Welcome to this week’s edition of the “Wolfpack Week in Review.” Here you’ll find a colorful and possibly opinionated recap of all the things that happened this week in the world of North Carolina State sports. The week is from Thursday to Wednesday because we live in a crazy world where few things make sense. Last week it said Wednesday to Wednesday which is embarrassing because that is actually eight days. A week only has seven days, so it’s easy to see where the problem arose. Anyways. . .
Beat Wake Forest
For their third ACC win of the season, the Wolfpack basketball team jumped on the back of Anthony “Cat” Barber. The ACC’s best player exploded out of the gate in the second half, scoring 13 of the Pack’s first 15 points and making five of his first six shot attempts. The team scored 53 points in the second half and he scored 30 of them. NC State is not good, but it’s terrifying to imagine where they would be without Barber, like, really scary. Stop thinking about it.
Barber’s ability to penetrate and also knock down jumpers makes him pretty much impossible to stop one on one. If you’re a State fan, forget about the record at this point and just enjoy the Cat awesomeness, because he’s spectacular despite the season already being burnt toast.
After Cat’s 38, the Pack got quality shooting performances from wing players Caleb Martin and Maverick Rowans, scoring 18 and 20 points respectively. Both are inconsistent shooters that are huge for the offense when they are hitting and awful for it when they are not. The two were 7-16 from three and also hit timely shots down the stretch.
Losing to Wake in Winston-Salem and then beating them at home has become a yearly tradition for the Pack. The home team has won the last nine matchups in the series. You have to go back to Gott’s first season to find a road victory for either team.
Lost by a Big Number to Virginia
Virginia is ruining the fun of basketball, because winning is fun, and that never happens when you play Virginia.
NC State had been competitive in every ACC loss this season. They were run out of the building in Charlottesville. This isn’t just because NC State is bad. Virginia is truly a very good basketball team and the Pack had pretty much no answer for their immovable object of a defense after the first five minutes. They are efficient and are given all the credit they deserve for Monday’s beatdown. That said, NC State was physically painful to watch after halftime. Barber was the leading scorer again, but this time he only had 14 points, which is much less than 38. Looks like all those math classes I took did pay off.
The Pack shot less than 19 percent from three. Rowan and Martin were 2-12 from distance and 2-17 overall. At this point, you should be okay with these guys continuing to shoot, even if it’s hailing bricks. Every minute from here on out is basically just experience, which can be valuable to a freshman like Rowan. I hope they continue to shoot the ball because they’ve both shown flashes and it’s not like they’re hurting anything at this point.
Here’s another stat line that will make your eyes bleed. Virginia’s Anthony Gill notched 13 rebounds, which is six more than BeeJay Anya, Lennard Freeman, and Abdul Malik-Abu combined. State took a ton of perimeter shots in the second half, which might have had a small effect on the amount of rebounds the big guys got, but not to anywhere near the level of seven combined boards for the entire game. Abu also did not have a field goal attempt. It’s all very bad and everybody should just forget Monday night happened. I’ve already forgotten about it. What am I talking about? I don’t even know, but certainly not any recent basketball contests. What even is a Virginia?
Image Credit: WRAL sports fan
Stats from ESPN
The Armchair All-Americans 