When: Saturday, December 7th – 4:00 p.m

Where: Lenovo Center (venue formerly known as PNC Arena)

TV: ESPNU

Opponent: Florida State Seminoles (ACC)

Prediction – KenPom (KP) / Bart Torvik (BT): Wolfpack 73-71 / Wolfpack 74 – 70

Wolf Pack Snapshot: KP No. 75 / BT No. 71 / NET 120

Wolfpack season so far: 5-3

Wolfpack Players Notes:

• Mike James was born on October 30th. operated on the knee. Expected to be out for 3-4 weeks.

Opponent overview:

Coach Leonard Hamilton’s Seminoles were picked to finish 15th^Th in the league this season.

FSU’s departures were hit hard, with six players starting more than one game last season and only Jamir Watkins returning. Luckily for Coach Hamilton, he was their leading scorer and rebounder. Two other key bench players returned, Jackson and Bol Bowen.

They added four transfers. Guards Bostyn Holt of South Dakota and Jason Simpson of St. John’s are expected to make immediate contributions. Hampton forward Jerry Deng and top JUCO player Malique Ewin complete the list of transfers.

Hamilton also brought in five freshmen; The most famous is CG Daquan Davis (4 stars, 247 #91) from OTE. They also added guard Anastasios Rozakeas from Greece, 6’3″ forward Christian Nitu from Canada, as well as 3-star forward AJ Swinton and 3-star 7’0″ center Alier Maluk.

Your season so far: 7-2 CP #63 / BT #70 / NET 73

FSU has played a decent schedule; one that, based on the rankings, appears to be tougher than ours. It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference in the long term. So far they have lost their two tough games.

Their first three games were wins against Northern Kentucky (KP 200) (+12), Rice (KP 164) (+8) and Tarleton State (KP 317) (+20).

They then hosted the Florida Gators (KP 8), were down 44:31 at halftime and even lost 87:74 for the rest of the game. The Gators outshot FSU 52.46% / 35.71% / 76.47% to 38.57% / 35% / 61.9% and outgained them by 18. The stat that kept the Seminoles in the game was that they forced 19 turnovers.

Next came wins against Hofstra (KP 163) (+18), Temple (KP 115) (+9), UMass (KP 166) (+33) and Western Carolina (KP 296) (+34).

FSU drew with LSU in the ACC/SEC Challenge and performed well in the first half, leading 35-32 at halftime behind Ewin’s 13 points. Then after halftime, LSU came out and scored 8 goals in a row and never looked back, winning 85-75. The Tigers got it done in the second half by shutting down Ewin, the hot hand, holding him to 4 second half points and forcing 7 turnovers.

Player notes:

Jamir Watkins is 8^Th In the ACC, he scored 30 points against Rice

The ‘Noles bring some strong shooters off the bench. 6-foot-1 guard Justin Thomas is shooting 41.7% (10/24 – 2.6 attempts per game, 7.4 points per game) and 6-foot-1 forward Jerry Deng is shooting 37.8% (14th). /37 – 4.3 attempts per game, 6.7 points per game) from 3PT.

View of the wolf pack

As we watch our dreams of Selection Sunday relevance turn to dust via OOC wins, we shift our focus to the ACC regular season. Our most likely path to the postseason is now through ACC wins. We just saw the SEC destroy the ACC this week. Are we all terrible? How does NC State stack up against the ACC in some key statistical categories so far?

• Rating – The Pack ranks 14th in the ACC with 74.6 ppg. But as the table shows, we are having difficulty scoring points against the better competition.
• High-scoring Defense – We are 5th in the ACC at 65.5 ppg and look like we can do it against better teams. We held Texas 20 points below its season average, its lowest point total of the season. BYU averaged 90 ppg and we held them to 18 points below their average, their second-lowest point total of the season. But in both cases we were their first tough competition. Last season our opponents averaged 71.8 ppg. Our defense is ahead of our offense at this point.
• Field Goal Percentage – We currently rank 6th in the ACC. But we had a difficult time in the last three games against the adults. The average of the final three would put us at the bottom of the ACC standings.
• Three-point ratio – this is no surprise, but it is noteworthy that we have exceeded our season average in the last two games.
• Three points per game – No surprise, teams will challenge us to shoot all season long.
• Free throw rate – No surprise here either (And no apology)
• Rebounding – We are ranked 15th, but if you use the last three games as our average, we would be 18th.
• Assists – We share the ball well and that didn’t slow down too much even against the better competition.
• Turnovers – We are tied for 13th with 10.3 turnovers per game, but we force 14.9. Our margin of 4.63 ranks 1st in the ACC. Our assist/turnover ratio is 1.41, ranking 8th in the ACC. Our trend seems to be going in the right direction.
• Steals – We are currently ranked 4th, but against P4 competition we averaged 4.6, which is near the bottom of the ACC.

What does it mean?

(Caveat: Just a reminder that these ACC stats are based on very different schedule strengths and each ACC team is a work in progress.)

If you’ve been paying attention, it won’t be a surprise to learn that the Wolfpack are far from ready for the ACC wars in “early December.” Luckily, we still have four games left to improve before the season begins full time on December 31st in Charlottesville. We have seen improvements in the first 8 games. We will need more.