Strong collective effort leads NC State past Duke, 96-85

If you were not prepared for the up-and-down nature of this NC State basketball season, I hope you are now. Lose by 30 at Notre Dame, win by 11 at home against Duke, see this is just how it’s going to work this year. There are going to be swings. And when we hit the good swings, they’re going to be fun.

NC State sustained a consistent and determined effort against Duke on Saturday night, and it played generally smart, balanced basketball, which led to a 96-85 win. Omer Yurtseven scored 16 points on 8-14 shooting while grabbing nine boards. Six Wolfpack players scored in double figures.

This was a fantastic collective effort, the sort of thing State could use every game moving forward. Lavar Batts played some really good minutes off the bench early; Braxton Beverly hit some important threes; Torin Dorn was outstanding when it mattered; Lennard Freeman did the usual Lennard things.

We know the Wolfpack can be good when it gets quality games from a good portion of the lineup and takes pressure off of a few key individuals. You could see that at work tonight—I don’t think any one guy felt like they had to win the game, and when that’s the case, it leads to more organic offense, and the positive results go from there.

That was a lot of fun. wooooooooooo