Cold shooting results in short stay in NCAA
<blockquote><p align=justify>ORLANDO — One and done. The three most painful words in college basketball.
UL Lafayette was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament here Friday at the T.D. Waterhouse Centre, falling 61-52 to the No. 3-seeded North Carolina State Wolfpack.
Just as painful as the loss and the resultant early trip home was the knowledge that, for much of the game, the Ragin’ Cajuns were as responsible for their own demise as the victors.
The Cajuns shot just 32.7 percent from the field, enough to offset their solid defense that held the ACC regular-season runners-up to 36.7 percent.
And as frustration mounted over missed shots, the Cajuns turned the ball over at back-breaking times each time they tried to rally in the second half.
“I thought we had a good start for the most part,” said UL coach Jessie Evans, whose Sun Belt Conference champions finish 20-9. “We were fairly loose. We made some stops and got some baskets, but then we started to rush our shots. If we had knocked down some of those shots early, it would have helped our confidence late.
“In the second half, they’re such a patient team that we had to try and pressure them. They made some unbelievable shots, one while the player was falling down.
“You start to wonder if maybe it was not our afternoon.”
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The Cajuns held NCSU to 9-of-31 first-half shooting to trail by just 27-23 at the break, but the Wolfpack got a baseline hit from Marcus Melvin and a 3-pointer from Cameron Bennerman for a quick 32-23 margin.
After that, the closest the Cajuns could get was 34-28 on an Antoine Landry trey.
Another Landry 3-pointer drew his team within 53-46 with 1:53 remaining, and the Cajuns got a defensive stop, but Brad Boyd missed Orien Greene with a pass at 1:09 and that turnover signaled a last gasp.
N.C. State (21-9), which got 20 points from Melvin and 14 from ACC Player of the Year Julius Hodge, did a better job of keeping its composure in second-half crunch time to reach a second-round Sunday meeting with Vanderbilt.
“Credit goes to our guys,” Wolfpack coach Herb Sendek said. “We have a very high character quotient on our team, and there is never any question about their intent.
“I’m proud of the way we found a way to grind it out, on a night when we didn’t get any points for artistic beauty.”
Typical of the Cajuns’ bad fortune was a missed fast-break layup by Cedric Williams with NCSU leading 38-30 at the 14:25 mark. Adding insult to injury, the possible rebound went out of bounds off the Cajuns.
And, after a steal and layup by Greene had UL within 42-35, Hodge barely got a hand on a pass in the lane, yet still saw the ball go in the basket.
There was also the falling down bucket from Engin Atsur, just beating the shot clock buzzer and putting his team ahead 49-40.
“When guys make shots like that,” Landry said, “You think maybe some things are not meant to be. I watched N.C. State play a lot this year, and I’ve never seen them make shots like that.
“It was not bad defense. But when they make those, it just takes all the momentum out of you.”
“Their defense played great help defense,” Hodge said. “Early on, I was making some bad decisions. You have to give them credit, but some of it was my mistakes.
“We knew they were a good team that was used to winning. Early on, we weren’t making the shots we usually do, so the key was playing defense.”
“In the second half,” Melvin said, “we really started to focus in more. We wanted to stop them, rebound the basketball and on offense cut hard and pass the ball.
“That’s why they weren’t able to get any closer.”
“The idea here is to advance,” Sendek said. “If you watched the games yesterday, a lot of them weren’t easy.”
Friday’s Wolfpack victory was hard earned, but the frustrated Cajuns made their day easier.
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Louisiana misfires against North Carolina State
<blockquote><p align=justify>North Carolina State turned to its defense to overcome a slow start against Louisiana in Orlando, Fla.
Marcus Melvin scored 20 points and the Wolfpack (21-9) survived a subpar performance by Julius Hodge, the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year who turned the ball over six times and was held to 14 points on 5-for-13 shooting.
Louisiana (20-9) kept it interesting, cutting its biggest deficit -- 11 points -- to seven on Antoine Landry's 3-pointer with just less than 3 minutes to go. North Carolina State put the game away by going 6 for 6 from the foul line the rest of the way.
Landry led Louisiana with 16 points, but the Ragin' Cajuns shot just 32.7 percent from the field, including 5 for 22 on 3-point attempts.
The key was a field-goal drought of nearly 12 minutes that spanned the last 9:15 of the first half and the first 2:40 of the second.
