{"id":25536,"date":"2024-04-01T03:16:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T08:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=25536"},"modified":"2024-04-01T03:17:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T08:17:04","slug":"n-c-state-and-its-2-djs-headed-to-1st-final-four-since-1983-after-76-64-win-over-duke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=25536","title":{"rendered":"N.C. State and its 2 DJs headed to 1st Final Four since 1983 after 76-64 win over Duke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DALLAS (AP) \u2014 Bruising big man DJ Burns Jr.<\/u><\/a> plays with plenty of joy, skipping on and off the floor and interacting with North Carolina State fans that he often works into a frenzy with slick moves and a soft-touch shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was raised in a happy environment,\u201d Burns said. \u201cI try to take that with me everywhere I go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now he can take that to the desert for the Wolfpack\u2019s first Final Four in four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 6-foot-9, 275-pound Burns scored a season-high 29 points<\/u><\/a> on 13-of-19 shooting, DJ Horne had 20<\/u><\/a> and 11th-seeded N.C. State beat Atlantic Coast Conference rival Duke 76-64 in the South Region final Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

N.C. State is back on basketball\u2019s biggest stage for the first time since the late Jim Valvano was sprinting around the court looking for someone to hug after winning the 1983 national title with an upset over Houston and Phi Slama Jama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese guys are so special,\u201d seventh-year coach Kevin Keatts<\/u><\/a> said. \u201cNine elimination games or you go home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These Wolfpack (26-14) head to Glendale, Arizona, with the most losses ever for a Final Four team, but on a winning streak that began after losing their last four regular-season games, and seven of nine. They had to win five games against past national champions in five days in the ACC Tournament, including a win over Duke in the quarterfinal round, just to get into the 68-team NCAA Tournament field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Now they will play 7-foot-4 All-American Zach Edey and Purdue<\/u><\/a> in the first national semifinal game, before defending champion UConn takes on Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>\u201cI\u2019ll say like I\u2019ve been saying the whole tournament. When I stop having fun with basketball, I\u2019ll stop playing,\u201d said Burns, who was voted the South Region\u2019s most outstanding player. \u201cThere\u2019s just been a total switch in our commitment. Nobody\u2019s being late to things. Nobody\u2019s being a problem on the court. Everybody\u2019s come together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth-seeded Duke (27-9), which ousted top seed Houston in the Sweet 16 two nights earlier,\u00a0missed out on its second Final Four in three seasons<\/u><\/a>\u00a0after leading by six at halftime and maintaining that margin with 16 1\/2 minutes left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But soon after Keatts was called for a technical foul with 8 minutes left, his team was well on its way to becoming the seventh double-digit seed to make the Final Four since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jared McCain made both free throws for the technical that Keatts got after officials ruled a missed shot by Duke\u2019s Kyle Filipowski that went over the backboard and off the shot clock went off one of his players. Replays showed that while maybe there should have been a foul since Burns made contact with the 7-foot Filipowski\u2019s arm, the Wolfpack forward\u2019s wasn\u2019t even close to the ball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A minute later, Ben Middlebrooks had a steal that led to a fast-break 3-pointer by Michael O\u2019Connell. There was a foul called while the ball was in the air, so the Wolfpack got the trey, kept possession and Burns made another nifty basket for a 53-42 lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Connell had six points, also finishing with 11 rebounds and six assists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCain led Duke with 32 points, the freshman guard hitting 8 of 20 shots and making all 11 of his free throws. Jeremy Roach had 13 points while sophomore center Filipowski had 11 points<\/u><\/a> and nine rebounds before fouling out with 4:52 left and the Blue Devils already down eight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust give credit to State. They\u2019re on a hell of a run right now,\u201d Roach said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t us today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of the double-digit seeds have even made it to the national championship game, but Wolfpack fans chanted \u201cWhy not us, why not us?\u201d before their team cut down the nets in Big D \u2014 about 1,200 miles from Tobacco Road where the N.C. State and Duke campuses are only about a half-hour drive from each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the game\u2019s first media timeout, they even got to watch on the big video boards in the arena as the N.C. State women dribbled out the final 26 seconds of their regional final victory over Texas<\/u><\/a> to also advance to the Final Four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burns, who had only four points in the regional semifinal against Marquette, hit short jumpers on the Wolfpack\u2019s first two shots of the game. But those were their only consecutive makes before halftime while shooting 26.5% (9 of 34) and trailing 27-21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They certainly turned that around with a 55-point second half in which they made 19 of 26 shots (73.1%). Burns, who had eight points in the game\u2019s first nine minutes before his second foul, went 9 of 11 after halftime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duke made only 19 field goals the entire game, shooting a season-worst 32.2% on its 59 attempts. The Blue Devils became the sixth consecutive opponent held under 40% shooting by N.C. State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe never had any rhythm on offense,\u201d second-year Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. \u201cThey started to score more and our offense, it was probably the most disjointed game that we\u2019ve played all year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duke had held its first three March Madness opponents to fewer than 60 points. The only other times the Blue Devils had three-game streaks like that in tourney were in 2010 and 2015 \u2014 their last two national championships. Scheyer was part of both of those, first as a player and then an assistant coach under Mike Krzyzewski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joining Burns on the all-region team were Horne, Filipowski, McCain and Marquette\u2019s Tyler Kolek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DALLAS (AP) \u2014 Bruising big man DJ Burns Jr. plays with plenty of joy, skipping on and off the floor and interacting with North Carolina State fans that he often works into a frenzy with slick moves and a soft-touch shot. \u201cI was raised in a happy environment,\u201d Burns said. \u201cI try to take that with me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":25537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5782],"tags":[1904,1824,27569,27567,24795,2827,27568],"class_list":["post-25536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ep","tag-basketball","tag-college","tag-dj","tag-duke","tag-ncaa","tag-north-carolina","tag-tournament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25538,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25536\/revisions\/25538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}