Very bad calls to end the game. Breed played straight up D and got called for the foul. Then Breed gets an elbow to the face and it’s no call lol. DW hit a couple big shots but he just has to be way better. Preseason ACC POY. He’s gotta be better.

12/13/2025 7:50:31 PM

Pretty terrible end of game coaching.

12/13/2025 7:53:00 PM

We just have to be better. It starts with DW. He’s nowhere near as good as advertised. But Holloman, PM, Able a combined 5/20 on 3 and 6/27 on FGs just is fucking terrible. Offense is painful to watch at times

12/13/2025 7:54:00 PM

Need spend all our NIL money on women’s x-country, soccer, and bass fishing.

12/13/2025 7:55:31 PM

Well Bass Fishing is a club team so they get zero money

Also you're ignoring women's tennis, who just won a doubles national championship.

[Edited on December 13, 2025 at 7:59 PM. Reason : Also we need to practice layups]

12/13/2025 7:58:15 PM

The elbow to Breed’s head is unfortunate but the real abomination was the foul on him the possession prior. In a game with so much contact and so few fouls calling that is just completely inexcusable. Ref inserted himself when he didn’t need to

12/13/2025 8:00:25 PM

Man that and 1 3 seconds into OT got me hyped for a win too

12/13/2025 8:00:52 PM

What’s going on with McNeil?

12/13/2025 8:00:54 PM

I want to go punch someone in the face, and I expect no consequences as well.

Sounds reasonable, right?

12/13/2025 8:12:25 PM

^^I just don’t think he’s that good. He’s streaky shooter and not great at much else. Although I’m ready for him to show the hot streak part of streaky shooting and not just the cold streaks.

12/13/2025 8:21:05 PM

Are we even a bubble team at this point? Q1 and Q2 losses don't exactly make a tournament resume

12/13/2025 8:28:51 PM

After they win their next 20 games, yes, they will be in the tournament

12/13/2025 8:40:44 PM

Idk. Boise is Q1 and VCU Q2 for now. But yeah lots of missed opportunities. Texas one feels especially bad because I’m not sure they’re actually very good

12/13/2025 8:51:37 PM

Melvin Council Jr. is my new favorite non-Tar Heel player.

12/13/2025 8:52:50 PM

I still think letting anybody just shoot wide open shots is a bad idea. And D Williams needs to return some NIL money.

End of game is opposite of KK but same out come.

Call a TO and draw up a play Q tried to play hero ball too much. That should have been a flagrant 1 or 2.

12/13/2025 9:12:01 PM

LOL. Why would losing a Q1 game knock us out of the tourney? Teams get in the tourney as at-large's with double digit Q1 losses every year. As long as we consistently play at that level at home, we are going to have a decent seed.

[Edited on December 13, 2025 at 9:14 PM. Reason : .]

12/13/2025 9:13:16 PM

9/34 on 3 is a bad percentage and also way too many attempts. Shooting 26% from 3 and 38% from the field just isn’t gonna cut it.

Too many guys that just aren’t good enough offensively right now.

Obviously having a career bum (seriously, he’s a career 27% 3PT shooter on nearly 300 attempts) have an insane night is bad. But I feel like the offense just let us down tonight. It was basically Q and VAL for 40 minutes. And then DW for OT. Idk how realistic it is to expect McNeil and Able and even DW to simply start being way better. But if they don’t step up soon we’re gonna run out of chances.

12/13/2025 9:15:25 PM

Quote :

"I still think letting anybody just shoot wide open shots is a bad idea. And D Williams needs to return some NIL money. End of game is opposite of KK but same out come. Call a TO and draw up a play Q tried to play hero ball too much. That should have been a flagrant 1 or 2."

I’m fine with making a career bum be the guy that’s gonna beat us. He was hot. We adjusted in the second half and he stayed insanely hot. In general I agree but in addition to open looks early, he hit some wild and very tough shots later too.

I thought end of game was mostly fine. Had a few good looks and they didn’t go in.

