Wolfpack Tipoff: Game 31, Wake Forest
NC State (18-12, 9-10 ACC) vs. Wake Forest (13-16, 6-13)
PNC Arena (19,772)
7 p.m., ACC Network (PxP: Wes Durham; Analyst: Paul Biancardi)
Streaming: ACC Network Extra; Satellite radio: Sirius XM 972; Live stats: GoPack.com
Series history: State leads 145-106 (State leads 61-24 in Raleigh)
Last meeting: State won 91-82 at Joel Coliseum, Dec. 7, 2019
Most recent game: State lost to Duke 88-69; Wake lost to UNC 93-83
BetOnline line: State minus-7 1/2 | Over/Under 151 1/2
PROJECTED STARTERS
NC State stats | Wake Forest stats
| NC STATE | State | WAKE FOREST | Stats | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Markell Johnson | 6-1 Senior | 13.0 ppg 6.5 apg | Brandon Childress | 6-0 Senior | 15.4 ppg 4.7 apg |
Devon Daniels | 6-5 Redshirt Junior | 12.4 ppg 5.3 rpg | Jahcobi Neath | 6-3 Freshman | 5.0 ppg 2.0 apg |
C.J. Bryce | 6-5 Redshirt Senior | 13.4 ppg 6.1 rpg | Chaundee Brown | 6-5 Junior | 12.5 ppg 6.3 rpg |
D.J. Funderburk | 6-10 Junior | 12.6 ppg 6.1 rpg | Isaiah Mucius | 6-8 Sophomore | 7.0 ppg 4.7 rpg |
Manny Bates | 6-11 Redshirt Freshman | 5.2 ppg 2.9 bpg | Olivier Sarr | 7-0 Junior | 13.5 ppg 8.9 rpg |
THEY SAID IT
"I don’t know about easy to flush. We had a great opportunity to come in here and beat a good team on their home floor, so I don’t flush any loss. I don’t. My kids may be over it in about three or four hours. I’m going to watch the game film again. I’m going to do it to myself again. We’ve got to get better." Coach Kevin Keatts on bouning back from Monday's loss at Duke
"You go back to practice and there should be, will be a level of frustration. You should be mad and we've got to harness those energy-generating behaviors and put them into our game plan and go execute." Wake Forest coach Danny Manning after Tuesday's loss at UNC
"(We've got to) get back to the drawing board and work on the things we need to work on and just take care of the next game ahead of us," sophomore forward Jericole Hellems said. "For us, it's hard to lose one like (Duke) that we know we can handle. But we've got to worry about the next game." Sophomore forward Jericole Hellems
NOTABLE
Friday will be the final game at PNC Arena for seniors Markell Johnson and C.J. Bryce, along with graduate transfers Pat Andree and Danny Dixon. ...
Johnson played all four years at State and is just the third player in program history to record 1,100 points, 500 assists and 150 steals in his career. Bryce came to the Wolfpack with coach Kevin Keatts after spending his first two seasons at UNC Wilmington. He enters Friday's regular season finale having started 57 of his 62 career games at State, scoring 765 points in his two seasons. ...
Andree and Dixon are finishing their only season at State. Andree made 23 three-pointers in the first 11 games of the season before being slowed by ankle injuries. Dixon has provided front court depth behind Manny Bates and D.J. Funderburk. With Bates out of the lineup in January, Dixon stepped in and played a season-best 15 minutes and pulled down a season-high five rebounds in the Wolfpack's win at reigning national champion, Virginia. ...
Johnson enters the game with 189 assists for the season and 586 for his career. He needs two assists to establish a career high for assists in a season and four to move past Lorenzo Brown for third on the program’s all-time list. He is eight assists away from moving into the top 10 for assists in a season. ...
Friday's game is the 100th at State for coach Kevin Keatts. His record over that stretch is 63-36, including seven wins against ranked opponents and five against teams ranked in the nation's top 10. Keatts took over a program that had only won nine ACC games combined in the two seasons before he was hired. In his three seasons, the Wolfpack has won at least nine each year and 29 ACC games overall ...
Sophomore forward Jericole Hellems is averaging 13.0 points per game on 59.4% (19-of-32) shooting over his past four games, including 54.5% (6-of-11) from three-point range. ...
State enters the final weekend of the regular season with two players atop of the league in individual statistics. Freshman Manny Bates leads the league and is sixth nationallyu with an average of 2.93 blocks per game and Markell Johnson leads the conference and ranks 11th in the nation at 6.52 assists per game. ...
Bates is trying to BeeJay Anya in 2014-15 to lead the ACC in blocks since the blocked shot became an official statistic in 1976-77. He can become the first freshman to lead the ACC in blocks since Florida State's Solomon Alabi in the 2008-09 season. ...
Johnson previously lead the ACC in assists as a sophomore and can become the first ACC player to win multiple assist titles since North Carolina’s Kendall Marshall in 2010-11 and 2011-12. Johnson would become the first State player to lead the conference in assists more than once since Chris Corchiani in 1988-89 and 1990-91.
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