It’s been well-established over the course of NC State men’s basketball’s four-game winning streak, and even before that, that the Wolfpack is a good 3-point shooting team, and is strong at preventing its opponents from making shots from deep. The Wolfpack took that to the extreme in Sunday’s 92-72 win over No. 25 Florida State at PNC Arena.
In the Pack’s fourth consecutive victory, 20th win overall, 10th ACC win and fifth win on the season over a top-25 opponent, NC State connected on 59 percent of its attempts from deep and held the Seminoles to 0 for 15 from 3.
Since an 86-81 loss to Miami on Jan. 21 in which NC State allowed the Hurricanes to shoot 52 percent from 3-point range, NC State has not allowed an opponent to shoot better than 36 percent from downtown, and is now holding its opponents to just 32 percent on the season.
The Pack prides itself on defending from the 3-point line, and reached a peak against against a Florida State that came into the game shooting 36 percent from 3. Rare was the Seminole attempt from deep where an NC State defender did not have a hand in the shooter’s face, save for those ill-advised shots the Pack simply conceded in an effort to take away the inside.
“If you look at our stats, we’ve been a pretty good 3-point field goal percentage defensive team the whole year,” head coach Kevin Keatts said. “We did a great job of challenging shots. I think the only clean look they got was when we fouled them in the corner. I think our guys, we couldn’t stop them from taking threes, but certainly we wanted to make them take some challenged shots.”
On the other end of the floor, as has become almost expected in the past several games, the Wolfpack made it rain from beyond the arc, hitting 59 percent of its own 3-point attempts.
NC State has not shot worse than 44 percent from three over the course of the last four games, and has had a number of players contribute to that success.
Against the Seminoles, a surprising name joined the fun from 3. With freshman guard Braxton Beverly, normally a dangerous shooter, going 0-5 from beyond the arc, his fellow distributor, sophomore Markell Johnson, stepped up to go 3 for 4 from downtown, his second game of the season with three 3-pointers.
Graduate guard Allerik Freeman, while not quite as hot as his 7-for-7 performance in a win at UNC-Chapel Hill, hit 4 of 5 shots from deep, including one step-back, fadeaway shot in the second half that was seemingly a low-percentage try but swished in.
The hot hand continues to be graduate guard Sam Hunt, who went 4 for 4 from 3-point range for the second game in a row and is now a blistering 15 of 18 in his last four games. Hunt electrified the PNC crowd on multiple occasions by drilling shots from the spot that could soon be known among NC State fans as “Sam Hunt’s corner.”
For Hunt, the Pack shooting so well from deep stems from confidence that builds with each swish from downtown, as the hoop seems to get bigger and bigger in the players’ eyes.
“It definitely does,” Hunt said. “The confidence goes up to see the ball go in. Once one person makes one, as a team, we get going and other people start feeling it too.”
Being able to win the 3-point battle is crucial in any game in college basketball today. With the Pack seemingly a virtual lock for the NCAA tournament, that ability to drill shots from deep and prevent opponents from doing the same could be a key component of a deep run for the Wolfpack.
