ACC Champion NC State Hosts the USC Upstate Spartans

And so begins the first leg of our journey to the 2025 NCAA Tournament

When: Monday November 4, 7:00 PM

Where: The Lenovo Center (venue previously known as PNC Arena)

TV: ACC Network Extra

Opponent: USC Update Spartans (Big South Conference)

Predictions – KenPom (KP) / Bart Torvik (BT): KP – NC State 86-60, BT – NC State 82-59

Wolfpack Snapshot: KP #53, BT #58

Wolfpack Season So Far: (1-1 in exhibitions)

Wolfpack Injury Report:

• Mike James has a knee issue (described as “nothing major” by renowned arthroscopic surgeon Kevin Keatts); arthroscopic surgery was Wednesday (10/30). Expected to miss 3-4 weeks.
• Dennis Parker, Jr has a matching set of sprained ankles (renowned sprained ankle specialist Kevin Keatts indicates they are not serious), but no ETA on his return

Opponent Overview: KP #349, BT #345 – 10-20 / 5-11 last season. Big South voters predicted them to finish last in the league this season.

This will be the third meeting, we are 2-0. The last meeting was a 98-71 win in 2018 and Eric Lockett (remember him?) led our scoring.

Coach Marty Richter is in his first season at USC Upstate. He has two seasons’ experience as a head coach, both at JUCO Florida Southwestern State. He most recently spent five years at Drake as an assistant under new WVU coach Darian Devries.

The Spartans only return one player, guard CJ Rich, who accumulated 9 minutes last season. He is expected to improve on that total this season.

Redshirt freshman guard 6’3” Chico Johnson is expected to be a team standout. Johnson followed Coach Richter from Drake after spending his rookie season rehabbing a torn ACL.

“Be ready to play for NC State. And if you do, I promise you you’ll get the reward that we got last year”

The Pack has five winnable home games to prepare for our first three ‘resume games’ starting November 28 in San Diego. (notice that both Purdue and Texas are predicted to be close) Based on both sets of preseason predictions in the table above, the five ‘prep’ games are expected to generally increase in difficulty, which is good. [Caveat: Preseason predictions are done with Ouija boards]

Goals for game #1:

Fix everything that was wrong in the Lees-McRae exhibition game (too much?) How about:

1. The bigs – Huntley-Hatfield / Middlebrooks / Diouf

• Get involved in the half-court offense – that should improve both scoring and shooting percentages
• Defend the basket better – no easy baskets
• Improve rebounding

2. Cut down turnovers – 8 different players turned the ball over in the exhibition. Yikes

3. Run the offense – Play the full roster, but keep the lineups functional

4. No more injuries! – One knee and two ankles is plenty, thank you.