The Golden Eagles and the Wolfpack square off for the first time since 2009, and their first ever meeting was kind of a big one.
Name: North Carolina State University
Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Founded: The North Carolina state legislature created the school in 1887 as an agriculture and mechanical arts college, and classes began in 1889. The College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts name hung around until 1918 when they dropped the word State into the title and changed Mechanical Arts to Engineering. In the early 1960s, a deeply weird situation happened where there was a protest over changing the name to North Carolina State University, so for about three years there, this was the name of the school:
North Carolina State of the University of North Carolina
Right. You can see how the NCSU people eventually won out.
So, about their relationship with the University of North Carolina: UNC is the older school, having been chartered in 1789 and starting classes in 1795. However, the two institutions did not become part of the University of North Carolina system until consolidation in 1931. This was largely done as a cost-saving measure relative to the Great Depression, although it seems like such a good idea in the first place, y’know?
Enrollment: 37,323 total students as of Fall 2023 with 25,993 of them as undergraduates.
Notable Alumni: Musician John Tesh, perhaps best known for Roundball Rock, the song best known as the NBA On NBC music that is now licensed out to Fox Sports…. y’know, what, that’s a great excuse to just listen to it….. complete with the story of how John Tesh got started on the writing process for it.
Yes, we will watch the sketch from Saturday Night Live about the song…. and yes, that’s Tim Robinson from I Think You Should Leave as John Tesh’s brother Dave.
Other Alumni Who Are Notable, I Guess: Professional wrestler Charlotte Flair; two-time Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones; A.D. Miles, former head writer for The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon; 10-time father and former NFL quarterback Phillip Rivers; and finally, Lara Trump.
Honestly, considering the size and age of NCSU, that felt very disappointing. Get it together, North Carolina State alumni!
Nickname: Wolfpack
Why “Wolfpack”? Because an NCSU graduate wrote a letter to the alumni newsletter in 1921 and suggested it. No, really, that’s the entire story, and that’s what NC State actually says. There was a vote in 1946 as to whether or not to keep the nickname because of a connection to World War II German U-boats, but the students made it very clear what they wanted, and the name became official for all sports in 1947.
All Time Series: NC State leads 3-2, with the last four contests coming by way of home-and-home series in 1991-92 and 2008-09.
Any notable meetings between the two teams? Well, the first one was kind of a big deal. The 1974 NCAA national championship was on the line.
Maurice Lucas (21 points and 13 rebounds) and Bo Ellis (12 points and 11 rebounds) both had a double-double for Marquette, but 21 points from David Thompson and a double-double from Tom Burleson ended up tilting the thing towards the Wolfpack for a final score of 76-64 at Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina.
Preseason Poll: NC State was picked to finish 7th in the 2023-24 ACC preseason poll after finishing 6th with a record of 12-8 last season.
KenPom.com Ranking: #54 after starting the season at #61… and after starting the ACC tournament at #76.
BartTorvik.com Ranking: #55 after starting the season at #69….and after starting the ACC tournament at #79.
This Season: I don’t think anyone in Wolfpack red and white is going to tell you that this was a great season for NC State before the postseason started. Their best win in non-conference action was a neutral site victory over a Vanderbilt team that ended up getting head coach Jerry Stackhouse fired. However, they did turn a 9-3 non-con mark to 3-0 and 5-1 in ACC action, with the only loss there coming against North Carolina. Yes, I’m sure that hurt on an emotional level, but a purely statistical 30,000 foot view level, that’s fine.
Things turned badly from there with a three game skid, which turned into five losses in seven games…. Which turned into six losses in nine games…. Which turned int four straight losses to wrap up the regular season and end up at 9-11 in conference games. Yes, that means they went 4-10 since that start.
That landed NC State the #10 seed in the conference tournament, and the bracketing procedures for their conference tournament meant that they were the best team that had to play in the first round. That also meant that they had to play #15 seed and Noted National Joke Louisville…. And they trailed the Cardinals 28-18 after 10 minutes. This is not 100% surprising, as they had to squeak out an 89-83 loss on the road against UL earlier in the season, but it’s definitely not what you want.
But eventually NC State got it together and they got a 94-85 win to end Kenny Payne’s tenure as UL head coach and advance in the conference tournament….. and NC State hasn’t lost since.
Syracuse, Duke, Virginia in overtime, North Carolina, all fell to the Wolfpack in the ACC tournament. #6 seeded Texas Tech lost to NC State in the first round of the NCAA tournament afte the Wolfpack earned a #11 seed as the auto-bid from the ACC. They arrive in Dallas following a 79-73 overtime victory over #14 seeded Oakland where they trailed 64-62 with two minutes to go in regulation and 69-68 with two minutes to go in overtime. The Wolfpack ran off an 11-1 run to push away from the Golden Grizzlies late and secure the program’s first Sweet 16 appearance since 2015.
Stats Leaders
Points: DJ Horne, 16.7 ppg
Rebounds: Mohamed Diarra, 7.7 rpg
Assists: Michael O’Connell, 3.2 apg
Head Coach: Kevin Keatts, in his seventh season with NC State and 10th season as a Division 1 head coach. He has a record of 137-93 with the Wolfpack and 209-121 overall.
Bigs? Not only is the answer yes, but NC State has different kinds of bigs.
