Wolfpack Looks to Build on Momentum of Duke Win
The NC State basketball team showed how good it can be on Wednesday in its 88-66 rout of No. 6 Duke.
It was a victory that thrust the Wolfpack right back into the NCAA tournament conversation and sparked a court rushing celebration that spilled over to the clock tower until all hours of the night.
But it also begged two obvious questions.
They are: Where has that kind of performance been all season and more importantly, is coach Kevin Keatts' team capable of doing it again?
It will get the chance to answer the second one on Saturday when it takes on No. 8 Florida State in a second straight showdown against a top-10 ACC opponent at PNC Arena.
"When we play basketball like that, especially homecourt advantage, I'll take us against anybody in the nation," redshirt senior wing C.J. Bryce said after by far his team's best effort of the season.
"We've got to build off this. We know the mistakes that we've made in our losses. If we fix those minor mistakes and get back to practicing again, we can wrap this up."
A win against Florida State would go a long way toward getting State back into the NCAA tournament after barely missing out a year ago.
The problem is that the Wolfpack has had trouble following up its best wins with another strong effort.
It went from the high of beating defending national champion Virginia at John Paul Jones Arena for the first time ever to the low of a turnover-filled loss at Georgia Tech. And after beating Syracuse on the road last week, it stubbed its toe again by falling victim to a lackluster first half in a loss at Boston College.
The difference against Duke, said Devon Daniels, is that State came out in attack mode right from the opening tip. The redshirt junior guard had a lot to do with that by scoring 14 of his team's first 20 points on the way to a career high of 25.
Daniels said that the key to recreating the intensity his team had against the Blue Devils on Saturday against Florida State -- besides coming down from the high of the emotional victory as quickly as possible -- is to start fast again and not wait for the game to come to it.
As it has on too many occasions this season.
"Sometimes as a team we start slow," Daniels said. "We think we can just turn it on and off, so (against Duke) I tried to switch it on from the very beginning. I think the whole team did that. We were all active from the very beginning."
In addition to that aggression, the Wolfpack (17-9, 8-7 ACC) finally displayed the kind of urgency usually associated with a team fighting to get back onto the right side of the NCAA bubble.
Although beating Duke won't guarantee State a spot in the field of 68, the victory improved its chances considerably. A another Quadrant 1 win against Florida State (22-4, 12-3) would further strengthen its resume.
But while junior forward D.J. Funderburk called the team's NCAA chances "an elephant in the room," its not something he, his teammates or Keatts spend much time discussing.
"These last five (regular season) games, this is definitely the biggest stretch of opportunities for this team and everybody in the program," he said. "But I don't know ... I'm just worried about Florida State right now."
That's the kind of focus Keatts wants from his players and why he goes out of his way not to talk about big-picture concerns such as NCAA tournament bids and bracketology.
"I don’t really talk about that with those guys, we just talk about the next game because I’m not sure they can handle that," said Keatts, who planned on having his team do some yoga instead of practicing hard on Thursday in order to help the players stay relaxed.
"If I put pressure on them and say we have to win this game for NCAA hopes, I’m not sure we would respond like we did (Wednesday)."
