ACC Roundup – If You Didn’t See State-Kansas…You Really Should

In Saturday’s ACC Action, Louisville hammered Memphis 99-73, UNC beat South Carolina Upstate 80-62, UMass thrashed Florida State 103-95, Miami took care of UL Monroe 104-79, Notre Dame aced the Evansville test 82-58, Clemson got by Mercer 70-63, Hofstra punked Syracuse 70-69, Villanova dismissed Pitt 79-61, Cal took out Northwestern State 79-70, Stanford slipped by San Jose State 86-82 and LSU knocked off SMU 89-77.

And then there was NC State and Kansas, which proved two things: a) NC State is a very dangerous team and b) NC State stuff still happens.

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What do we mean?

Well, Kansas won an instant classic, 77-76 in an overtime game that looked right out of March. State didn’t fold. The Pack punched back on every front and while this Kansas isn’t the Kansas a few years ago, it’s still very well coached and entirely capable of beating most teams.

But NC State stuff still happens. And how did it happen here? Simple.

Prior to this game, Melvin Council was 5-27 from behind the line, which works out to 18.5%.

Against State, Council was just on fire, hitting 9-15, or 60%.

Obviously they read the scouting report and assumed he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. But he could.

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Darrion Williams heated up late though, and down the stretch, the game took on a real heavyweight feel.

And State had a chance to win at the buzzer but Williams couldn’t get his shot to fall. Still, this was one of the great games of the season so far. People will be talking about it for a while.

USC Upstate actually led UNC 21-20, but that was about it for the Spartans: UNC had a 17-7 kick to end the first half and any dreams of a shocker faded away quickly.

Caleb Wilson had a double-double with 20 points and 11 boards while Henri Veesaar had 14 and 9. This was a typical exam break game/scrimmage so don’t take too much out of it.

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Louisville and Memphis used to have an intense rivalry but it didn’t carry over to Saturday’s reunion as Louisville won by 26.