Tonight at 7:20 p.m. ET the No. 12 North Carolina State Wolfpack will be in action for the second time this NCAA Tournament, as they were victorious in the play-in game and advanced to face No. 5 Saint Louis. Watch the game on TNT or live stream it free by clicking this link. Wolfpack fans can hear the game on 99.9 ESPN, while Billikens fans can listen in on 101 ESPN.
St. Louis was 26-6 on the season, and 13-3 in a tough Atlantic 10 conference so many feel they are under-seeded as a No. 5 in the brutal Midwest region. "You can speculate the seeds or the matchups, and the locations, and who's playing Thursday, who's playing Friday ... all these things that are fun to try to figure out. But it comes down to the game doesn't know that," Crews said.
The Billikens are led by senior forward Dwayne Evans, who paced the team 14 points and 6.4 rebounds a game; his numbers this year are nearly identical to the stats he amassed a season ago when St. Louis was a trendy choice to reach the Final Four.
N.C. State, meanwhile, is from a traditional powerhouse conference, the ACC, and has a traditional scorer in lengthy forward T.J. Warren. He was the leading scorer in the ACC, putting up more a night than highly publicized Duke freshman Jabari Parker and mighty mite point guard Marcus Paige from UNC. He scored 24.8 points a night on 52-plus percent shooting from the field.
To contain Warren and advance, the Billikens will need to keep him out of the paint and launching 3-pointers, where he connects at just 27 percent. Also, the Wolfpack may need to battle fatigue after a furious push to even make the Big Dance.
"I feel good about what's happened because of where we started," N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried said. "Even after the tough games we had and losses we had that were really emotionally tough, our guys seemed to always bounce back and have a good spirit about themselves. That's made it a lot of fun. Hopefully, we can keep on going with this for a while."
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