NC State turned things up a notch in the second quarter and Virginia Tech couldn’t keep up in its 82-62 loss on Sunday afternoon.
“Disappointed with our defense this afternoon,” Hokies head coach Megan Duffy said. “We knew that we probably had to have our best defensive effort of the season. NC State has five elite-level players who can score at a pretty high clip, and I thought we were a step slow on our scout. Just had too many breakdowns. I thought we had some good moments throughout the game as it went on, but overall, not enough defensively to stop their big three.”
The Hokies (18-7, 8-5 ACC) jumped out to an early seven-point lead on the Wolfpack (17-7, 10-3) and were deadlocked through 12 minutes of action. However, they couldn’t buy a bucket for the rest of the first half as NC State outscored them 21-4 and led 44-27 at the break.
Tech went 8:23 without a field goal and missed 11 straight attempts. Its only points over that stretch were two free throws from Carleigh Wenzel, its leading scorer with 22 points (8-for-19). They were sandwiched in between separate 10-0 and 11-0 runs from the Wolfpack, which was an efficient 8-for-13 (61.5%) in the quarter.
“The run was fast and quick,” Duffy said. “They went downhill, they went one-on-one. … I thought we were back on our heels too much instead of being the aggressor — in that moment and in different moments throughout the game.”
The Hokies tightened things up in the second half and were only outscored 38-35, but their second-quarter deficit (25-8) was too much to overcome. (It was just a 57-54 Wolfpack margin in the other three periods.)
Their lack of offense was a big reason for their struggles. Outside of Wenzel, who accounted for 11 of their 27 first-half points, Kilah Freelon was their only other consistent option. She tied her career-high with 18 rebounds and added two blocks, two steals and 14 points on 7-for-13 shooting.
Wenzel and Freelon were a combined 15-for-32 (46.9%) from the floor. The rest of Tech was 12-for-39 (30.8%). The team had 16 turnovers, too, after giving it away 21 times in Thursday’s loss at Notre Dame.
“They kind of just switch everything and blow it up,” Wenzel said. “You just have to make reads. I just don’t think we did that to the best of our ability. I think that we were trying to get downhill and be aggressive, and I think we had a lot of kicks out of the paint to wide-open players for them to make reads.
“Just sharing it a little bit better. I don’t think we did that to the best of our ability, and I think that came with how they were jumping things, but that’s something you work on in practice. That’s not anything that we weren’t ready for. It just didn’t kind of go in the way we wanted it to go today.”
Tech made just four of its 18 looks from 3-point range, three of which were from Wenzel. The other came from Sophie Swanson in the fourth quarter. Carys Baker, who averages a team-high 14.8 points per game, was 0-for-6 from deep, 4-for-16 overall and had just eight points to go with nine rebounds.
“You’ve got to pay attention to Wenzel and Baker,” NC State head coach Wes Moore said. “We didn’t want them to get hot from three. … And then how we handled pick on the ball situations. Thought our players executed that really well for the most part. … I’ve been at times hard on them, questioning their focus on carrying out the scout. Today, I’ve got to give them a lot of credit, and if we can continue that, we’re trending in the right direction.”
The other five Hokies who scored — Mackenzie Nelson (six points), Swanson (five), Mel Daley (three), Samyha Suffren (two) and Leila Wells (two) — only totaled 18 points.
That wasn’t enough to hang with NC State, which received 25 points apiece from stars Zoe Brooks and Khamil Pierre.
Brooks consistently slashed through the Tech defense, and though she only converted six of her 14 shots, she was 13-for-14 from the foul line. She leads the ACC in free-throw shooting and is 86-for-93 (92.5%) from the stripe in conference play.
“I think I’m best when I’m aggressive and constantly attacking,” Brooks said. “I think that it’s very hard to stop me from going to the basket, and if you do stop me, I can always find a teammate.”
She also led a defense that racked up 10 steals — six of which were hers — while adding five rebounds and five assists. Meanwhile, Pierre was a beast inside, shooting an efficient 11-for-17 and corralling 12 rebounds.
“I thought we didn’t do enough of what we wanted to do at the beginning of the game, which [Pierre] didn’t feel enough pressure on her,” Duffy said. “She was just very comfortable with her ability to get to her spots. … She has a lot in her bag. … I thought because she got easy stuff early, then some of the difficult ones she ended up making.”
Zamareya Jones made some crucial plays for the Wolfpack, like her step-back triple late in the shot clock during the third quarter, a response to a Wenzel trey. She finished with four 3-pointers and had 16 points.
The fourth member of NC State’s quartet, 6-foot-6 forward Tilda Trygger, had a quieter game with eight points, six boards and three blocks. However, the supporting cast delivered in a few spots, with Destiny Lunan and Devyn Quigley each burying a three off the bench.
Tech’s now lost back-to-back games for the third time this season. After setbacks in November, it turned the page by winning four of its next six. Then, when it fell to Miami and Louisville to begin January, it followed that up by ripping off seven straight victories.
How do the Hokies regroup after losing to the Fighting Irish — a game they could’ve won if not for an excessive amount of giveaways — and the Wolfpack? They’ll have to search for answers this week when they head to California.
“We’ve got to recenter ourselves, re-find ourselves,” Freelon said, “and make sure who we are is how we played at the end of that game, in spurts of that game, and we need to find that aspect of ourselves again and be able to pull it out for 40 minutes like we had been for those previous win streak we had. Just being able to stay connected and learning from these losses instead of letting it bring us down.”
Tech is off to the West Coast on Tuesday for a two-game road trip at Stanford (Thursday) and Cal (Sunday). The Golden Bears and Cardinal are a combined 31-19 (11-13 ACC) overall but an outstanding 20-6 at home. They’re both top 55 in the NET rankings, too.
“What I told them in the locker room is we really have to flip the mirror, look at ourselves, from coaches to players,” Duffy said. “Reset ourselves with effort. We can get better at the basketball part. …
“Even when you’re in February, you have to be so hungry to continue to improve on small things, and that’s the margin of error — you go play really good teams down the stretch. I think this team has proven to me that they can do that, and that’s my job to reset them and really lock into the small things.”
Box Score: NC State 82, Virginia Tech 62