just gotta start our right time right now.”