Q was the only guy that could do anything offensively. No choice but for him to get in the lane and either score or find an open man. He’s turnover prone and that sucks but i don’t have a problem with him being so ball dominant. Our offense was awful outside of him and VAL

The bubble/seeding talk is way premature. Our resume isn’t impressive right now but it’s so early, any actual bracketology talk is pointless. Hard to compare resumes at this stage really and the NET numbers are still kinda volatile. Just win games. We’ve missed on several opportunities but we’ll have more. Maybe we make the tourney maybe we don’t. But it’s just December.


[Edited on December 13, 2025 at 9:26 PM. Reason : J]

12/13/2025 9:21:52 PM

^ Yeah, I agree with that take on letting that guy shoot. And they definitely adjusted once it became clear he was just feeling it. Maybe they could have done a little more to knock him off the line/deny the ball to him. But it is still Kansas, you start losing focus on the other guys to guard the dude who was supposed to be the patsy and we get killed.

But on the bubble/seeding talk, we are pretty close to the data becoming meaningful. 10 games is a pretty good sample size for Kenpom and the NET rankings. We are looking solid there and turned the D situation around pretty fast. If we kept playing D against good teams like we did vs Seton Hall/Auburn/Texas, then sure, we would be pretty cooked. But the last couple of games suggest we are much better than those early games showed.

^^ And I wouldn't worry too much about the scoring problem just yet. Kansas is definitely an elite defensive team (top 10). I may have missed someone, but I believe the only ACC team that is in that ballpark in the ACC is Duke.


[Edited on December 13, 2025 at 9:36 PM. Reason : double poster!]

12/13/2025 9:32:40 PM

RED RECKONING: WE ARE GOING TO SNEAK INTO THE TOURNAMENT ON THE STRENGTH OF OUR LOSSES

12/13/2025 10:55:41 PM

We have a quad 1 win and a quad 2 win with a top 50 non-conference SoS. I know wins don't count as wins to you unless they're one of the 5 teams you actually will acknowledge are "good" at basketball. But we have actually played one of the more difficult non-conference schedules of power 5 teams and have wins against several good teams.

12/13/2025 11:20:42 PM

We fought to the end but sucks to come up short. I don’t like leaving anyone wide open for that many threes unless it is an awful shooting center. I was expecting bigger things from McNeil, he needs to develop a floater or mid range so he is not only a 3 point shooter.

12/13/2025 11:21:26 PM

Quote :

"But we have actually played one of the more difficult non-conference schedules of power 5 teams and have wins against several good teams."

Several = 2

Playing a tough non conference schedule doesn't mean anything if you lose

12/14/2025 12:13:56 AM

I was counting at least one of Liberty and/or UAB in there too. Both of those are high level Quad 3 wins. Both have a good shot of making the tourney. Just like us (except our odds are even better).

[Edited on December 14, 2025 at 4:51 PM. Reason : .]

12/14/2025 4:47:17 PM

Ole Miss game is basically a must win.

Conference isn’t as ass as it has been so we’ll have some more opportunities in conference but sucks to be 0 for in the big games thus far.

12/14/2025 5:57:52 PM

Quote :

"high level Quad 3 wins."

LMAO.

RED RECKONING

12/14/2025 6:00:54 PM

^^ The conference is way better than people realize this year. We don't have a bunch of top 10 teams building hype but 2/3 of the conference is in the top 75 and there are only 3 atrocious teams this year (Pitt/BC/GT are likely Quad 4 games if you have to play them at home). We have as many teams in the top 75 as the SEC does right now (12). The top 75 are guaranteed Quad 1/2 games.

We are actually on track for the best tournament seed since some dude named Herb Sendek was the coach, and some kid from Harlem was talking about how hungry he was. We don't even have to win many more of our Quad 1 games. If we take care of business with the 2nd tier teams and avoid a bad loss we just need to sprinkle in a few more Quad 1 wins.

