The Blue Devils go to PNC Arena in Raleigh to face the Wolfpack Monday evening (streaming, live stats), tipping off about 47 hours after finishing the Virginia game. It's March now, so the players may as well get used to quick turnarounds between games. As it was with Virginia, Duke plays State really late in the regular season for the first and only time. This game starts a doubleheader on the mothership network -- Texas plays at Baylor after -- so tune in on time to see the game in its entirety. (Unless ESPN brings in their bracketologist Joe Lunardi for an unnecessary split screen; it's been known to happen.)
Opponent: North Carolina State Wolfpack
Record: 17-12 (9-9 in ACC, 12-4 at home)
NET: 80
KenPom: 75
Last game: 79-70 road loss against UNC (recap, box score, highlights)
Kevin Keatts is a system coach, and by that I mean he's stuck in the system at NC State, a program now over 40 years removed from its last national title. He is the fourth consecutive head coach to lead the Wolfpack above .500 but not quite .600. To show how close he is to his predecessors, I calculated their winning percentages prior to Saturday's game. Coach Keatts was tied with Herb Sendek at .591. With a win against UNC, he would have moved into first place with .593. But he lost, tying him with Mark Gottfried at .588. It came down to that one game; what have you done for us lately, indeed.
.443 Les Robinson (78-98), 1990-1996
.591 Herb Sendek (191-132), 1996-2006
.524 Sidney Lowe (86-78), 2006-2011
.588 Mark Gottfried (123-86), 2011-2017
.588 Kevin Keatts (130-91), 2017-present
If we're talking about NCAA Tournament appearances, then yes, Coach Keatts (twice in 6 previous seasons) hasn't had as much success as Sendek (5 times in 10 seasons), but keep two things in mind. First, Sendek's teams missed the NCAA Tournament in his first five seasons, so Keatts is already ahead of him at this point in their parallel tenures. Second, Sendek worked within the confines of a much smaller ACC back then, from 9 to 12 teams. Sendek made the Sweet Sixteen once, with a 2004-2005 squad that went 7-9 in conference play and still got in as an at-large team. I doubt that would happen now.
A recent DBR Podcast explored the question of what the TJ stands for in TJ Power's name. (His player bio is silent on this, but Duke's official team statistician said the TJ stands for Thomas James; go to the 3:35 mark in this video.) Here the J stands for a middle name, and not Junior, as is the generational trend.
I mention this because State's rotation has four players so initialed (DJ Horne, DJ Burns, MJ Rice, and LJ Thomas), plus the coach's son KJ Keatts on the roster. Theoretically there's a sixth, Dennis Parker Jr, but a third DJ on the team might be too confusing. Does NCSU have the highest percentage of players potentially named Junior on a Division I men's college team this year? Maybe a question for a future DBR Podcast. It's not the kind of statistic that Ken Pomeroy or Bart Torvik would track, and I'm not going to check 362 rosters. I thought about looking up Indiana's roster for Juniors, but then I remembered...
6-2 grad student guard DJ Horne (17.6 pts, 3.3 reb, 2.2 ast, 1.4 stl)
6-9 grad student forward DJ Burns (11.6 pts, 3.9 reb, 2.6 ast)
6-3 grad student guard Casey Morsell (11.6 pts, 2.9 reb, 1.9 ast, 1.0 stl)
6-10 junior forward Mohamed Diarra (5.3 pts, 6.5 reb, 0.3 ast)
6-2 senior guard Michael O'Connell (4.4 pts, 3.3 reb, 3.0 ast)
6-4 junior guard Jayden Taylor (12.2 pts, 3.7 reb, 1.3 ast, 1.2 stl)
6-10 junior forward Ben Middlebrooks (5.4 pts, 4.2 reb, 0.4 ast)
6-6 freshman guard Dennis Parker Jr. (4.8 pts, 3.3 reb, 0.4 ast)
6-5 sophom*ore guard MJ Rice (4.1 pts, 1.9 reb, 0.1 ast)
6-2 sophom*ore guard LJ Thomas (2.6 pts, 1.1 reb, 0.8 ast)
6-2 junior guard Kam Woods (1.3 pts, 0.9 reb, 0.2 ast)
Dennis Parker Jr and LJ Thomas are the only players listed above who came to Raleigh as freshmen. Coach Keatts has been busy bringing in everyone else from the transfer portal in the past few years.
The Wolfpack's pair of DJs give them 4 turntables, 2 microphones, and just under 30 points per game. Both are among the league leaders in field goal percentage, and Horne in particular seems to shoot well both inside and outside, and in high volume. Horne trails only UNC's RJ Davis and Pitt's Markus Burton in field goal attempts, and he tops the ACC in 3-point percentage, averaging 3 makes on 7 attempts. DJ Burns was used sparingly in State's last two games, going scoreless in 12 minutes at FSU and scoring only 6 points in 17 minutes at UNC.
Jayden Taylor has come off the bench for the past 5 games, and his scoring output has actually increased. He scored 24 in Tallahassee and 22 in Chapel Hill, and he's now the team's second leading scorer. You may recall Ben Middlebrooks from last offseason's weird portal trade, in which he transferred from Clemson to NC State just 2 days after Jack Clark transferred from NC State to Clemson. Together, Taylor and Middlebrooks are gaining the minutes that Burns has recently lost.
MJ Rice, a Kansas transfer, will not play in this game. He stepped away from basketball in the summer, then played 9 games in December and January, then decided to sit out the rest of the season.
None of NC State's numbers in Basketball Reference stand out to me. They are top 100 nationally in steals, field goal makes and attempts, and 2-point makes and attempts. Within the ACC, they are 2nd in committing fouls (Duke is 9th), but 13th in committing turnovers (Duke is 12th). They are average in most other categories, which seems fitting for a team that is 9-9 in conference play.
