Quadir Copeland had 24 points and eight assists. Ven-Allen Lubin added 18 points, as seventh seeded NC State beat 15th-seeded Pitt, 98-88, in the second round of the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament.
NC State (20-12) advances to play No. 2 seed and 10th-ranked Virginia in the quarterfinals on Thursday. The two teams met twice in the regular season. The Wolfpack lost both contest by an average of 22 points.
After the win, head coach Will Wade, Copeland and Lubin discussed facing the Cavaliers for a third time.
“They’re massive,” Wade said. “They’ve blocked a ton of our shots in both games. The first time we played them, they didn’t have the shooter White, and then the second time we played them, he did what every shooter does against us – which is make a bunch of shots.”
“They’re a really good team. They’re really well-coached. Coach Odom does a great job, and they’re massive. We’re not the biggest. A lot of our defensive issues is our positional size isn’t very good, so there’s not a lot of answers sometimes with that. We’ve got to find a way to see if we can just hang in there tomorrow and see what we can do. But we’ve been out-classed both times.”
Tip off for tomorrow’a quarterfinal matchup is 12:00pm.
