NC State 80, Mount St. Mary's 65

Box Score

NC State

Four Factors
eFG	61.5
Turnover Rate	20.6
Off Reb Rate	29.6
FTM/FGA	43.8

The Mount

Four Factors
eFG	43.0
Turnover Rate	20.6
Off Reb Rate	43.5
FTM/FGA	5.6

-- Tough night for BC (22.2% shooting, 25.2% turnover rate), but everyone else was good:

Player    %Poss   ORtg

Costner    28.4   81.0
Grant      23.7   102.4
McCauley   21.8   138.4
Horner     20.2   129.7
Fells      17.7   123.4
Nieman     9.7    168.9

Statistically, this was Bryan Nieman's best game of the season. We can't ask for any more than what he gave us today: efficient shooting and zero turnovers in 36 minutes.

-- Is there a pattern to the team's performance as it relates to Gavin Grant's workload? This is something I'll be keeping an eye on. I'm not putting any stock in these numbers yet, because Gavin's high workload games have come against the toughest part of the schedule, but here's what we've got so far...

Grant %Poss Under 30.0: 4 games (Woff, Del St., Sav St., Mt. St. Mary's)
Grant's Average %Poss In These Games: 24.7
NCSU Average Offensive Efficiency In These Games: 118.5

Grant %Poss Over 30.0: 5 games (Valpo, G-W, Mich, UVA, WVU)
Grant's Average %Poss In These Games: 32.5
NCSU Average Offensive Efficiency In These Games: 105.2

-- Second chance points: MSM 21, State 8. MSM grabbed 43.5% of their misses (season average: 34%). I cringe at the thought of what the bigger ACC teams--teams that are on a whole different rebounding skill level than Mount St. Mary's--are going to do to us. As has been the case over the last five years, offensive rebounds aren't particularly important to us--we shoot well enough to have a good offense without them. Defensive rebounds, on the other hand, are vital to our defensive effectiveness. It's hard enough to stop the better teams in the league even when they don't have the benefit of second chances.

Said Coach Lowe:

"Their big guys were pushing us under the basket. They were more active and more physical in there."

-- The game had about 68 possessions, so it was faster than MSM would have liked. The Pack scored 1.18 pts/poss, while MSM scored 0.96 points per.

-- Credit to Sam Atupem for a very productive game: 15 points and 10 boards in just 18 minutes.