State 77, Pittsburgh 73: Postgame Observations
The NCAA tournament selection committee doesn't ask how when it meets to select the 68 teams to fill its bracket on Selection Sunday.
It only asks how many wins each college basketball team has when all is said and done.
So while NC State won't receive any style points for the 77-73 victory it grinded out against Pittsburgh on Saturday, it will still get high marks for flipping the switch on in time and getting the job done.
It's not the kind of win that will help the Wolfpack's tournament chances. But more importantly at this time of year, coach Kevin Keatts avoided a result that would have severely hurt.
Here's a look at some of the factors that led to the important triumph and what it means in the big picture:
◼ Urgency kicks in: For the first 32 minutes Saturday, Pitt (15-15, 6-13 ACC) looked more like the team with its season on the line than State.
And Keatts let his team know it in the huddle during a TV timeout with 7:35 remaining and the Panthers leading 61-55.
"I thought at that point (Pitt was) playing with a lot more energy than we were," the Wolfpack coach said. "We needed go get some big stops (and) we needed to get big rebounds."
Keatts suggested that he also used some colorful language to emphasis the message. But whatever buttons he pushed, they were the right ones because State (18-11, 9-9) began playing with a much more visible sense of urgency from that point on.
Jericole Hellems, in particular, picked up the intensity.
"Coach tells me I'm an energy player and whenever I get in the game I try to bring energy," Hellems said. "I try to do what I can do to help the team win and today it was enough."
After C.J. Bryce made a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to four, Hellems' hustle down the court put him in position to tip in a Bryce miss off transition that got the PNC crowd back into the game. He then hit a 3-pointer from the left corner to give the Wolfpack its first lead of the game -- 62-61 with 6:55 remaining.
Hellems made all six of his field goal attempts (including two of his team's five three-pointers) to finish with 16 points in only 16 1/2 minutes before fouling out. Once he lit the spark, everyone helped ignite it.
The Wolfpack held Pitt scoreless for 3:57 on one end and with redshirt freshman Manny Bates making contributions on both ends of the court and Markell Johnson making his free throws down the stretch, State was able to finish the game on a 22-12 run for the badly needed victory.
◼ The X-factors: It's no secret that Johnson, C.J. Bryce, Devon Daniels and D.J. Funderburk are the players that make the Wolfpack go.
And things don't usually go well when more than one of those players is off his game offensively.
Saturday, Johnson, Bryce and Daniels were all at less than their best -- combining to go 9 for 29 from the floor (31%). Bryce still ended up with 16 points and Johnson had six assists, to go along with 14 points and seven rebounds from Funderburk. But this time, it was the contributions of two role players that helped pull State through.
Hellems' 16 points are seven more than his season average. But at least he's had big offensive performances before. Bates, on the other hand, has strictly been a defensive stopper in his first season with the Wolfpack.
The 6-foot-11 redshirt freshman did block five shots to add to his ACC-leading total. But he also chipped in with 15 points and 10 rebounds, both career highs, and was 5 of 6 from the floor.
His biggest basket of the day came with only one second left in the half. It came on a play in which he saved the ball from going out of bounds on the baseline, composed himself and scored as he was fouled. He then converted the three-point play to cut a four-point deficit down to 31-30 at the break.
Bates also made the shot that may finally have broken Pitt's spirit during State's decisive final run when he caught a pass from a driving Johnson -- something he hasn't always done well -- and laid the ball in for a 68-63 lead with 4:30 left.
"The reason I played so well is because I wanted to win," Bates said. "I'm here to do whatever Coach wants me to do. If he says rebound, I'm going to rebound. I just had the mentality to get every rebound today. I'm definitely feeling more confident every day."
◼ Taking it to the paint: State has been an inconsistent perimeter shooting team all season and Saturday wasn't one of its better days in that regard.
And yet, for the longest time, its shooters continued to shoot from long range rather than attacking the rim as the Wolfpack has done when it playing at its best. At one point late in the second half, it was just 2 of 10 as a team from three-point range while making nine of its 14 attempts from everywhere else.
State finished the game 5 of 22 (22.7%).
While it did make two big threes during the final eight minutes -- the one by Hellems and another late in the shot clock by Bryce -- it did most of its damage from closer range while finishing the game at 45.6% (26 of 57).
"It's the time of year when you look around college basketball and nobody is shooting the ball well because it's been a long year," Keatts said. "Most teams don't have legs, so we've got to figure out how to drive the basketball more and not settle for threes. I thought that kind of when the game changed around a little, when we stopped settling for threes."
◼ Lockdown defense: Pitt shoots only 28.9 percent from 3-point range for the season, but came out on fire by making three of its four attempts from beyond the arc in the first half.
The Panthers were shooting right around 50 percent overall for the game and always seemed to have an answer during a second half stretch in which the Wolfpack rallied to tie the game three times, but could never get the stop needed to take a lead.
That changed over the final eight minutes, though. Excluding two window dressing baskets in the final seven seconds, Pitt went 1 for 9 from the floor down the stretch (1 of 4 three-pointers) while missing seven free throws.
In all, State held the Panthers scoreless for four critical minutes, allowing it to catch up and pull away. Although Bryce and Daniels didn't play their best offensively, Keatts gave both credit for their play on the other end of the floor, as well as lauding Bates for his five blocked shots.
◼ What does it mean? State came into the game as either one of the last four teams in the NCAA tournament field or one of the first four out, depending on which bracket guesser you prefer. In that regard, nothing changed with Saturday's result. That's actually a win for the Wolfpack, though, because a loss would have put it in a much less advantageous position heading into Monday's short turnaround game at Duke.
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