NC State needed a road victory over Notre Dame to keep its slim NCAA Tournament hopes alive.

The Wolfpack (13-9, 9-8 ACC) did exactly that, defeating the Fighting Irish (9-14, 6-11 ACC) 80-69 in South Bend Wednesday night in what could be the Pack’s regular-season finale.

Hours before tipoff, the ACC announced that NC State’s originally scheduled home finale against Virginia Tech was canceled due to “quarantining and contact tracing review” within the Hokies program.

So did Wolfpack head coach Kevin Keatts use it as motivation for his visibly energized team in what was its fifth-consecutive ACC road win?

“100 percent not at all,” Keatts said. “I don't have the type of team that I can talk about a game on Saturday going into a game tonight, so I haven't mentioned a word to them. Now, I'm smart, I know they're all on social media, so I'm sure they've seen it.

“But I didn't say a word to them. I don't think with these kids it would be a motivation to say this is possibly your last game, we're just playing good basketball right now.”

Keatts’ intuition was right.

Although the head coach didn’t mention the cancellation to his team, his players had already seen the news on Twitter and it was a point of discussion before the game.

Freshman guard Cam Hayes admitted that when his teammates saw the news, they wanted to make sure they ended the regular season on a high note.

“A lot of us knew about it,” Hayes said. “Social media is really a big platform. We're teenagers, so we're definitely going to be on our phones and on social media. We just wanted to go out with a bang regardless if it was tonight or it's on Saturday. We just wanted to focus on tonight's game. Since we don't have a game Saturday, I felt like we finished our season strong if there's not a possibility we have another game.”

Once again, the Pack’s superior energy to its opponent translated to elite performance on both ends of the floor.

NC State became the fourth team in Notre Dame’s last 12 games to hold the Irish below 70 points.

The Wolfpack also shot above 50 percent from the field (54 percent Wednesday) for just the fourth time in ACC play.

After Notre Dame scored the first basket of the contest 11 seconds into the game, the Pack responded with a bucket on the next possession and led the Irish for 38:21, growing the lead as high as 19 points with less than four minutes to play.

“Our guys have bought in,” Keatts said. “It took us a little time to get a different identity. We didn't know how we were going to play, but our guys made a great adjustment. We started playing the game inside-out, and good things started happening for us.

“The biggest adjustment is when you look at us, we have become more solid on the defensive end. We've done a good job of shutting down and guarding people now.”

Hayes led all scorers with a career-high 20 points on 7-of-11 shooting, including a 3-of-6 mark from behind the three-point line. He also added four rebounds, three assists and two steals with only two turnovers.

Despite the career performance, his individual production was not even the most surprising contribution from the young Wolfpack backcourt.

Redshirt freshman guard Dereon Searbon also achieved new career highs, producing 17 points and a team-best 13 rebounds, four of which on the offensive glass. The 6-7 Swiss Army knife also stuffed the stat sheet with three blocks, two assists and one steal with just one turnover.

“We're finding ways to win,” Keatts said. “The last game it was the veterans. In this game I thought our young guys came out and played well.”

Freshman guard Shakeel Moore chipped in an efficient eight points on 3-of-6 shooting, including a 2-of-3 clip from beyond the arc, in 17 minutes on the floor. He also produced three assists, two rebounds, one block and one steal with no turnovers.

The dazzling performances followed up an underwhelming outing from the freshmen against Pittsburgh Sunday.

In the three-point win over the Panthers, the three freshmen guards scored a combined 11 points on 2-of-13 shooting (15.4 percent) with six assists and four turnovers. They also had a combined plus-minus rating of -9 in the home win over Pitt.

Wednesday night, the rookie trio combined for 45 points on 18-of-29 shooting (62.1 percent), 19 rebounds and eight assists with just three turnovers.

“I would be lying to you if I told you I knew that both Cam Hayes and Seabron were both going to have career-highs,” Keatts said. “They both have prepared the right way. Both of those guys, and even Shak, all of those guys realized they didn't have their best performances [against Pitt], and those guys have a sense of pride about them.

“It was good to see them have the ball go in, and it was good to see them play aggressive. They all wanted it more than they did the last game.

“When you're young, you realize how hard you have to compete in every game. I think that was a wake-up call for those guys because we won a game against Pittsburgh that was a grind-it-out game without any guards really playing well other than Braxton Beverly.”

One commonality in each of the Pack’s victories during the current five-game win streak? Keatts has gone with the same starting lineup in each contest.

For the fifth-straight game, NC State started Hayes and Seabron in the backcourt to go along with junior forward Jericole Hellems, fifth-year senior forward DJ Funderburk and redshirt sophomore center Manny Bates.

The Wolfpack head coach pinpointed his “aha” moment back to when he was watching film in preparation for the road game at Pittsburgh, the first of State’s last five wins.

Keatts recalled the length of his lineup from reviewing the tape of NC State’s 15-point win over Pittsburgh in the second round of the 2020 ACC Tournament. Other than point guard Markell Johnson, every player on the court was 6-5 or taller.

The enlightenment came when he compared that to some of his starting lineups early on this season, which included at least two members in the backcourt listed 6-1 or shorter in senior guard Braxton Beverly and redshirt junior Thomas Allen.

“We were really small,” Keatts said. “In our situation, because of Braxton not being all that healthy and not being able to practice, Thomas Allen going through his injuries, it allowed me to experiment with a little bigger lineup. It's kind of worked for us.

"I'm proud of Seabron and Cam because they both have gotten better on the defensive end. Good things happen to you when you play defense, and that's the way they both have scored.”

NC State committed just nine turnovers when it defeated then-ranked No. 15 Virginia on the road last Wednesday, marking the first time the Pack had committed less than 10 turnovers in a single ACC contest this season.

Now the Wolfpack is making ball security a habit.

For the third game in a row, NC State finished with a single-digit turnover total, allowing Notre Dame just nine takeaways.

The Wolfpack head coach cites his team’s developed ability to take care of the basketball as one of the biggest factors in the Pack’s recent success.

“Our biggest adjustment is we stopped turning the ball over,” Keatts said. “When you go back to the Syracuse and Duke games, we didn't give ourselves an opportunity to win because we turned the ball over.”

In the two home losses to Syracuse and Duke in early February, NC State turned the ball a combined 38 times for an average of 19 per contest.

The Wolfpack has since turned the ball over just 10.2 times per contest during the five-game win streak.

But how exactly did the team develop its newfound ball security?

One of the Pack’s freshman guards points to a specific motivation from practice, or rather, something to avoid.

“I'd say a lot of running from turnovers,” Hayes said. “A lot of running. We turned the ball over, and we don't want to run a lot. That's probably one of the biggest things that we wanted to do. In practice, coach would mark tallies for turnovers. Sometimes, if you had one turnover, you might have two or three suicides, so I feel like that played a big role.”

The freshmen have played a big role in limiting the offensive mistakes.

In the home losses to Syracuse and Duke, the freshman backcourt trio combined to turn the ball over 12 times with just six assists.

In the past wins, that same trio has produced just four turnovers per game while averaging a combined six assists per contest.

“They have matured in a lot of ways,” Keatts said. “We would turn the ball over, we would fall down. We would do freshman things. It's not a fault of their own, they were just thrown into a situation that they weren't ready for at the time. Ball security is the number one thing.”

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