Carolina Sports News

Carolina Sports News

What Went Wrong?

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NCAA Basketball: Coppin State at N.C. State
Coach Keatts looking for help | Jaylynn Nash-Imagn Images

And can we fix it?

How did a season that looked so promising, turn so bad?

We are halfway through the ACC season and the 2024 ACC Champion Wolfpack has been painful to watch, no doubt about it. Losing double-digit leads against UVA, VT & Duke? Losing to UNC by 2 at home? (and all of that blue in the stands?) Double-digit losses in 3 of 4 OOC resume games. A six game (and counting) losing streak? Not pleasant at all.

However, howl away as you will, there is a near zero percent possibility of a coaching change after this season. But why are they so bad? What went wrong, or looked at from a ‘half full’ perspective, what could have gone right? I’ll look at:

  1. Current Statistical snapshot
  2. Offense
  3. Injuries
  4. Departures
  5. Mike James
  6. Disappointments

As noted in the table above, NC State ranks mediocre-to-bad in most of the ACC conference game statistics. And if you can’t win the OOC resume builders (which seems to be the case most of the time), you’d better do well in your conference, and we are largely what the stats indicate – mediocre-to-bad in our conference.

Offense:

The frustrating thing about the offense is that during transfer season when talking about the transfers we signed, Coach Keatts specifically said they’d brought in 4 double digit scorers to address the 3 double-digit scorers lost – plus he had already signed a high school scoring machine.

Equally frustrating, if you look at only the P4 games we have played in which we are 2-12, we’ve taken an average of 56.9 field goal attempts per game to our opponent’s 54.4. And we’ve taken an average of 19.4 3PT shots to our opponents 18.9 3PT shots. We’re getting shots! KenPom ranks us 222nd in 2PT% shooting and 269th in 3PT% shooting. We’re a team of bad shooters. (bad shooting can be attributed to poor shot selection or poor shot execution – we’ve got both)

Can it be fixed? We’ve shown that on occasional nights, we can shoot well. But it hasn’t been reliable and seldom lasts an entire game.

Injuries:

Almost every season of Coach Keatts’ tenure, we have lost key players, mostly to injury. I suppose it happens to other teams, but the consistency at NC State is bizarre.

  • Year 1 – No significant injuries, finished 3rd in ACC
  • Year 2 – Manny Bates out for season
  • Year 3 – Bryce missed 6 games, Andree 5, Dixon 13, Funderburk 2, Seabron missed the entire season due to academics
  • Year 4 – Daniels only played 12 games, out for season. Beverly had a back injury that hampered him much of the season.
  • Year 5 – Manny Bates out for season, Gantt out for season, Ross played 14 games and missed remainder
  • Year 6 – Mahorcic lost for season in Dec, Clark out for 7 games, Gantt missed first half of season due to injury the previous season
  • Year 7 – Diarra injured in December but played through it – reduced minutes and effectiveness. Took about 5-6 games to recover. Dennis Parker Jr. missed the final 12 games due to illness. Horne missed the first ACCT game against Louisville, O’Connell pulled a hamstring 10-12 minutes into the Final Four game against Purdue and couldn’t finish.
  • Year 8 – (so far) James, Middlebrooks (UVA loss), Huntley-Hatfield (UNC, VT, Clemson losses) Both Middlebrooks and H-H’s missed games were all decisions at the pre-game shootaround.

Departures

The portal giveth, and the portal taketh away.

  1. Mo Diarra – You can’t blame an international player for wanting to go home. He’s playing pro ball back home in France averaging 17.6 minutes per game, 8.1 ppg, 6.1 rpg, and 1.6 apg. In his best game so far, he played 25:29 mins and scored 7 pts, 16 reb, and 4 assists. After his incredible transformation from Missouri to NC State last season, you have to wonder what one more season would have looked like in Raleigh, and if the NBA would have beaten down his door afterwards. One thing is certain, he would have made a HUGE difference on this season’s team at both ends of the court.
  2. LJ Thomas – He’s at Austin Peay averaging 32.4 mins per game. 15.2 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 3 apg. 22% from 3PT this season.
  3. Kam Woods – He’s at Robert Morris averaging 34 mins per game, 14.5 ppg, 4.1 rpg, and 4.6 apg.

Mike James

Not everyone agrees, but I believe James would have been a starter. He had started every game of his career (64 games – injury redshirt his entire freshman season) and for his career averaged double digits and more than 4 rebounds. In the ACC! Neither Styles nor Huntley-Hatfield can say that. If I’m right, we are playing another season without a starter. However, whether he started or not, we can all agree he would have gotten significant minutes and could have helped.

