WINSTON-SALEM — Playing Wake Forest in Winston-Salem brings out anticipation of dread among NC State basketball (and football) fans, but the Wolfpack was able to take care of business Saturday in a 91-82 win over the Demon Deacons.
It was actually the second victory in three trips for the Pack, but fans are more likely to bring up losing last season in a game that ultimately may have played a role in keeping the Wolfpack out of the NCAA Tournament. NC State had also lost five straight in Winston-Salem prior to a victory in the 2017-18 season.
The fear of doom of playing games at Wake Forest has not gone unnoticed among NC State’s players.
“I’ve heard that around campus, heard from alumni, all that,” junior guard Braxton Beverly admitted. “I just tried to block that out and treat it like another game.”
What was more important than breaking the jinx in Winston-Salem, for a year at least, was getting in the win column in ACC play. NCSU opened the year with a one-point overtime loss at home to Georgia Tech despite not trailing in regulation.
“I thought our guys did a tremendous job of coming in on the road and getting a good road win, when you think about the fact we felt like the opening game of the year we gave away an ACC game,” head coach Kevin Keatts noted. “I talked to those guys and we had to figure out how to get one back.”
Redshirt junior guard Devon Daniels noted that winning Saturday was “really important.” Beverly added getting even in ACC play was “huge.”
“It’s always huge to get a win in the ACC, especially on the road. … We knew we had to come back and get this one, get back going,” Beverly explained. Keatts himself has never been one to publicly acknowledge hexes like the perceived one of playing in Winston-Salem.
“We’ve had some success in here,” Keatts said. “My last two out of three years we were able to win. It’s a tough place to play. We thought we had a chance last year but we were without Markell Johnson.
“I thought our guys did a good job. They’re locked in. They don’t care about that stuff. They wouldn’t know if won 20 games here or lost 20 games here. We just locked in to be successful.”
Hot-Shooting Wolfpack Were Clicking On Offense
NC State made its first four three-pointers of the game, from three different players. Included in that group was Daniels. Seeing the ball go in the basket, Daniels acknowledged, was a quick confidence-booster that helped NC State take a quick 14-4 lead and maintain a double-digit advantage for much of the contest.
For the game, NC State made 12 of 22 shots from beyond the arc, with four different players making multiple threes.
“All of just came out shooting threes,” Daniels said. “We weren’t really worried about missing. We were just taking the right shots, the open shots. It started us off well. We went into a flow really early, and we kept it the whole game.”
Keatts said that the coaches had a feeling that the perimeter shots would be available because they expected a healthy dose of the Demon Deacons using a 3-2 matchup zone.
“To be honest with you, I was a little mad cause I thought we passed up some shots that we could have made,” Keatts said. “We have put a lot of work on shots.
“ We expected that coming into this game to see a mixture of a little bit of man-to-man and more of the 3-2 matchup, so we spent a lot of time the last couple of days really working on making shots behind the arc.”
In the second half, Beverly kept the momentum going from long range, making all three of his three-point attempts after the break. Beverly attributed his and the team’s success to the flow of the offense.
NC State overall shot 34 of 65 from the field, or 52.3 percent.
“We were just playing our game,” Beverly said. “We had a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of energy. We had guys playing for each other, had each other’s backs out there.”
“We were clicking,” Daniels added. “We were playing fast, playing confident.”
Jericole Hellems Taken To Hospital Following The Game
The final few minutes put a damper on the feel-good nature of the win. For one, NC State allowed Wake Forest to actually cut what had been a 13-point lead with 1:30 left to five points with 28.0 seconds remaining.
“We were kind of sped up at the end,” Daniels noted.
More concerning however was what happened after Wake Forest senior guard Brandon Childress, who rode a hot hand (10-of-13 shooting overall and 5 of 6 on threes) to 30 points, connected on a long range shot to trim that lead to five. NC State sophomore forward Jericole Hellems took a hard collision and fall while battling for a loose ball.
Hellems was on the floor for several minutes while trainers evaluated him. He was placed on a stretcher with a neck brace and transported to Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem for precautionary reasons. NC State said he was being evaluated for a possible lower back injury and concussion.
Keatts began his postgame press conference asking for prayers for Hellems, who continued his strong start to the season with 13 points, and Keatts’ counterpart at WFU, Danny Manning, starting his PC with prayers for the Pack forward.
Keatts was planning to see Hellems upon leaving the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
“These are my kids," Keatts said. "Any time you see one of your kids on the floor it’s tough. It was hard for me the last 28 seconds of the game because it was hard for me to focus on the game knowing that we had one of our kids down on the floor.”
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