State traveled to Winston-Salem to take on last place Wake Forest yesterday. Wake has decidedly been the worst team in the league this season, possibly the worst ACC team of the last several years. But with the way State has been falling apart of late by no means was this an expected win, in a game that became a game for outright last place in the conference.
State finally showed up for 40 minutes though and led wire-to-wire starting with an 8-0 run to start the game, and extending the lead to as much as 25. In the end they notched their third ACC win of the season, their second 20+ point win over Wake, and their first road win of the season, though they did beat Elon at the Greensboro Colosseum on a neutral floor.
Tracy Smith scored 20 points and had 8 rebounds. CJ Leslie returned from what turned out to be a one game suspension and scored 19 points and had 8 rebounds. He had his best game against a non-cupcake I'd say.
Lorenzo Brown had 7 assists along with 7 points. Ryan Harrow added 9 points, 6 assists, and a couple steals.
State looked good, shooting over 55% from the floor. It wasn't just that they looked good against the ACC's last place team. Granted Wake's defense makes things easier than say Duke or UNC but still, State figured out exactly what their game plan was early and went to it. That was getting the ball down low to Smith and Leslie. That was picking some spots to run and beat the defense down the floor before it could get set, resulting in some easy dunks for Leslie and Smith.
Get Leslie going early and frustration doesn't take over I believe. Rather than chucking up long threes and trying to go one-on-one starting from beyond the key, he ran the floor for easy baskets. He used his athleticism to get on the offensive glass for some points. He operated more like 6-7 feet from the basket if he wanted to take someone one-on-one, denying a ton of help from coming and leading to either baskets or a trip to the line. Leslie doesn't have a sophisticated offensive game yet, but he has some very big strong points when he works to his strengths as he did yesterday.
State also shared the ball and had motion in their offense. 7 players had assists in the game. 4 players had at least 3 assists.
Scott Wood was bottled up from behind the arc but scored 9 points. 3 of his 4 baskets were of the two point variety. Coming into the game the commentators said that something like 136 of the 170 shot attempts that he'd taken on the season had been 3's. 3-point sniper or not I think he needs to show a bit more diversity. If he frees up for some mid-range jumpers or some cuts to the basket that's going to keep the defense from camping out beyond the arc just waiting to find him. Lack of predictability may free him up for some 3's. That's not all on him either. It looked like he was moving without the ball well throughout the game (though maybe better yesterday than previously), he just didn't usually receive the ball until he was behind the arc.
At this point the NCAA is out of the question unless State literally runs the table the rest of the season and at least makes it to Sunday in the ACC Tournament. They may well need to win on Championship Sunday. Maybe a run though could save Lowe's job. Would it be ideal if Lowe could figure something out with this team, keep his job, keep this young team together and add the 5-star legitimate 7-footer and the other highly ranked power forward to the class next year? Yes. But they need to show an awful lot right now or it's not happening.
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