How would he have fit in?

He scored double digits in 22 (of 32) games, including 20+ 4 times, had 5+ rebounds 16 times, hit 5 3PT shots in two ACC games (34% overall), and shot 81.8% FT last season. Obviously, there are no guarantees he would replicate those numbers, but it looks like he could have helped areas in which we are sadly lacking, offense and rebounding.

Where would he have fit in?

James is 6’5” 200 lbs, a little bigger than Taylor. He’s not much of a distributor, he averaged 1.5 apg as a sophomore, similar to Taylor this season. He prefers to drive the basket and is a great FT shooter but also has a better 3PT shot than Hill. So, he would have played either the 2 or the 3. I think that would have put pressure on the staff to push Hill into the PG rotation so that we could have three offensive threats at guard on the floor at the same time. Hill is a good passer, he’s had games of 4, 5, and 6 assists this season without spending much time at PG.

How much of a difference would he have made?

This is a team with too many problems to be solved by one player. But he’s a good player and a good size, and we need more of both. Hopefully, we’ll see what he can do next season.

Can it be fixed? Seems unlikely he’ll contribute this season. The more pertinent question is will he transfer? Assuming he redshirts, he’ll still have two seasons available.

Disappointments:

Brandon Huntley-Hatfield and Dontrez Styles were two critical pieces that HAD TO WORK for us this season. Both were double-digit scorers, both good rebounders. And both have been disappointments.

Brandon Huntley-Hatfield – I think BHH has emerged as the biggest disappointment this season. It’s his senior season, his ‘resume season.’ We expected him to replicate the previous season minimally but ideally improve on it as other transfers have. He’s averaging 4 fewer points and 3 fewer rebounds per game and is struggling defensively. We DID NOT anticipate him playing off the bench.

BHH, on paper, was an outstanding replacement for Burns and Diarra. He was a 247 5-star, top 25 HS recruit, and ranked 4-star, #51 as a transfer. On paper, possibly the best player this staff has signed. Compare his Louisville season stats to Burns and Diarra in the table.

Making Huntley-Hatfield’s numbers look better, he had his 12 double-digit rebound games in the 31-game regular season. Diarra only had 7 in the regular season.

But Huntley-Hatfield has not impacted the game even a fraction of the way Burns or Diarra did. There is no comparison! (but there should be)

Dontrez Styles – ‘Trez’ might have turned a corner. In his brochure, it said he’d give us really good shooting and rebounding, and we had high hopes he’d be another Hellems / Dorn / Bryce / Clark. We were disappointed … and then there was a glimmer against SMU. His 12 points were his second most in an ACC game. Then he went to Cameron and shot 58.3% / 66.7% and got 18. Followed by Clemson 64.3% / 75% with a season high 24 and career high 6 3PT shots made. That’s the guy we were hoping for. Can he keep it up?

Can it be fixed? Yes, they’ve shown they can play better and do it more consistently. Trez is on fire right now. If these two can play consistently to their potential, we’ll be a pretty good team.

What Can We Fix?

  1. Consistency – As Coach Keatts has said several times, we are playing really well for short periods of time. We need to maintain that level of play, and if so, we will be in most games. That’s the challenge for most college teams.
  2. Scoring – Similar to the previous point, our scorers need to contribute every game. Our top 5 scorers average better than 50 points per game. If they do that, we should be competitive.
  3. Leadership – O’Connell, Middlebrooks, Taylor, Huntley-Hatfield, Styles, and Pass are all 3+ year players and should be a stabilizing force on this team. They need to be the ones keeping their composure and making the smart plays at critical moments. This is not yet happening.

Can we turn this thing around? (Depends on your definition)

NC State is ranked NET 109. The back half of the ACC schedule is Cal (NET 130 – Away), Stanford (#72 – A), Lou (#30 – H), BC (#217 – H), UNC (#44 – A), WF (#69 – H), Syr (#133 – A), GT (#128 – A), Pitt (#36 – H), and Miami (#230 – A).

Will we make the tournament? The ACC tournament? Yes, we can do that. The NCAA tournament? Nope, not this season. The NIT tournament? With a strong turnaround in the second half, we might make the NIT. The NIT now uses the NET. The ACC automatic qualifiers (and 1st round hosts) will be the two teams with the highest NET not selected for the NCAAT. Then there will be 20 ‘at large’ qualifiers. We should be candidates if our NET is ranked in the top half of the ACC and play well late in the season.

Or we could win the ACC Tournament. Why Not Us?