If you don't believe me, take a gander at this example 4 seed from 2024:
https://www.warrennolan.com/basketball/2024/team-net-sheet?team=Auburn

"Look at all those wasted Quad 1 opportunities. If only they could have won more games against "good" teams so they wouldn't have been a bubble team!" /s

[Edited on December 17, 2025 at 4:31 PM. Reason : .]

12/17/2025 4:30:06 PM

Lol we haven't even played a single conference game yet and somehow we are on track for the best tournament seeding in 20 years. Yes, if we only lose 3 more games the rest of the season(to equal the 7 regular season losses that Auburn team had), then win the conference tournament (like auburn did) we will be ok and a likely top 4 seed in the tournament.

Is it reasonable to expect this NC State team to go through ole miss + conference play to only lose three games? And then win the ACC tournament? From what i have seen? No, it is not. So this is a silly comparison.

12/17/2025 4:47:47 PM

We only need a 7 seed to be the best we've had in 20 years. You're missing the point again. You can be a 4 seed with a less than 30% win rate in Quad 1 when you have a strong SoS (which we do). A 4 seed would be great. I figure we land closer to a 7 than 4 though. And a 7 seed would be a huge success of a season in the context of the last 20 years.

12/17/2025 5:07:55 PM

I think it’s way premature to say we’re on track for our best seed in decades when we have exactly 1 Q1 win.

I’m not hitting the panic button on the season. Tons of time and opportunities left to make our resume.

12/17/2025 5:12:26 PM

Damn now i'm wondering if it is better to exceed expectations or to underwhelm. Exceed and then fan base bummed out if suck in year 2-4. Underwhelm and ppl that have expectations for this season bitch.

12/17/2025 6:33:03 PM

Breed starting. DW out with injury.

I’m hear to boast about my bold Breed starting prediction from back in May

Quote :

"I’m going to take a stand on this heated subject. People come to Sports Talk for hot takes and heated sports debate and I don’t want to deprive people of that. I think Breed will start. If I’m wrong I’ll continue to post here but I’ll lose credibility. Literally all of my credibility is on the line with this prediction."

12/17/2025 6:54:35 PM

I fully endorse that boast

[Edited on December 17, 2025 at 7:15 PM. Reason : Technically you are here though ]

12/17/2025 7:14:45 PM

Quote :

"You can be a 4 seed with a less than 30% win rate in Quad 1 when you have a strong SoS (which we do). "

You can be a 4 seed when you only lose 7 games. We have already lost 4. You're the one who compared this team to an SEC championship team, not me. For us to have a record similar to that team we would have to win every single quad 2 game the rest of the year and win multiple quad one games. Again, i just don't see it.

I have serious questions about this roster still. I don't think Copeland and Williams mesh well together. Both need the ball in their hands to impact the offense and with Copeland being so ball dominant I feel like that is a large part of the reason Williams just disappears from games sometimes. With Copeland at PG you're essentially reducing Williams to being a spot up shooter off of copeland drives and that's not really what we brought him here to do.

12/17/2025 7:33:31 PM

Yep it’s Paul

12/17/2025 8:24:45 PM

Quote :

"I think it’s way premature to say we’re on track for our best seed in decades when we have exactly 1 Q1 win."

That's part of the bigger point though. You don't need a bunch of quad 1 wins to be solidly in the tournament. Our resume as it stands right now (high NET with high SoS) would be solidly in. And being solidly in the tournament would give us our best seed in decades. We just need to seal the deal on a few of our very winnable Q1 wins to stay there (and obviously don't lose any terrible games).

^^ For fuck's sake dude. Nobody is saying we are going to be a 4 seed. Just that the current resume is a solid tournament team at this point in time and the analytics projects them to stay that way. You were asserting that we are ass and aren't going to be in if we don't win a bunch of Quad 1s, and that is 100% wrong. The 2024 Auburn resume is just one of many examples to help you understand why. Incidentally, Auburn has the exact same Quad 1 record as us this year and is still ranked. So why don't you go on their forums and tell them how they are barely a bubble team and stink?

