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NC State Game Notes | NC Central Game Notes
RALEIGH – The NC State men’s basketball team opens the Will Wade era on Monday night when it hosts North Carolina Central in the 2025-26 starter inside a sold out Lenovo Center.
Tipoff against the Eagles is scheduled for 7 p.m. and the game will be streamed on ACC Network Extra with Andrew Sanders and Casey Morsell on the call. NC State fans can also listen to Matt Chazanow and new radio analyst – and former Pack great – Chucky Brown call the action on the Wolfpack Sports Network.
Noting NC State
– NC State opens its 116th season of basketball Monday evening when it hosts North Carolina Central.
– The Pack wrapped up the preseason last Sunday with a come-from-behind 88-86 win over South Carolina in Greensboro. NC State trailed 79-68 with eight minutes to play but used a 17-2 run to take an 85-81 lead with under one minute to play. USC scored the next five points though to take an 86-85 with 15 seconds to play. Paul McNeil, Jr., won the game for the Pack with a three-pointer that swished through the net with 0.5 seconds remaining.
– Ven-Allen Lubin led NC State with 18 points on 8-of-13 shooting. Quadir Copeland, Tre Holloman and Darrion Williams all also reached double figures with each player finishing with 16 players. The quartet of players combined to shoot 66.7% (24-of-36) from the field.
– Red Reckoning: On March 23, 2025, Will Wade was announced as the head coach of the NC State men’s basketball program. Wade comes to NC State after leading McNeese to a combined 58-11 record and back-to-back Southland regular season and tournament titles in his two seasons at Lake Charles. His final win with the Cowboys was on March 20th when he led McNeese to a 69-67 win over fifth-seed Clemson in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That win was the first March Madness win in McNeese history.
– A native of Nashville, Tenn., Wade has previously served as head coach at Chattanooga, VCU, LSU and McNeese. He brings 11 years of head coaching experience to the Wolfpack and has led his programs to seven NCAA Tournament berths, including appearances in the last five.
– Wade turned over the NC State roster from last season’s 12-19 team. He only brought back just one scholarship player (Paul McNeil, Jr.) from last season and just two players overall (McNeil and walk-on Jordan Snell). The Pack’s top-eight scorers from last season are not returning to this year’s team and you now have to go back to the 2011-12 & 2012-13 seasons to mark the last time NC State had the same leading scorer in back-to-back seasons.
– The Pack added 13 scholarship players to its roster this offseason. Nine transferred from other D1 institutions, two are international players that played overseas professionally last season and the final two are traditional freshmen that played high school basketball last season.
Monday Storylines
– NC State has won 30 of its last 31 home-openers when played against a non-conference opponent. (NC State fell to William & Mary in the season-opening contest of the 2015-16 season. In the 2019-20 season, NC State dropped a season-opening overtime game to Georgia Tech. That year the ACC had conference games on opening night to celebrate the new ACC Network.)
– Dating back to the 2016-17 season, NC State has a 66-3 (.957) record against non-conference opponents in regular season home games.
– NC State has the potential to have 13 players make their official NC State debut on Monday night. Last season, seven players made their NC State debut on opening night and in the 2023-24 season, NC State had six players make their program debut in the season lid-lifter. NC State had nine players appear in the exhibition game against South Carolina on Sunday and eight of those were new to the program.
– Gaining an advantage at the foul line. In the exhibition win over South Carolina, NC State shot double the amount of free throws as the Gamecocks (30-to-15). In fact, the Pack made more free throws (19) than USC attempted (15). Last season at McNeese, Wade’s Cowboys made more free throws than their opponents attempted in 16 of 35 games and outscored or tied their opponents at the foul line in 24 of 35 games.
NC State series with North Carolina Central
– NC State leads the all-time series with NC Central, 4-1. The two programs met five times in six seasons from the 2007-08 season through the 2013-14 season. All five games have been in Raleigh.
– Last Meeting (November 20, 2013): NC Central beat NC State, 82-72, in overtime inside PNC Arena. The Pack made a three-pointer at the end of regulation to force overtime, but the Eagles scored the first 11 points of the extra period to put the game away.
– The game on Nov. 20, 2013 pretty much set (or nearly set) every Lenovo Center record that deals with fouls and free throws. The two teams combined for 57 fouls and 64 made free throws (78 free throw attempts) in the contest. In the win, NC Central made 41 of its 45 free throw attempts. The 41 made free throws are the most by a team in a single game in arena history and the 45 attempts are third-most in a single game in arena history. The 64 combined made free throws are an arena record and the 78 free throw attempts are the second-most combined free throw attempts in a single game in arena history. NC Central’s Jeremy Ingram went 19-of-21 from the free throw line. The 19 free throws are tied for the most by a single player in one game in arena history. The 57 fouls are the second-most combined fouls in arena history and NC State’s 31 fouls in the game are the most the Pack has ever had in the 20+-year history of the Lenovo Center.
