NC State’s small mistakes magnified again in tight loss to Texas

Box outs. Rebounding. Free throw shooting. 

In each of NC State’s three losses, it’s been the little things that have caused the Wolfpack to come up short. The pair of setbacks at the Rady Children’s Invitational were through a lack of rebounding and not the best defensive intensity against both No. 13 Purdue and BYU in San Diego. 

And when the Wolfpack returned home to play Texas in the ACC-SEC Challenge, its small mistakes were magnified in a 63-59 loss to the Longhorns on Wednesday night at Lenovo Center. 

NC State’s effort was there with its highest defensive pressure of the young season, but free throw shooting struggles — 6-of-14 from the line, a season low — caught up to the Wolfpack. Despite that, the Pack had a chance to win the game as senior guard Jayden Taylor’s game-tying layup was blocked with four seconds to play. 

The Wolfpack had a chance to earn its first power conference win of the season, but it came up inches shy and dropped its third straight instead.

“We feel like we should have won that game,” senior wing Dontrez Styles said afterwards. “We know we’re a good team. We just have to keep building. It’s a tough one. I ain’t gonna lie to you. … We’re going to bounce back.”

Styles, who had a rough go in the Wolfpack’s two losses in San Diego with a 3-of-12 shooting effort, was able to shake his rough patch. He finished the game with a team-best 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including a trio of 3-pointers. 

While the Georgetown transfer broke out of his slump, it stung that NC State wasn’t able to get over the hump as a team. The squad’s small miscuses mounted in a hurry. 

And that was the team’s postgame focus. It knew it could have taken down the Longhorns to earn the ACC a much-needed win over the SEC, which it is now 29-3 against in the 2024-25 season, but the tiniest of errors were the difference between leaving the arena with a smile or in a somber mood.

The Pack experienced the latter. 

Senior point guard Michael O’Connell, who finished with just 3 points on 1-of-8 shooting from the field, turned in a season-high four turnovers after he entered the night second in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio (7.5).

“We know we can compete with these good teams,” O’Connell said. “We know we can go out there and play really well, we just have to keep piecing some things together and keep figuring it out for the next game.”

NC State’s box outs and rebounding struggled for the third straight game, which proved costly in a one-possession game with less than 10 seconds on the clock. The Wolfpack held the rebounding advantage 18-14 in the first half, but the Longhorns nearly doubled NC State’s total in the final 20 minutes with a 23-12 differential. In all, Texas won the battle on the glass 37-30, which included 13 offensive rebounds that led to 9 second-chance points. 

The difference? Texas was able to corral long rebounds for extra possessions, even though NC State was able to get bodies inside to fight for missed shots on the interior. 

“They beat us to a couple 50-50 balls,” NC State coach Kevin Keatts said. “I thought, in the first half, we did a really good job. I came into this game more focused on not giving up offensive rebounds. At halftime, we had done a great job. In the second half, they beat us to some loose basketballs.”

As Texas made more of the small details count in the game, NC State felt as though it was able to take away positives from the loss. In a way, it shouldn’t have been as close as it was. The Pack’s ability to hang with the Longhorns proved NC State belongs in tight games with quality teams, it just has to play cleaner basketball. 

But the gaffes that have been prevalent in each game against power conference opponents this season came back to haunt NC State against Texas.

“It’s just small things we have to get right,” Styles said. “We’re a very good team, we just have to figure it out. Just the small things, we have to limit those. Once we figure that out, we’re going to be the team we know we can be.”

The Wolfpack doesn’t have long to correct its mistakes. Florida State arrives in Raleigh on Saturday afternoon to open ACC play. NC State’s clock is ticking to stop its skid and begin to build momentum before the heart of the conference slate begins at the end of the month.

“Winning and losing is a thin line,” Keatts said. “We just gotta grow on it. We gotta shake it off. The crazy thing about it is it’s a really thin line between winning the game and losing the game, and how you feel and approach the next game. We got to get better.”