NC State doesn’t have any time to feel sorry for itself

Saturday was not an especially good time for a hiccup for NC State, which is looking at four of its next six games on the road. All of these games can be considered winnable, but the Wolfpack will be some measure of underdog in every road game, too.

It’d be great if NC State could split these road contests—at FSU, at UVA, at UNC, at Syracuse—and I’d take that outcome in a heartbeat if I could. But that is not gonna be an easy task since all four of those teams have been better than State on paper this year.

Still, the nature of the league what it is this year, the margins here aren’t dramatic: KenPom doesn’t have State as more than a five-point dog in any of those games. Also in this stretch, State has home games against its kryptonite, Georgia Tech, and Wake Forest. NC State can hardly afford to lose either one of those without digging itself a hole.

All four of State’s games up to this point have been in doubt during the final minute of regulation play, and you can expect plenty more close games to come. How State handles them, especially over the next couple of weeks, will go a long way to determining the team’s season outlook.