You cannot—you just cannot—mess around when your season is in the balance. Maybe it was fitting that NC State lost at home to Georgia Tech at home thanks to a last-second lapse that led to an easy dunk. I can’t argue at this point that State should be in the NCAA tournament, or that there was anything raw about the deal tendered on Wednesday night.
State simply wasn’t any good. State almost bailed itself out from being not very good, thanks to Torin Dorn’s go-ahead three with 5.5 seconds left, but it never should have come down to that moment.