Was out of town and just caught the replay. That was... unreal. What a debacle this year is. When Doral got the dunk and the foul with a couple minutes left I really thought we had it. Then those last possessions... Just absurd. Sarr tries to pass the ball when he's 3 feet from the bucket and turns it over giving them a breakaway, tied. Then Sarr hangs in the corner looking lost instead of flashing high to give Crawford an option. The result is right when he's going to pass it back to Wilbekin across the timeline an NC State defender jumps toward Wilbekin and Crawford has to pass it behind the line and it's a 10 second call. Manning yanks him for Chill. Next we get NC State on offense, they accidentally throw the ball off Yurtseven's face and it ricocheted so far that Crawford can't get it and they hit a jumper. Okey dokey. Childress immediately breaks the press with Wilbekin, we get a great screen on a ball reversal to Crawford who splits the defense for a layup. But he misses it and Yurtseven maybe gets away with basket interference. Next Beverly puts his head down and dribbles straight into a double team and is totally dead pinned on the baseline under the basket, but Woods actually drops his hands and stops playing defense for a second, giving him a passing lane and they hit an elbow jumper. Then it's just a cluster fuck. Wilbekin just blindly jacks a 3 like we're down 9 points instead of 4, despite the fact that Doral is pointing at the rim with nobody in his way for a simple dunk. Would have been a 2 point game with 50 seconds. Instead we have to foul, and the game is effectively over.
It wasn't quite UVA-comeback ridiculous, but damn. Throw in the fact that Doral took two made buckets away from us on basket interference, and Craw/Chill combine for 0/9 from deep and we only made 4 threes total. It's like we're finding the most painful, absurd, and dumb ways to lose possible. Can't really fault the in-game coaching since every play was right there to be made for the win - I typically hate the 4 guard lineup as well but Sarr was a deer in headlights towards the end and NC State had zero size. The matchups didn't hurt us, just horrid execution. The Wilbekin 3 and the Crawford layup were just brutal.