NC State basketball versus Duke / Rob Kinnan-Imagn Images
NC State basketball suffered its fifth straight loss and seventh across its past eight outings, returning to Raleigh with a 74-64 road defeat at the hands of the No. 2-ranked Duke Blue Devils (18-2, 10-0 ACC) in Cameron Indoor Stadium on Monday night.
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As things stand, with the third-worst record in conference play, the Wolfpack (9-11, 2-7 ACC) is not even on track to earn an invite to this year’s 15-team ACC Tournament in Charlotte’s Spectrum Center, March 11-15. Even so, following the failed upset attempt in Durham, eighth-year NC State basketball head coach Kevin Keatts once again expressed encouragement from his team’s effort.
Here’s what Keatts said in his opening statement to the media:
“I thought we had a lot of fight. It was a really good game. What we’ve talked about is we’ve been on the unfortunate side of a lot of wins and losses this year. But our guys, what I told them is, ‘Hey, if you can stay consistent and play the way we played tonight’ — and Duke’s good, I mean, Duke’s a really good basketball team, arguably the No. 1 team in the country — I thought we did a really good job.
“In the first half, I thought we had great player and ball movement. I thought we really shared the basketball. We were able to get out in transition.
“I just thought they made a few more plays than we made. And obviously, [Duke basketball freshman forward Cooper Flagg] is as good as advertised. You know, I think he’s the difference in the game. If I got Cooper Flagg, I might win that too, you know. But he’s a good player.
“And I think [Duke basketball head coach Jon Scheyer has] done a good job of setting a really good group of guys around a really good superstar.
“So, you know, we’ll learn from this. We’ll try to get better. We’ll continue to work. I think our guys understand that we’re capable of anything if we continue just to stick together and grind and play good basketball.”
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