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Friedlander: A banner opening night for ACC basketball … especially at NC State
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RALEIGH, NC – There’s always a little extra juice associated with the first game of a new season.
At NC State on Monday, it was multiplied by two.
Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts admitted to getting so choked up as the banners his team earned for its ACC Tournament championship and Final Four run last spring were hung from the rafters at Lenovo Center that he had to remind himself there was a game to play.
The 4 returning players from that historic Wolfpack team did a much better job of channeling their emotions into the task at hand.
Breon Pass doubled his career high by scoring 14 points and Ben Middlebrooks posted an energetic double-double, while Michael O’Connell and Jayden Taylor also made major contributions to State’s 97-66 win against USC Upstate.
The emotional night in Raleigh was 1 of 15 ACC games on the opening night of the college basketball season. But this one had just a little more meaning than all the others.
“I was very juiced. It was a very cool experience,” Middlebrooks said of the pregame ceremony that preceded his 10-point, 10-rebound, 4-block performance. “To see all the stuff we accomplished last year, it just gives you that edge going into the games we have coming up.”
Whether it was the extra oomph of the banners going up or the 3 intense practices that followed a lackluster exhibition game effort last week, the Wolfpack were a different team than the one that struggled to beat Division II Lees-McRae.
They shot 57% from the floor, recorded 20 assists on 38 baskets, forced 17 turnovers and got scoring from all 11 available scholarship players.
While this State team still has many of the same pieces that helped fuel its surprising postseason run, Monday’s debut provided a glimpse of how different this version will be.
With super-sized big man DJ Burns now playing professionally in Japan, the Wolfpack have become a much faster, more athletic unit looking to run at every opportunity.
Keatts characterized it as more of a “depth team” than a “go-to guy team” with multiple players capable of being the leading scorer on a given night.
On this banner night, it was Pass – a deep reserve over his first 3 seasons – and Bowling Green transfer Marcus Hill leading the way with 14 points each while Louisville survivor Brandon Huntley-Hatfield combined with Middlebrooks to fill the void left by Burns with 13 points.
Just the way Keatts drew it up.
“I’m glad the game went the way it went because we dropped the banners,” the Wolfpack coach said afterward. “I didn’t want to hang 2 banners and just have an okay game.”
A perfect start
Keatts wasn’t the only one around the league who could smile about the way things started on Monday.
Commissioner Jim Phillips was probably smiling ear-to-ear as well.
Phillips has made a concerted effort to try and create a more positive national perception for the ACC and help prevent it from being as “undervalued” as it’s been on the past 2 Selection Sundays. At least for this one night, all his teams helped in that effort by winning their season openers.
(That might not sound like much — but 2 ranked SEC teams lost their openers to unranked teams Monday night; UCF beat No. 13 Texas A&M, and Ohio State took out No. 19 Texas. And South Carolina lost to North Florida. Not an ideal start for a league proclaiming to be the best in the country in 2024-25.)
Georgia Tech, Notre Dame and Virginia will tip things off Wednesday.
It wasn’t always pretty for the ACC on Monday. Or easy. Both North Carolina and Syracuse struggled before pulling out closer-than-they-should-have-been victories against Elon and LeMoyne, everyone took care of business and got off to a winning start.
A Flagg flying at Cameron
Duke didn’t have any banners to raise at Cameron Indoor Stadium. At least not yet. So the Blue Devils settled for unfurling a flag for their opening night game against Maine.
That’s Flagg, as in Cooper Flagg, the 5-star freshman already being projected as the No. 1 overall pick in next spring’s NBA Draft.
The 6-9 teenager had a successful debut against the Black Bears from his home state. He filled up the stat sheet by scoring 18 points – punctuated by a SportsCenter Top 10-quality dunk – to go with 7 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals in Duke’s 96-62 win.
https://twitter.com/bballforever_/status/1853601379853758481
Flagg isn’t the only fantastic freshman Jon Scheyer has at his disposal. Fellow 5-star Kon Knueppel led the Blue Devils with 22 points while 4 others scored in double figures to lead their school’s 43rd straight home-opening victory, a streak that dates back to the 1982 opener.
Mike Krzyzewski’s third season at Duke.
Nervous nights in Chapel Hill and Syracuse
For RJ Davis and his Tar Heels, Monday’s opener against Elon must have seemed like an uncomfortable flashback to last season’s Sweet 16 to Alabama.
At least until the final 6 ½ minutes.
The reigning ACC Player of the Year went 1-for-9 from 3-point range in that loss to the Crimson Tide. And he was headed in that same direction after a 1-for-7 start that helped put UNC into a 71-69 hole with 6:48 remaining. Davis finally warmed up by hitting a pair of 3s down the stretch to spark a 21-5 finishing run that averted disaster.
But the Tar Heels are going to have to be better. And soon. On Friday, they head into hostile territory to take on Kansas at Allen Field House.
If there was one positive to UNC’s 90-76 win, it was the play of sophomore point guard Elliot Cadeau, who showed off his new-found shooting stroke by going 3-of-4 from distance on his way to a 17-point, 8-assist performance.
While the Tar Heels got a scare, Syracuse had an even closer call.
The Orange trailed for the better part of the first 34 minutes and led by only 1 with less than a minute to go before pulling out an 86-82 victory against a team in just its second season as a Division I program.
Unlike UNC, Adrian Autry’s team will have a couple more dress rehearsals – against Colgate and Youngstown State – before facing their first big test against Texas on Nov. 21.
A different breed of Cardinals
The only resemblance between the Louisville team that throttled Morehead State 93-45 in its first game under new coach Pat Kelsey to the one that lost 24-plus games in each of the past 2 seasons for Kenny Payne is the name across the front of its jerseys.
The Cardinals, armed with 12 new players to go with their energetic new coach, looked like a competent, cohesive unit on offense while putting on a defensive clinic in holding their opponent to just 3 field goals in the first half and 23% shooting for the game.
Transfers Kasean Pryor and J’Vonne Hadley, both of whom helped their teams into the postseason in 2023-24, led the scoring with 18 and 15 points, respectively, while helping Louisville serve notice that it once again has the potential to be a factor in both the ACC and nationally.
Kelsey, who compiled a successful resume at Winthrop and College of Charleston, wasn’t the only new coach getting off to a winning start.
Stanford beat Denver 85-62 in its first game under former Washington State coach Kyle Smith, and SMU christened the Andy Enfield era with a 96-62 win against Tarleton State. Cal, meanwhile, took down Cal State Bakersfield in its first game as an ACC member.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
