Irish stymies Wolfpack comeback in the second half as Notre Dame downs NC State, 69-57
N.C. State took time Saturday to honor the Wolfpack’s 1988-89 team, wearing Adidas throwback jerseys, letting the returning players take a bow.
Remember the Pack in ‘89? Jim Valvano the coach. Chris Corchiani and Rodney Monroe in the backcourt — “Fire and Ice,” they called them. That team finished first in the ACC’s regular season.
But that was then.
Corchiani and Monroe are in their early 50s. The Pack has not been at the top of the ACC since 1989 and N.C. State won’t be again this season, losing to Notre Dame 69-57 on Saturday to fall to 3-10 and last in the ACC.
Terquavion Smith had 19 points for the Pack, 10-14 overall after a fourth straight loss, but there was not enough help elsewhere. Dereon Seabron, hampered by a sore neck the past few days, had 14 points but most came late in the game. Casey Morsell and Cam Hayes each had 11 points off the bench, but senior Jericole Hellems was held without a point as the Pack shot a season-low 29.9 percent from the field.
“Tough game for us in that we didn’t have our big three play well,” NCSU coach Kevin Keatts said. “I thought Terquavion Smith did. But you look at Seabron and you look at Jericole, then did not have great games. Those three, when they don’t play great, it’s always a tough situation for us. Even when they play well, we still need one or two guys to play (well) in order to have a chance to win.”
Paul Atkinson Jr. had 15 points for the Irish (9-3 in the ACC, 16-7 overall) as Notre Dame won for the 12th time in the last 14 games and continues to push for an NCAA bid.
A game of runs
In a game of ebb and flow, for each team, the Pack fell behind by 17 points in the first half, recovered, took the lead in the second half, then had Notre Dame surge ahead again with a 24-6 run.
A 2-3 matchup zone by the Irish in the second half completely stymied the Pack’s offense. Notre Dame coach Mike Brey switched to the zone with the Irish trailing 40-37 after a 10-0 Wolfpack run brought the PNC Arena crowd to life.
The Pack, which handled Syracuse’s zone reasonably well Wednesday in an 89-82 loss, had too many offensive possessions become one-and-done against the Irish. Notre Dame responded with an 11-2 push and kept adding to the lead for a comfortable victory.
“I thought we stood around against Notre Dame’s zone and didn’t have a lot of player ball movement, and that hurt us.” Keatts said. “We settled, where if you look at the Syracuse game we drove it, we hit the middle, we passed it inside out, we made shots, we rebounded. I thought we stood around too much today.”
The Irish played much of the game without 6-10 senior Nate Laszewski, who suffered an apparent leg injury early in the game. Hellems left the game early in the second half with a finger injury.
The game was, in a word, weird. The Pack suffered through a miserable first 10 minutes and fell behind 21-4. But just when it appeared it might be methodical Irish blowout, the Pack made enough of a push in the next 10 minutes to trail 33-28 at the break.
“It’s crazy but with this team I never felt they were out of it,” Keatts said. “I know when you look at it and it’s 21-4 but with this team, we had our runs. We have some pride.
“I don’t want to get in the habit of being a team, as we’ve done so many times, that’s down so often early that we have to come back. I didn’t see any panic in our guys. We just didn’t make shots. I didn’t think it was an issue and we kind of erased (the big lead) by halftime.”
The Wolfpack surge continued early in the second half. Three-pointers by Morsell and Hayes, then a driving basket by Hayes gave the Pack its first lead of the game, 38-37, and Seabron ended a 10-0 with two free throws.
Lockdown defense steadies Irish ship
Notre Dame then made the next move, switching to the matchup zone — in the end, a winning move.
A Trey Wertz 3 at the end of what had been a botched possession for the Irish, and a fast-break dunk by Blake Wesley pushed Notre Dame back ahead. The Irish hit 13 of 23 shots from the field in the second half.
“We started off pretty hot and took the lead but around that 12- or 13-minute mark they started running away with it,” Morsell said. “Our mistakes from the first half kind of came back again in that stretch.”
It was nothing but misery for the Pack in the first 10 minutes as nothing would fall. The Irish scored the first 11 points of the game and rolled out to a 17-point lead as N.C.State kept forcing and missing shots.
The Pack did not score until 13:33 was left in the first half, Smith hitting a long 3. At one point, the Wolfpack had missed 20 of 22 shots from the field.
But the Pack kept fighting, clawing its way back into the game.
“It wasn’t like one of those UNC situations where everything kind of went in for them,” Morsell said, referring to last week’s blowout loss at North Carolina. “We were miscommunicating. We weren’t focused and locked in on the little things and details. Then about the 10-minute mark we started to pick it up on the defensive end.”
Back-to-back 3-pointers by Smith spurred a 12-0 Pack run that Smith ended with a fast-break slam. N.C. State was within 27-23 before 3-pointers by Notre Dame’s Wertz and Prentiss Hubb knocked down 3s to give the Irish the 33-28 halftime lead.
In an odd sequence in the first half, Brey, standing in front of the Irish bench, wandered out on the floor to grab a loose ball during play on what would be a Notre Dame backcourt violation. Pack fans howled for a technical foul but the referees conferred and ruled it a Notre Dame turnover and N.C. State’s ball at midcourt.
This story was originally published February 5, 2022 at 5:09 PM with the headline "Irish stymies Wolfpack comeback in the second half as Notre Dame downs NC State, 69-57."
