| Four Factors | NC State | SC Upstate |
| eFG% | 57.3 | 45.0 |
| Turnover Rate | 11.2 | 19.2 |
| Off Reb Rate | 36.7 | 35.9 |
| FT Rate | 17.7 | 13.3 |
| Pts | Poss | OFF_EFF | DEF_EFF | |
| USCU | 60 | 62.5 | 96.0 | 126.4 |
| NCSU | 79 | 62.5 | 126.4 | 96.0 |
State got off to a sluggish start--Upstate actually led for over four of the first ten minutes--and didn't hit double-digits until seven and a half minutes into the game, but from there they had little issue scoring against a small and slow Upstate team. The Spartans turned the ball over on a quarter of their first-half possessions, and their transition defense, which was pretty bad, allowed State to turn defensive boards into some quick and easy buckets.
Both Ryan Harrow and Lorenzo Brown were outstanding throughout. Harrow was pretty much unguardable and found a lot of easy opportunities with the blow-by!, as Bill Raftery might say. It was fun to watch but eventually I started to feel bad for the dude who had drawn matador duty on this day. Just not in the same hemisphere when it came to quickness. Harrow finished 10-13 from the field, all of them twos, most of them in close. Brown was 7-10 from the field, scored 17 points, and added six assists.
-- Jordan Vandenberg injured an ankle in the second half and wasn't able to put much pressure on it as he hopped over to the bench. Not sure of the severity of the injury.
-- Including his 3-4 effort today, Scott Wood is 26-59 (44.1%) from beyond the arc this year.
-- As good as NC State's defense was in the first half (0.7 pts/poss allowed), it was that bad in the second (1.2 pts/poss allowed). To a certain extent it was just misfortune in that Upstate's threes started falling, and they weren't all easy looks. Chandler Hash came out of nowhere to hit four by himself. I didn't even bother to mention that guy in the preview. It was largely poor effort on the Wolfpack's part, though. The Spartans cut their turnover rate in half, grabbed 41% of their misses, and shot better than 51% from the floor. Not okay.
"We gave up 38 points in the second half," Lowe said. "I thought we relaxed a couple of times defensively on some guys. I just told our guys we have to play the same way every night, every minute we are on the floor. We can’t relax – it has to become a habit, it has to become a mindset. Then when we play against the Wake Forest and Duke and Clemson and those teams then our habits will take over. But if we have bad habits against teams we feel we should beat then those bad habits are going to come out when you play your conference games."
Yeah, I don't feel good about this being solved by January.
