DALLAS — An improbable run of March magic continued for the 11th-seeded North Carolina State men’s basketball team Friday night, when the Wolfpack fended off a late bid by No. 2 seed Marquette on the way to a 67-58 upset in the NCAA tournament’s South Region round of 16 at American Airlines Center.
The victory sends the lowest remaining seed in the tournament to Sunday’s region final against No. 4 seed Duke, its ACC rival. It also secures the Wolfpack’s first trip to the Elite Eight since 1986 and the sixth in the program’s storied history.
“I imagined it way back in October,” graduate forward DJ Burns Jr. said. “It was the why-not-us thing. We’re going to keep that going. We get a lot of disrespect. People still don’t think we’re supposed to be there, that we’re going to go further. We’re going to keep trying to crash the party.”
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Point guard DJ Horne led N.C. State with 19 points, and guard Casey Morsell added 15 points on 7-for-12 shooting in a game the Wolfpack led for all but four minutes. Forward Mohamed Diarra had 11 points on 4-for-6 shooting and a game-high 15 rebounds while managing depleted energy levels as he observes Ramadan.
The Wolfpack (25-14) limited Marquette to 4-for-31 shooting (12.9 percent) from three-point range, including 2 for 18 (11.1 percent) in the second half. The Golden Eagles (27-10) did themselves no favors by missing myriad open looks from behind the arc.
The decisive moments unfolded after Marquette trimmed its deficit to 58-52 on Kam Jones’s three-point play with 3:39 remaining. The Wolfpack countered with Morsell’s contested turnaround jumper and Michael O’Connell’s three-pointer to expand the lead to double figures again with less than two minutes to go.
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Jones scored a game-high 20 points for the Golden Eagles, who got no closer than eight the rest of the game. N.C. State, one season removed from bowing out in the round of 64 in its first tournament appearance since 2018, sank four consecutive free throws in the final minute to keep Marquette at bay.
“Man, I would just say proving everyone wrong,” Morsell said of what has been the most gratifying part of N.C. State’s surge. “Going into every game we’re pretty much the underdogs. We have that conversation heading into every game about trying to embrace everyone doubting us and just proving everyone wrong and going into the locker room and celebrating.”
The path each team charted to reach this point included bumps late in the regular season followed by a pronounced upswing attributable to differing circumstances.
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The Golden Eagles closed by losing two of three heading into the Big East tournament in large part because of an oblique injury to point guard Tyler Kolek, which left Marquette without the national leader in assists (7.9) for six games. The transfer from George Mason came back for the start of the NCAA tournament, helping Marquette advance to its first Sweet 16 since 2013.
The previous time N.C. State played in the round of 16 was in 2015. This run, meanwhile, has been unlike any other in this season’s NCAA tournament. The Wolfpack had lost four in a row going into the ACC tournament in D.C., and Coach Kevin Keatts’s job security was reportedly in doubt.
N.C. State proceeded to win five games in as many days to claim the conference tournament championship for the first time since 1987, fueled by Burns and Horne, both graduate transfers. Burns came to Raleigh from Winthrop. Horne began his career at Illinois State and transferred to Arizona State before playing for his hometown school.
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“The difference in the game is when you can defend teams,” Keatts said. “I thought when we defended the three-point line, that made a huge difference. Then offensively I just thought we really shared the ball. We did some good things. Turned the ball over a little bit more than I wanted to, but when you get 14 assists on 26 made field goals, that’s a good night.”
The sixth game all-time between the schools also marked a notable anniversary. N.C. State won its first national championship 50 years ago, defeating Marquette, 76-64, in the NCAA tournament final.
In the teams’ latest meeting, the Wolfpack sparkled in the first half, belying a group participating in an eighth elimination game this month. Torrid shooting and rugged defense carried N.C. State to a 37-24 lead at halftime after Golden Eagles forward David Joplin (0 for 7 on three-pointers) missed three free throws with 2.2 seconds left.
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N.C. State opened its first double-digit lead about seven minutes into the game and closed the half on an 8-2 burst. Jayden Taylor made a three-pointer off a pass from Diarra, and Burns, at 6-foot-9 and 275 pounds, dazzled with an up-and-under move for a layup between two defenders.
“I think when we watch on tape we will see that their physicality and aggressiveness disrupted us at times,” Marquette Coach Shaka Smart said. “Certainly some things that we could have or should have done differently against that just to kind of meet force with force. It wasn’t that we didn’t talk about that during the game. A lot of three-point shots we got were good, didn’t make nearly enough. I mean, it’s going to be hard to win if you go 4 for 31 as a team.”
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