NC State has no trouble dispatching Davidson, 81-47

NC State played without Diamond Johnson and Jada Boyd but looked little worse for wear, flexing its depth against an overmatched Davidson team on Thursday night. The banged-up Wolfpack showed it still had more than enough ammunition to handle the Wildcats, who were put away quickly.

Early on, it was Camille Hobby providing the scoring to get the Wolfpack into the flow, and then Aziaha James started canning threes to help the Pack build a lead. James took full advantage of the extra playing time by leading all scorers with 19 points; she was 5-6 from three.

State led by 10 after one and as the half progressed, Davidson started piling up silly turnovers, giving the Wolfpack easy points in transition that it didn’t need but happily accepted all the same.

The Pack’s second-quarter defense was stifling, limiting Davidson to only seven points, and State carried a 22-point lead into the break. It was academic from there.

NC State really owned the paint in this game as the clearly bigger, stronger team. Davidson couldn’t match up individually with State’s forwards and when the Wildcats tried some zone, they just proved that they shouldn’t play zone if they can help it. NC State had no problem finding easy scoring opportunities all night.

Hobby finished 7-9 from the field, while River Baldwin went for 11 points and 11 boards in 17 minutes. The Wolfpack shot 59.5% inside the arc and for good measure hauled in nearly half of the shots it missed.

That’s a wrap on non-conference play for State, which is 10-1. The ladies open up ACC play against Clemson on Sunday, and then they’ll have a lengthy holiday break to hopefully get back to 100%.