GREENSBORO, N.C. — “You go up and grab the ball off the rim when it comes off, and then you grab it with two hands, then you come down with it, and that’s considered a rebound. So they got more of those than we did,” said then-Baylor men’s basketball forward Taurean Prince after his team was outrebounded by Yale in an upset loss in the NCAA Tournament in 2016.
It was a sarcastic response from Prince when he was asked how Yale outrebounded Baylor. However, it was really just that simple. Sometimes the game just comes down to the fundamentals of going up and grabbing missed shots. And that was certainly the case in NC State women’s basketball’s 76-62 loss to Duke in the ACC Championship game Sunday afternoon at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro.
After keeping pace with the Blue Devils on the boards in the first half, the Wolfpack was outrebounded 26-10 in the second half, a key factor in how Duke overcame a 36-29 first-half deficit to outscore NC State 47-26 in the final 20 minutes.
“You got to give all the credit in the world to Duke,” said head coach Wes Moore. “They’re a great defensive team, they’re a great rebounding team and those things are what wins championships.”
NC State’s inability to rebound affected its ability to score in the second half too. After making nearly 50% of its shots in the first half against the ACC’s best defense, the Wolfpack made just 10 of 31 in the second. Most of NC State’s possessions were one-and-done in the final two quarters. It may have been a different game if the Pack could’ve grabbed a few more offensive rebounds to help its sputtering offense.
In contrast, Duke’s effort on the glass ignited its offense after it shot just 36% from the field in the first half. The Blue Devils grabbed eight offensive rebounds for eight points in the second half and their dominance on the defensive glass allowed them to get out in transition for eight fastbreak points.
“We need to be a little more like Duke is on the defensive end and on the boards,” Moore said. “We need to have a little more dog in us and compete. When things are going wrong and momentum shifts, you have to fight that much harder and turn that momentum back around. We’ve done that at times during the year, and today,it was disappointing.”
What disappointed Moore the most was that he thought Duke was the tougher team, especially in the third quarter when the Blue Devils outscored the Wolfpack 24-10 to go from down seven to up seven. The Wolfpack came down with just four rebounds in the quarter while the Blue Devils pulled down 14.
NC State also offered no defensive resistance in the frame as Duke made 10 of its 16 shots with 12 points in the paint compared to the Wolfpack’s zero.
“That third quarter, it snowballed pretty fast, and they came out ready to play and got after us,” Moore said. “At some point, all the cute scheming and all that doesn’t matter at some point, it’s about competing.”
Getting outcompeted. That’s not something that happened to the Wolfpack when it won 22 of its last 24 games leading up to this one. NC State had a plus four rebounding margin over that stretch and was only beaten on the glass in seven of those games. For the game, Duke grabbed 16 more rebounds than NC State, its worst rebound margin of the season since LSU outrebounded 44-24 back in November.
Now, the Wolfpack will prepare to make another run to the Final Four. Senior guard Saniya Rivers said the team will take the next few days to reset mentally, physically and emotionally, taking a couple of days off from basketball and school.
Last year’s squad lost in the ACC Championship game and used it as fuel for the program’s second Final Four appearance. This year’s team hopes there will be a similar script. Either way, the Wolfpack is projected to be a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, meaning it will host the first two rounds of the tournament.
“It sucks when you work that hard and it doesn’t result in the win, but it’s not over for us,” Rivers said. “We still have a long season ahead of us in our minds, so we’re just going to take this break and get our minds back right and obviously fix what we can correct.”
NC State’s official seeding will be announced on March 16 at 8 p.m. on ESPN.
