Box Score

To no one's surprise, Wake Forest put forth a much better effort in the rematch, because the announcement that Wake and State would be primary partners going forward completely changed the approach and intensity leading up to this game. Whereas once they despaired for want of a reason to go on, now they had purpose. And so it was that C.J. Harris rose above and dropped through the rim 21 points-worth of success, and Tony Chennault restored seven possessions, and La Forward Nikita...let's move on.

Scott Wood helped State's offense regain its effectiveness in the first half with some hot shooting, which was good since Wake decided to hit a bunch of shots from beyond the arc as well. I guess we should have seen that coming after the Winston-Salem fiasco. C.J. Williams hit seven of 10 two-point attempts, maybe not overly surprising since he came into the day shooting 60% from inside the arc, but I'm still amazed by how reliable he's become. His mid-range jump shot has become a thing of beauty. I'm not sure he's received enough recognition around the league for how much better he's gotten this year. Dude has been huge for this team.

It was also good to see Lorenzo Brown get back into something resembling a groove at the offensive end; he had a very good second half, and finished with eight assists versus two turnovers. We're better when he's being assertive offensively.

TV: ACC Network (Tim Brant, Dan Bonner OH MY)

I guess at some point we'll have to try to take this future rivalry game up a notch or something. I don't know how just yet though. I'm sure we'll think of stuff.

On Friday afternoon, the ACC announced the scheduling changes that will be made in order to accommodate Pittsburgh and Syracuse. In basketball, that means not only a move to an 18-game conference schedule, but also an adjustment to how the primary partners (schools guaranteed to play each other twice each season) are set up. More specifically for NC State, it means fewer games against the Tar Heels.

Under the expanded 18-game basketball schedule, each school will only have one permanent partner, as opposed the three-partner model that has been used since the league expanded in 2004. State's partner will be Wake Forest and Carolina will pair up with Duke. That means State and Carolina will only play once twice a season in one of every three years.

So State will play Wake Forest six times in every three-year cycle, and Duke and UNC four times each. Obviously when they decided to go with this model, there was never going to be any way around a Duke-UNC pairing, and everybody loses to some extent. It's a shame the Big Four matchups will decrease like this, but such is the reality of expansion I suppose.

Additional info from the N&O, including a list of how the primary partners are arranged.

According to the scheduling model's three-year cycle, ACC teams will play every league opponent at least once in basketball, with the primary partners playing home and away annually while the other 12 rotate in groups of four:

--One year both home and away

-- One year at home only

-- One year away only.

Maryland probably got the worst of it in being paired with Pittsburgh, unless they have some history I don't know about. Boston College and Syracuse at least have their mutual Big East history to draw from, and all of the other pairings make sense from both geographical and historical perspectives.

On the football side of things, the league is keeping the current division structure and simply adding Pittsburgh to the Coastal and Syracuse to the Atlantic. The inter-division primary partner situation won't change, meaning that State will continue to play UNC each year in football. The league is moving to a nine-game conference schedule, which allows for six division games, a game against the primary partner from the other division, and games against two rotating opponents from the other division.

Box Score

The only reason State came away with a conference win on Wednesday night was because Boston College was the opponent, but hey, give the team credit for good timing: if State was going to lay a huge egg like it did tonight, there was no better day on which to do it.

There was an upset on the night, though, and that was the fact that the Pack's 3FGA/FGA ratio was higher than BC's, which is probably just one more indication of the strange/terrible nature of the game. State hit 14 of 28 two-point attempts but didn't seem to have much of a plan for taking advantage of the matchups in the paint. There did not appear to be much of a plan of any sort, really.

Boston College deserves a lot of credit for playing hard and hustling after the ball; it would be easy for them at this point to be going through the motions. I don't know why they haven't made the effort to slow the game down like this all season, because their talent deficit kind of demands that sort of style. They did a good job limiting possessions tonight--sometimes accidentally so, as they came close to shot clock violations by way of poor half-court offense several times--and it almost worked. They have to shorten games as much as possible...the problem, of course, is that aforementioned half-court offense. Quite the pickle you got there, Donahue.

Anyway, the Wolfpack managed to avoid a tourney-bid-killer tonight, and while I still kinda want to punch something, I'm just glad they were able to get out of Chestnut Hill with a win they had to have. Let's hope the guys can get out of this funk at the offensive end before they hit the Duke-FSU-UNC stretch.

Since their surprising 2-1 start to league play, the Eagles have lost four in a row, and they've still yet to come close to cracking a point per possession in seven games. When State met them in Raleigh, they were pretty much as advertised: they didn't rebound or shoot well, and they turned the ball over a lot. The Pack should have won that game by more than 14, but sometimes it's tough to avoid cruise control when that's all it takes to win.

It's been less than two weeks since the first meeting, so not much has changed in the big picture, but we do have some more substantial conference-only data at which to look. (If there are any BC fans who happen to be reading this, under no circumstances do you want to look at these figures.)

In league games only, Boston College's offense ranks last in six categories: offensive efficiency (84.7), turnover percentage (24.5), offensive rebounding percentage (19.5), free throw percentage (63.9), block percentage (16.6; meaning that 16.6% of their two-point attempts are blocked by the other team), and steal percentage (14.3% of their possessions end with an opponent stealing the ball).

It's not likely that this roving disaster will be able to score efficiently enough to beat NC State on Wednesday night, but there's always the lingering uneasiness that comes with the fact that they shoot a whole hell of a lot of three-pointers, and anything can happen in any given game.

Also, there's a good chance there will be liveblog tonight.