NC State wasn’t at its best, but its growth was on display in its 74-63 win over Elon
The trio of guards walked back onto the court with a good chunk of time remaining in the television break. A long conversation ensued, with all three players acting out screens at various times, demonstrating how Elon was catching N.C. State taking short cuts on defense and how to stop it.
This is how it’s supposed to work: Older players coaching up younger players, open lines of communication, an attention to not only the details of defense but the commitment required. Safe to say, it’s not a conversation that would ever have happened among the Wolfpack last year.
“That’s the key,” N.C. State guard Casey Morsell said. “Last year, we didn’t guard as well. We were a hell of a team on the offensive end, but we didn’t guard on defense. It was just hard to win.”
But Terquavion Smith is more comfortable in his skin as a star, a better listener after going through the NBA draft process. Jarkell Joiner has been through a lot in his college career. And Morsell is no longer a newcomer but a veteran, now surrounded by other veterans. It’s a conversation those three players can have, organically, among themselves, coaching each other.
“I think that’s what’s going to help us down the stretch, that they’re able to talk their way through things,” N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said. “That’s a good positive. And that comes with having some veteran guys who have played college basketball, who have seen those types of plays before.”
N.C. State’s 74-63 win over Elon on Saturday afternoon was far from perfect, and in some ways that was the beauty of it. Keatts wouldn’t go so far as to say it was the kind of game the Wolfpack would have lost last season, but when Elon cut it to five points late, it started to feel like it was. N.C. State turned it up on defense when it had to, finally figured out that getting the ball to Jack Clark inside was a better option than trying to shoot Elon out of its zone.
In the end, the Wolfpack moved to 4-0 by winning the kind of game teams all over the ACC have lost – to Bellarmine, Colgate, Maine, Stetson, Troy, Wright State – this November.
“This team understood when we needed a stop or basket,” Keatts said. “When it got to five they kind of looked up like, ‘Oh my goodness, we’ve got to play now.’ I don’t know that we would have had that last year.”
Clark led N.C. State with 21 points, Smith had 16 and Morsell 15, while Dusan Mahorcic missed a free throw in the final seconds that would have given him a double-double. If that’s the worst thing that happens, it’s a good afternoon.
The Wolfpack was far from its best and still played well enough to win, which is the 180-degree opposite of last year, when N.C. State had to be at its absolute best just to have a chance, even before plunging into the deep waters of ACC play. And, fairly, N.C. State made it through this portion of the season a year ago before the wheels came off, but it’s also impossible not to see progress.
“It’s just different, the energy this year,” Smith said.
The bar gets a lot higher in four days, when N.C. State faces Kansas and the newly unsuspended Bill Self in the Bahamas, in the same tournament where Keatts sprung an upset on Arizona in his first season. At least through these four games, all of the major changes of the offseason have done what they were supposed to do.
The addition of veteran players like Joiner and Clark and Mahorcic has given the Wolfpack the foundation it lacked a year ago. (“No, you, Dusan. You!” Joiner said as he arranged Clark and Mahorcic at one point, getting the right screen in place before running a play that ended in a basket.) The turnover on the staff has had a visible calming effect.
And Smith continues to develop, not only as an explosive offensive player but on the defensive end of the court – where his athleticism and length should make him a major weapon, and he followed up his six-steal game in the blowout of Florida International with two deflections before the first TV timeout Saturday.
And while it may take a bit for the word to spread among Wolfpack fans worn out not just by last season but the many years without true success in basketball – Saturday’s sparse crowd was a function of not only that ongoing dynamic but an impending football game at Louisville and an in-state, but hardly show-stopping, opponent – it does appear that the mood has shifted around the team, to the extent anyone can tell in November.
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This story was originally published November 19, 2022 at 4:29 PM with the headline "NC State wasn’t at its best, but its growth was on display in its 74-63 win over Elon."