12/17/2025 8:40:28 PM

Get 50 you coward

[Edited on December 17, 2025 at 9:03 PM. Reason : Lol tsu was NOT having it]

12/17/2025 8:58:59 PM

Damn, wish he coulda done that vs Kansas

12/17/2025 9:22:55 PM

[^^^again, you are the one who compared this team to Auburn, not me. That team gave itself some breathing room by actually winning against a decent non-conference schedule. They were 10-0 against quad 2 entering the tournament. We already have one quad 2 loss. I don't think we're going to get 10 quad 1 chances in the ACC this year like they did that year. By my count, according to current net rankings we have 8 quad 1 opportunities in conference games (UVA x2, @Clemson, @wake, @smu, @louisville, UNC, Duke.) that means the other 10 conference games are all must wins, in addition to the ole miss game (which is nearly a quad 3)

It is pointless to argue that our resume is "solidly in" right now, because not a single conference game has been played. We are not getting in based on strength of schedule and being 8-4 with a quad 2 loss. If we win 2-3 quad 1 games and don't lose another sub-quad 1 game? Absolutely we are solidly in the tournament and then you could say this is the best season since Herb. Until then we are in the exact same spot every other NC State team of the last 2 decades has been in.

12/17/2025 9:38:55 PM

Quote :

"Until then we are in the exact same spot every other NC State team of the last 2 decades has been in."

Wrong. We have not had this good of a record against this good of a schedule at this point in the season.

Using Kenpom, the closest we've come was 2012 with a NCSoS ranked #119. Every other schedule has been significantly worse. The next best season was #167 in 2013. Most years we have been in the 200s/300s). Through Dec 17 of the 2012 season, we were 6-4 against that schedule.

This season, NCSoS is far stronger (currently #77 after Texas Southern and will bump back higher after Ole Miss) and we're 8-4 with just one non-conference game left.

12/17/2025 11:27:40 PM

Again, you have to win games, not just play hard games. We have not done that yet. Ole miss is a borderline quad 3 game.

12/18/2025 12:55:52 AM

https://x.com/charlie_grib/status/2001489660409975181?s=46&t=lHWRQcd88WhEW7wh4gQSIw

WW seems concerned

12/18/2025 8:04:28 AM

Quote :

"DROD900 All American 24705 Posts user info edit post What’s going on with McNeil?"

To respond like he did last night, McNiel must lurk on TWW.

12/18/2025 10:40:51 AM

^^ sorry, but that should be “Will Wade seems concerned”. To clarify, WW (Will Wilson) has yet to make any public comments on the basketball team to my knowledge.

12/18/2025 10:49:31 AM

Ebube is more athletic than I thought

12/18/2025 11:08:13 AM

Quote :

"Again, you have to win games, not just play hard games."

I guess we have to just agree to disagree. Cause last time I checked, they have won 8 out of 12 games against a tough schedule and came away with at least 2 resume builder wins and no bad losses. Your "feeling" about what constitutes a hard win doesn't really matter.

12/18/2025 1:22:32 PM

This is moot bc we are going to win out from here

12/18/2025 2:00:52 PM

It's going be great when Duke goes to Lenovo 29-0 and gets handed their first L

reckoning baby!!!

12/18/2025 2:13:44 PM

Quote :

"Cause last time I checked, they have won 8 out of 12 games against a tough schedule and came away with at least 2 resume builder wins and no bad losses. "

4 of those 8 wins are Q4 wins. Those do nothing for the resume, I wouldn’t count them as part of the difficult schedule. Not even entirely disagreeing with your overall point. But our resume right now has a lot riding on Boise and VCU since we missed the other 4 opportunities.

The other part of this is the eye test. Every high major opponent we’ve played has punked us. We played mostly ok against Kansas for the most part but still weren’t good enough. I think it’s very fair to be concerned about our performance against those teams regardless of our resume or NCAA hopes. It’s concerning.

12/20/2025 7:24:46 AM