The Ragin' Cajuns led for much of the first half and weathered a surge by North Carolina State to trail just 27-23 at the break, despite shooting just 25 percent (6 of 24) in the first 20 minutes.
They thrived on 3-point shots during the regular season, but misfired on 11 of 12 attempts from beyond the arc in the opening half and were nearly as bad after intermission.
Second-leading scoring Brad Boyd finished 1 for 7 from behind the line. Orien Greene, a transfer from Florida with the most NCAA Tournament experience, was 0 for 5.
It's a fact: Louisiana was held to its second-lowest point total of the season. The Ragin' Cajuns lost to Georgia Tech 79-45 in their season opener.
They said it: "We were up three or four and took some quick 3s, looking for the home run to try to increase the lead. We knew every possession is critical and you have to play 40 minutes against a team like that. It just didn't work out." -- Louisiana coach Jessie Evans
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N.C. State holds off sputtering Cajuns
<blockquote><p align=justify>ORLANDO, FLA. -- When he gets around to showing his team the tape of Friday's NCAA Tournament game against North Carolina State, Louisiana coach Jessie Evans no doubt will point out the missed opportunities for the Ragin' Cajuns.
And then he'll probably do it again just to make sure he didn't miss any.
Fourteenth-seeded UL had a chance to pull one of those memorable first-round upsets, but fell short, 61-52, at the T.D. Waterhouse Centre.
"Maybe it just wasn't our afternoon," Evans said. "We play them again, and things might have been different."
Instead of moving on to a second-round game Sunday against Vanderbilt, a 71-58 winner against Western Michigan, UL's season is done.
The Ragin' Cajuns (20-9) never trailed 15th-ranked and third-seeded North Carolina State by more than 11 points Friday. And yet, after trailing 27-23 at halftime despite going the last 9:15 without a field goal, they could get no closer than six during the final 20 minutes.
"We got to rushing our shots, where if maybe we had made a few more early on, that wouldn't have been the case," Evans said. "Then as hard as we were playing defense, they made some unbelievable baskets. We weren't too far away, but in a game like this, every possession is magnified."
That was most evident when UL had the ball trailing 53-46 with 1:21 left.
A basket would have made it a two-possession game. Instead, senior guard Brad Boyd, who had just come into the game after sitting out much of the second half, threw the ball out of bounds 13 seconds later.
The Wolfpack converted on the other end on an eight-foot jumper by Ilian Evtimov with 55 seconds left, and the game essentially was over.
"It's always frustrating when you turn the ball over," Boyd said. "There's not much else I can say."
Boyd's miscue wasn't the only crucial moment of the second half -- just the last.
With UL trailing 47-40, the Ragin' Cajuns forced the Wolfpack (21-9) into the final seconds of the shot clock, only to see freshman guard Engin Atsur throw in one from an improbable over-his-head angle.
At the other end, following a turnover by Brian Hamilton, the Ragin' Cajuns went to full-court pressure as the Wolfpack tried to inbound the ball under the UL basket, forcing a time out.
But after the time out and before the ball was inbounded, Orien Greene fouled Julius Hodge, and Hodge then made two free throws to make it an 11-point game.
ULL guard Antoine Landry, who prepped at De La Salle, made a 3-pointer to get the deficit back down to eight, and again the Ragin' Cajuns forced North Carolina State deep into the shot clock.
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But this time Marcus Melvin was fouled by Greene underneath the basket with one second left on the shot clock, and he then made two free throws, part of 11-of-11 free-throw shooting down the stretch for the Wolfpack, which leads the nation in free-throw shooting.
Meanwhile, UL finished with 36 percent shooting from the field, actually improving in the second half after going 6-of-24 in the first. But the Ragin' Cajuns also failed to get consecutive scores during the second half.
"The shots we normally make, we didn't make today," said Landry, UL's only double-figures scorer, with 16 points. "They didn't fall for whatever reason. I don't know. We never gave up, but if you can't make your shots and you never seem to get a break, you're not going to win."
North Carolina State got 20 points from Melvin and a quiet 14 from Hodge, the ACC Player of the Year who had only four points in the first half.
"They were playing great help defense," Hodge said. "And I was making a lot of mistakes of my own that I shouldn't be making. There are going to be games like this, and we just have to do whatever it takes to win."
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