NC State women’s hoops grinds out 59-45 win over pesky Wake Forest

Pretty basketball was not on the menu this weekend for the NC State men or the women, as it turns out. The Wolfpack Women had a rough afternoon shooting the ball against Wake Forest, but prevailed in the end, and I suppose we can live with that.

At one point about halfway through the second quarter, the teams were tied 2-2 in that period. It was that kind of day, but State was able to put together some runs here and there to extend the lead to nine in the second quarter and take a five-point edge into the half.

The game was tied 35-35 more than halfway through the third quarter when NC State scored nine of the next 11 points to again create some breathing room. The Pack just wasn’t able to score effectively for extended periods of time—Elissa Cunane was limited to five minutes in the first half with foul trouble, which didn’t help. She also made only one shot from the field all afternoon.

NC State tends to have problems when Cunane is not a difference-maker, and anyway poor shooting inside the arc was a team-wide plague today. Kai Crutchfield, normally pretty reliable, finished 0-9 from the floor. Jada Boyd shot only 4-10.

Fortunately, Kayla Jones hit 5-10 two-pointers on the way to scoring 15, doing the best she could to prevent the game from taking an unfortunate turn. Jakia Brown-Turner was solid as well, finishing with 11 points on 5-12 shooting.

Wake is a pretty good rebounding team and challenged State’s defensive rebounders, but the Deacs only made a quarter of their twos, which ain’t so good. As a wise man once said, you gotta make shots. Especially as a road underdog.