NC State women’s basketball buries Clemson, 79-60, behind a barrage of three-pointers

NC State knocked down 14 three-pointers and won all four quarters on the way to an easy win over Clemson on Thursday night. Ace Konig paced the Wolfpack offense with 23 points, and she shot 7-14 from beyond the arc to make sure there would be no upset in the works for the Tigers.

Clemson played zone defense all night, which is a risky proposition against NC State. Even riskier: playing bad zone defense. The Wolfpack shot 6-8 from three in the first quarter as it was more than happy to take advantage of the many open looks that were available. State also generated some good looks off of offensive rebounds.

The offensive glass helped Clemson hang around for a while, but the Wolfpack put this thing to bed with a 14-3 run out of halftime to push a nine-point edge to 20. Clemson, which is now 7-14 on the season, wasn’t going to shoot well enough to erase that kind of margin. The Tigers also didn’t get to the free throw line until the fourth quarter, which didn’t help.

Elissa Cunane had an off night offensively, finishing with eight points on 2-7 shooting, but between Konig and Kayla Jones (15 points on 6-9 shooting), State had plenty of offense anyway. But for a slow first half of the second quarter, the Pack’s offense was consistent, and after building the 20-point lead, the advantage never fell below 13.

Up next for State: a trip to Duke on Sunday.