NEW YORK — N.C. State, true to its nature, kept pace with Clemson for the entire game. It narrowed but could never close the gap in the second half, as was often the case this season. And that season ended, like a school-record 20 games prior, in a loss.
The Wolfpack’s final game was like so many that preceded it in so many ways: Unable to make the little plays that are the difference between winning and losing in the ACC, even on Tuesday in the ACC tournament, let alone better opposition. The Wolfpack was within five in the final 75 seconds of a 70-64 loss, and that was as close as it could get – an all-too-familiar scenario this season, relived one final time.
At one point in the second half, N.C. State knocked the ball loose on defense. Jericole Hellems fell to the floor in the scramble for it. The ball bounced right to a Clemson player, who fed Hellems’ unguarded man for an open 3-pointer.
Clemson, like any team with a functioning big man, was a terrible matchup for the Wolfpack but the Wolfpack managed to stay within reach of the Tigers even as Terquavion Smith missed his first 11 shots. On his 19th try, he made his first field goal of the season against Clemson, which moves on to play Virginia Tech on Wednesday.
N.C. State, inevitably, goes home.
“I’m the first to admit this was a tough year,” N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said. “But if i’m going to go through a tough year, these are the guys I want to go through it with.”
The Wolfpack remains 0-for-Brooklyn, in the ACC tournament anyway, and in some ways N.C. State is still trying to recover from the circumstances surrounding the first two.
In 2017, Mark Gottfried and Dennis Smith Jr. walked off the floor arm-in-arm after a loss to Clemson put an end to a dismal season that had already cost Gottfried his job – not to mention the recruitment of Smith that would ensnare the university in an NCAA investigation that was only finally litigated this spring.
A year later, in Keatts’ first ACC tournament, the favored and NCAA-bound Wolfpack managed to lose to Boston College – only days after Keatts insisted the Wolfpack had been able to “stuff the N.C. State Stuff” – in a fevered frenzy of N.C. State Stuff: A botched inbounds play and a timeout called without any timeouts.
Now finally out from under NCAA scrutiny but still dealing with the unstuffed N.C. State Stuff that reared its head in the first minute of the first game when Manny Bates was lost for the season, another season came to a quick – and, in this case, merciful – end in Brooklyn.
The numbers, at the end, were staggering: a school-record 21 losses and one win in the final 12 games, the worst season since Les Robinson was trying to maneuver the Wolfpack through the aftermath of a very different scandal.
This was never going to be a breakthrough season for N.C. State, but it certainly looked in December like it would be far better than this, a team that wasn’t going to win every night but at least had the explosive potential to win every night.
On December 12, in this same building, N.C. State had a double-digit lead on then-top-ranked Purdue with nine minutes to go. It would have been one of the upsets of the season and a confidence boost for a young, uneven team like a shot of B-12 in the arm.
Instead, in very much the same way the entire season would proceed, N.C. State was outscored 25-12 in the final minutes before folding entirely in overtime. That was the start of a five-game losing streak for N.C. State that included one truly unacceptable loss to Wright State, and the beginning of the end.
The Wolfpack wasn’t often blown out, but it rarely won after that, either. And for all the fight, there were never the results to follow.
Over the vocal objections of a portion of the fan base, Keatts will get at least another year, athletic director Boo Corrigan has made clear, but the way this season ended probably makes next season more of a barometer of his future than it would otherwise.
If Keatts can keep the core of this roster together, N.C. State brings in two four-star recruits and could potentially add five-star guard commitment Robert Dillingham if he reclassifies from 2023 to 2022, as has been rumored to be a possibility.
“We know when conference games come, every game going to be a possession game,” said Dereon Seabron, who finished the season with a 19-point, 12-rebound double-double. “We have to focus in on the littler things -- boxing out, loose balls, value possession. We know these games come down to one possession.”
Whatever that future holds, it’s finally time to look forward. N.C. State’s season ended long ago. This was merely the punctuation, a period at the end of a story no one’s going to want to tell again, except as a cautionary tale. Everyone can move on now. There’s nothing left to see here.