We’ll start with the guy that makes you say “oh, that’s a big dude” when you watch NC State play, and that’s DJ Burns. He’s listed at 6’9” and 275 pounds, and yeah, that makes you wonder if NCSU football coach Dave Doeren keeps approaching him in the athletic facility and saying “y’know, if you ever want to just go through a practice with us….” or something similar. He’s the Wolfpack’s #2 scorer behind Horn at 12.8 points per game, he’s third on the team in rebounding at 4.1 per game, and most interestingly, he’s second in assists at 2.7 per game. Keep in mind, Burns plays less than 25 minutes a game, so those kinds of assist numbers mean he’s actually one of the top 200 guys in the country in assist rate. In short, Burns is a perfect reminder of when you see a guy who looks like him playing high level basketball, that dude absolutely can hoop.
Ben Middlebrooks and Mohamed Diarra are tied as the actual tallest guys on the roster, with both men standing 6’10” tall. Diarra has made his way back into the starting lineup since the middle of February after starting off the year there, and the Missouri transfer will give you 6.4 points and a block to go with that team high in rebounds. Since getting back into the lineup, Diarra is averaging 9.4 points, 10.4 rebounds, just over an assist and a steal, plus two blocks per game in 32 minutes per game. He’s also shooting 38% from long range, so like I said, “different kinds of bigs.”
Middlebrooks picked up three starts along the way this season, but he’s floating around as a reserve behind Burns and Diarra. The Clemson transfer averages just under 16 minutes a night, and chips in 5.8 points and 4.2 rebounds a game, which is pretty good stuff for relatively limited playing time. Middlebrooks also has 25 extra pounds on Diarra, 240 to 215, and he was voted “most likely to be the name I come up with when trying to remember the name of the actor who played the lead on Silicon Valley.”
Shooters? As a team, NC State is a middle of the road long range shooting team, ranking #138 in the country according to KenPom.com. That’s because of something of a feast or famine situation amongst their shooters.
If DJ Horne gets going, Marquette Golden Eagles is in trouble. He’s shooting just over 40% this year and letting it fly more than six times per game. He hit for over 41% in ACC play…. but Horne is struggling with his shot in the postseason. After missing the Louisville ACC tournament game, he’s shooting under 27% on nearly six attempts per game. I think it’s reasonable to wonder if the hip injury that kept him out against the Cardinals is still a problem.
Michael O’Connell (37%), Jayden Taylor (36%), and the aforementioned big shooter Mohamed Diarra (34%) provide enough firepower elsewhere on the floor to help keep things opened up in the middle for DJ Burns to work his particular brand of magic. But then there’s Dennis Parker, playing 15 minutes a night this season before an illness knocked him out for the postseason to this point, but shooting just 30%. Casey Morsell has been a good shooter for NC State since transferring from Virginia, but his touch has completely evaporated this season, going from 41% a year ago to a very not okay 27% on 3.5 attempts per game. He’s actually been worse in the postseason, hitting just 24% of his 3.6 attempts a night.
What To Watch For: We covered a lot of stuff that could end up here on our Three Keys To The Game, and a little bit in our discussion of whether or not Marquette can win the region and advance to the Final Four in Phoenix. Go check those out if you haven’t already.
One thing that we haven’t dealt with in those articles is the dichotomy of NC State being nowhere close to an NCAA tournament bid before winning the ACC tournament and then advancing to the Sweet 16. Thankfully, we have BartTorvik.com and Gary Parrish’s Magical Data Sorting to help us out here.
This is what the Wolfpack looked like as a team before the ACC tournament started.
And this is what they look like in their last 7 games:
Sorry, they’re in the middle of the table now so I can’t keep the column headers on that one, but you’re smart, you can glance back and forth.
Short version! Their offense got great, their defense has been better, they started shooting fewer threes, and if we’re being honest about it……. they might be benefiting from a favorable whistle. Look at the tints on each column! Once you get past offensive and defensive efficiency, the only big change is for both offensive and defensive free throw rate! That’s honestly kind of wild, you’d think that a barely .500 team that’s suddenly knocking poeple out left and right got onto a hot streak of sorts, but that’s just not the case here.
What is the case is what changed for NC State when they put Mohamed Diarra in the starting lineup over the final 13 games. The 6’10” Diarra swapped in for Jayden Taylor, who measures up at 6’4”, so that’s a pretty notable change as far as what Kevin Keatts wanted his team to look like for a wide majority of the game. It did have a major change, too. Up to that point of the year, through Valentine’s Day, BartTorvik.com says that the Wolfpack were the #103 offense in the country and the #61 defense.
After making the move to Diarra? #18 on offense….. but #124 on defense. Now, you have to remember that NC State’s defense has gotten better than their regular season average over the past seven games. This sounds like “took a minute to figure out how to play with Burns and Diarra defending together, but got much better once that happened.” That’s not ideal for Marquette, because that means they’re going up against a Wolfpack squad that miiiiiiiiight have finally put all the pieces to their season together right now.
Then again: What if this is a case where Marquette is free from the burdens of getting past the Round of 32 unlike last season, and they’re free to play their best basketball of the year…. while NC State, the lowest seeded team left alive in the field, turns back into a pumpkin? What if Marquette doesn’t have to worry about coming up with a gameplan for dealing with DJ Burns’ size because they just had a roughly similar experience going against Colorado’s Eddie Lampkin? What if Shaka Smart is spending a not-insignificant amount of time revving up his team by showing them how much press NC State is getting by being the lowest seeded team left in the field and on a magical run in comparison to the attention that they’re getting by being part of the eight best teams in the tournament still being in the tournament?