Brownlow: Angst will be at an all-time high as NC State hosts hated rival UNC

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan columnist/reporter

Raleigh, N.C. — There are a lot of hostile, heated rivalries in the country. I'm sure there are some that are just as personal as NC State and UNC are.

But I can tell you that I've never felt an arena's entire aura shift quite like PNC Arena's does when UNC comes to town.

And Sunday?

Between UNC desperate to keep its NCAA Tournament hopes alive and NC State fans eager to do the opposite of welcome the Tar Heels to their home, it's going to be unprecedented.

Are NC State fans always ready to boo the referees? Yes. And are they ready to boo North Carolina? Of course, yes. Combine that with the animosity of the first meeting between the two teams and the bad feelings between NC State and the referees and, man.

Who needs NFL football on a Sunday when there's a grudge match like this one?

So let's just get to the GIFs, shall we?

NORTH CAROLINA (16-10, 8-7 ACC) AT N.C. STATE (20-7, 10-6 ACC)

Time: 1 p.m.
TV: ESPN

#ANALYSIS

Look. Sometimes, the game of basketball is very simple. Former UNC head coach Roy Williams said very many times that everything looks better when the ball goes in the basket. Former NC State head coach Sidney Lowe said: "Gotta make shots." UNC, right now? Not doing much of the shot-making. At least, not from the 3-point line. And when you don't make 3-pointers in today's college basketball world, you don't win a whole lot of games.

Carolina is 8-0 when it has hit more than a third of its 3-point attempts. But that means that yes, it has hit less than a third of its 3-point tries in 18 out of 26 games. That's ... not good. And it's gotten worse, not better. Carolina is dead last in ACC-only 3-point shooting (29.5 percent). UNC beat NC State in the first meeting between the two in spite of shooting its third-worst 3-point percentage in a win this season (4 of 18, 22.2%) for a few reasons, but one of them was it only took a third of its total shots from beyond the arc. In the loss to Miami on Monday, Carolina shot just 16% from 3 but the bigger issue was it took 47% of its shots from 3. The only times it took a higher percentage of shots from 3 were in wins, and it was because Carolina was MAKING them in those games. So ideally, NC State would love to get UNC setting for (and missing) 3-pointers on Sunday.

If you're Carolina and you can't hit 3-pointers, you've got to score somehow, right? So yes, UNC relies on its 2-pointers, but it also relies on free throws. And those free throws were a big reason it beat NC State, accounting for 36 of UNC's 80 points. More importantly? It was Caleb Love, R.J. Davis and Armando Bacot who took the bulk of the free throws, combining for 31 between them. When they're aggressive and attacking and getting to the line, UNC is hard to beat. When they're not getting to the line and settling for jacking up a ton of 3-pointers and forgetting to get it to Armando Bacot, they're not as difficult to beat.

The foul line has been an issue for NC State all year, though, and no amount of complaining or pleading from Kevin Keatts seems to have changed that. Because almost a bigger issue than sending opponents to the foul line a lot is NC State's failure to get there itself. NC State is 318th nationally in offensive free-throw rate and 12th in ACC games only. NC State is last in ACC-only defensive free-throw rate as well and ACC opponents have scored 21.8% of their points from the foul line against NC State, a figure that leads the league. Carolina has over a fifth of its points in conference play from the foul line and ranks third in that category, second in ACC-only free-throw rate.

But Carolina is 12th in defensive free-throw rate in ACC play. And so NC State has to figure out a way to exploit that, especially with its guards. The more NC State settles for jump shots instead of attacking is the moment it will play right into what Carolina wants. I mean, unless NC State hits all of the jump shots, in which case, kudos.

And I'll say this: I'm not judging what Keatts had to say after the Syracuse game about the officiating. I'm not saying whether it's good or bad for his team because I can't know that. He knows his group much better than anyone else. Maybe it fires them up and a little anger certainly never hurt most high-level athletes. But if a few calls go against NC State on Sunday, he has to get his team to stay the course and not lose their heads. NC State can't control what the officials do and don't call. But they can control how they respond. They fought down the stretch at UNC eventually, but they spent a large portion of the game overwhelmed and shell-shocked, even before Smith's injury. If the team starts to feel like it can't win because it's not allowed to, well, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point.

NAMES TO KNOW

Puff Johnson/Pete Nance. No matter which one it is, one of them has to show up and give UNC effective minutes at the 4-spot. UNC's woes are not quite as simple as one player, obviously. But it's been the biggest and most obvious difference between this year and last year's Tar Heels. No one was going to replace Brady Manek, but what he was able to do was so integral to UNC's spacing on offense. There's a reason that players who had a much better 3-point percentage a year ago suddenly can't buy one. They're not taking shots that are as good or in rhythm as the ones they got a year ago. Nance is more of a traditional big man than Manek was, and he's been in a 3-point shooting slump. Johnson has struggled with his health all season, and he picked up three fouls in just 14 minutes in the loss to Miami, shooting just 1 of 6 from the field. Nance played 30 minutes and had two points. The 4-spot just hasn't been good enough for UNC this year.

Last time UNC and NC State faced off, Johnson was not healthy enough to play. Nance had a nice enough game with five points and eight rebounds in 30 minutes, but he did his work on the defensive end, doing what he could to make life difficult on D.J. Burns. Johnson is the quicker one of he and Nance and the better shooter, better able to get out on stretch-4s and to move his feet on the perimeter. It's unclear on whether Hubert Davis will decide on one of Nance or Johnson to ride down the stretch or if he'll just play the hot hand, but one of them needs to produce in this game.

Terquavion Smith. Thankfully, the Wolfpack star ended up being all right after taking a scary fall the last time he faced off against the Tar Heels. But all eyes are going to be on him again in the rematch, in part because of that fall and in larger part because of how important he is to his team's success. When he had to exit the first meeting, UNC already had a pretty sizable lead. But he's so important to what NC State does that having him at full health and full effectiveness could help flip the matchup. He had 12 points on 4 of 15 shooting, but the real issue was he'd only gotten to the foul line once. Smith attempted at least five free throws in 11 of NC State's first 19 games and has done so just twice in the last eight. He went 11 of 13 in the game after UNC and has actually gone three games without attempting a single free throw since. He's just 2 of 4 in the last four games from the line and has attempted only four free throws, all against Virginia. Smith has such a knack for scoring through contact or creating contact, but it hasn't been getting him to the line as of late and that needs to change. Since he had 32 in the win over FSU, he has 54 points in the last four games but it's taken him 61 shots to get there and he's 11 of 38 from 3 (10 of 23 from 2). He needs to flip that ratio a little. UNC has struggled to defend opposing guards all season and with as well as he and Jarkel Joiner have played all year, they need to own this matchup in a way they weren't able to in Round 1.

NARRATIVES

North Carolina Win:

North Carolina Loss:

NC State Win:

NC State Loss:

PREDICTION

NC State, 75-69. Hard to imagine UNC containing NC State's back court twice in a row, and UNC is just ... not shooting the ball well right now.