Thursday, December 29, 2005

NC State 81, New Hampshire 62

Box Score

Woulda been nice if we'd played defense in the second half, but it's not a big deal.

This, though, is embarrassing:

UNH's OFF EFF:

Season: 85.5
Tonight: 105.4

NC State allowed one of the worst 20-30 offenses in the country to play efficiently, and it happened despite the fact that Blagoj Janev was a nonfactor.

The Wildcats rebounded from an 18-point, 39%-shooting (eFG%) performance in the first half with a 44-point, 69.6%-shooting performance in the second half. The Wildcats are terrible shooters...they just forgot about it for twenty minutes. Even with the good shooting, NC State had a 32-point lead with 5:42 left in the game.

Chris Vetrano led the way with 6 threes in the second half, four of which came in the last four minutes. And wouldn't you know it, after I singled out Mike Christensen in the preview, he made me look like a liar. Needless to say, I will have nothing but good things to say about George Washington players in the preview of that game.

Kudos to New Hampshire for playing well in the second half. It didn't matter, of course.

Quick notes:

-- NC State had its best offensive rebounding performance of the season. UNH went to the zone early and really had problems blocking out. The Pack's OR% was 47%. The Wolfpack were not nearly as good on the defensive glass, however. New Hampshire rebounded 35.7% of its misses, well above its season average (26.8%).

-- Janev had as many turnovers as points (7). UNH finished the game with a turnover rate of 25.5%; NC State's was just 8.5% (!).

-- Since the ghastly showing at Iowa, NC State's offense has been extremely effective--it's lowest OFF EFF since then is 118.