Inside NC State’s comeback win over Virginia to advance to ACC tournament final

WASHINGTON — After graduate guard Michael O’Connell fouled Virginia’s Isaac McKneely with five seconds left in the ACC tournament semifinals Friday night at Capital One Arena, he stood near the free throw line and checked the clock. 

NC State was down 3 with a chance to fight. O’Connell, the Pack’s go-to ball handler, needed to know how much time was left. He knew a wild sequence was coming, so O’Connell had to double check what was left on the clock. 

Five seconds was it. That was enough time in his head.

Well, McKneely missed the front end of a 1-and-1 and graduate guard Casey Morsell corralled the rebound. He quickly tossed the ball to O’Connell, who was already mid stride coming up the left side of the court. O’Connell took another peek at the clock and started to make a move on McKneely. 

Time was not in his favor, so O’Connell took four dribbles, set his feet on the left wing, and with McKneely’s hand practically touching the Stanford transfer’s face, he uncorked the triple. 

O’Connell’s shot was a high-arcing rainbow to clear McKneely’s outstretched hand. It went so high in the air that it disappeared from the TV broadcast before it came back down to Earth. It seemed like the ball took more than the just under three seconds it was in the air, and the entire NC State team sat and watched. 

Their season was in the balance. If it goes in, the Pack forces overtime. If not, the season is likely over. 

“It just seemed like it happened in slow-motion,” junior forward Ben Middlebrooks said. “It was like one of them movies.”

“Honestly, I just prayed in my head,” junior forward Mohamed Diarra said. “I did everything I can for Mike to make that shot. And I believe it. When he took the shot, I said, ‘it’s going in.’”

“All the wind had left my body and it all came back in that moment,” graduate forward DJ Burns said. “Crazy.”

When the ball came back to orbit, it karemed off the backboard, rattled around the rim and fell through the hoop. Overtime was on the way. 

Graduate guard DJ Horne, the team’s leading scorer, had a three-point try drawn up for himself with 16 seconds left, but he didn’t have a clean look. He passed it to Morsell, who missed the mark. 

But as he saw O’Connell hit the triple, just the third made three of the night for NC State, Horne was in disbelief. 

“I still don’t know how he made it,” Horne said. “It looked like it was the whole team on him. … It had a good arc on it and it went in man. I will say tournament Michael O’Connell is something else.”

NC State coach Kevin Keatts was confident his team had a shot the moment O’Connell let it fly. 

“Michael’s shot, man, that’s a great shot, and I had a direct view of it,” Keatts said. “As it went up I was like, man, that shot is going in, it’s going in, and then luckily it did and obviously sent us to overtime.”

The tenth-seeded Wolfpack then had to find a way to close the game. It did in the 73-65 overtime win over the third-seeded Cavaliers. 

Objective: Feed DJ Burns

O’Connell’s trey gave the cardiac Pack another life. The Pack had not played an overtime game since Jan. 21, a loss at Virginia, but the NC State players felt they had the Cavaliers where they wanted them when more time was added to the clock.  

It’s preferred method in the bonus five minutes? Burns. 

“Honestly, when we went into overtime, I knew we were going to win it at that point,” said Middlebrooks, who scored 12 points in the win. “Coming in with that type of momentum and the guys we have out there on the court — 30, DJ Burns, as soon as he got the ball I knew it was up. When he gets going, you can’t stop him.”

Middlebrooks was confident in Burns’ ability to score against the Cavaliers since he scored 10 points in his first six minutes on the floor in the first half. He made it look easy, and Burns is one of the elite post players in the ACC, so he could accomplish the same thing.

NC State fed its 6-foot-9, 275-pound big man in overtime on its first two possessions of the extra period. He capped his overtime effort with a layup and the foul to finish with 7 of NC State’s 15 points in overtime to lead the Wolfpack to its first ACC title game appearance since 2007. 

While Burns was NC State’s go-to option, he had to settle himself before the extra period. He felt that he was constantly fouled during the first 40 minutes and he admitted that he grew frustrated by it. 

He was in his “feelings” about it, but he moved on pretty fast. There were bigger things to worry about than the opinions of three men dressed in black and white outfits. 

“I just decided that we needed to win this game,” Burns said. “My team was more important than how I felt in the moment.”

He took over and it worked out for the Wolfpack. Burns finished with a team-best 19 points for the Pack, which scored 40 points in the paint against the Cavaliers. 

Burns’ ability to score at will against the Cavaliers’ post defenders was demoralizing for Virginia down the stretch.

“I though we were going to pull away there, but DJ Burns got going a little bit, and they kept fighting,” McKneely said. “Respect to them for that.”

‘We can’t quit’

NC State’s path to the NCAA tournament is still alive. It has won four games in four days, and it now has an opportunity to play for the conference crown, even though it trailed by as many as 7 with just over four minutes left in the contest. 

The red and white used the intermission between regulation and overtime to collect its thoughts. The team took multiple deep breaths in the huddle before it went onto the floor for five more minutes. That small meditation session proved to be useful and effective as it blitzed Virginia in overtime. NC State was not stopped on any of its five possessions in the bonus period.

NC State embodied its head coach once again. It wasn’t going to give up. That approach worked in the first three games, and it proved successful once again with Virginia as the opponent. 

“Redemption,” Diarra said with a smile in his locker. “We had to give everything we got. That’s what we do. And when we’ve done that, we’ve done great.”

Diarra, who transferred from Missouri before the season, nearly logged another double-double with 9 points and 12 boards. He is at his third school after starting his college career at Garden City Community College, but the Wolfpack has a different vibe than the other teams he has been a part of. 

It doesn’t give up.

“Nobody on this team like’s weakness,” Diarra said. “We can’t quit. We’re here for each other and we can’t quit. I don’t know why, but we’re all like that. Everybody’s like that on the team.”

For O’Connell, a player that averaged 5.2 points last season at Stanford, the Wolfpack’s run was not meant to end one win away from a conference championship appearance. 

He propelled the Pack with his triple and 12 points in the semifinal to give it a chance in the final day of the ACC’s pinnacle event.

“At this point, we made it this far, we didn’t want to cave in because things are tough,” O’Connell said. “We just tried to stay together, focus up and control what we could control to get stops and scoring. It worked out for us.”