NC State basketball gets another shot at Syracuse at home after big ACC win at Clemson

Talk about a player giving his coach a lift.

Did you see Casey Morsell at Clemson? The N.C. State guard rushed down the sideline Saturday at Littlejohn Coliseum, grabbed and lifted up Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts in a bearhug just after the 78-77 win over the Tigers.

Keatts was literally swept off his feet, both by Morsell and the Wolfpack, which left Tigertown with its biggest victory of the season.

Great game, great finish, great victory. It was some celebration.

Now comes Syracuse.

The Pack has the Orange coming into PNC Arena on Tuesday. As coaches like to say, the last thing Keatts needs is to have the Wolfpack take a breath after such an emotional game, lose a little focus.

Keatts doesn’t believe that will happen.

“We’ll be locked in,” he said Saturday.

The Pack (16-9, 8-6 ACC) had a week between its close loss at Wake Forest and then the Clemson game, a chance to analyze, work on things and shake off any lingering frustration after losing to Pitt at home and then the Deacons on the road.

“They had a week to get ready and they were ready,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “They had live legs and played really hard.”

There’s now a short turnaround for the Syracuse game, although Keatts may not have to say much to his players motivationally about the Orange (16-10, 7-8), which lost Saturday at Georgia Tech.

Syracuse handed the Wolfpack a 77-65 beating on Jan. 27 at the Orange’s place. Syracuse led 38-22 at the half and cruised to a victory, getting 26 points from JJ Starling while Judah Mintz had 20 points, nine assists and four steals.

The Wolfpack had too many turnovers, too many fouls. The Orange had 10 steals that were converted into 16 points in beating the Pack for a sixth straight time.

“I don’t think anybody on our team played particularly well,” Keatts said after the game at the JMA Wireless Dome. “It’s rare when nobody plays well.”

As if taking that as a personal challenge, Horne has responded by giving Keatts and the Pack his best offensively since that beating at Syracuse.

Here are the numbers: 24, 26, 25, 31 and 27. Those are his point totals in the last five games.

Horne has gone 21-of-43 on his 3-pointers in those five games. He was 5-11 on 3’s against the Tigers in his 27-point game that had the transfer guard score the winner on a runner in the lane with 9.8 seconds remaining.

Since the NCAA’s NET rankings will be omnipresent until the end of the regular season and dominate social-media conversations, the Pack will go into Tuesday’s game No. 75 and Syracuse No. 90. N.C. State moved up seven spots after the Clemson game and its first Quad-1 win and wants to continue to climb.

“We’re not going to worry about the NET. We’re going to control what we can control,” Keatts said Saturday.

The Wolfpack has three ACC home games remaining and two are this week – Boston College will be at PNC Arena on Saturday. It isn’t a time for slippage.

Horne believes the Clemson win, and how the Pack played in winning, can push it higher at the right time of the season, when NCAA Tournament contenders and pretenders are sorted out.

“I think this win here will just add some more fire under us, and just really show us how good of a team we can be,” he said Saturday. “And just give us some more spark for the rest of the season.

“We got this one. If we get a few more, that tournament talk gets a lot more in our favor. That’s the goal right now.”