Quadir Copeland and Paul McNeil Jr. both scored 18 points to lead another impressive offensive performance for North Carolina State in a 94-70 victory against visiting UAB on Friday night at Raleigh, N.C.
Darrion Williams and Tre Hollomon each racked up 14 points and the Wolfpack (2-0) shot 54.1% from the field, scoring more than 40 points in each half.
Jacob Meyer’s 15 points paced UAB (1-1), while Chance Westry produced 14 points and Daniel Rivera had 12. The Blazers shot 40.8% from the field in their first road outing of the season.
In addition to their defense, the Blazers were undone by shooting 4-for-25 shooting (16%) on 3-point attempts — with two of the connections coming late in the game.
NC State recovered from its shooting woes after missing its first eight launches from beyond the 3-point arc. The Wolfpack ended up 10-for-30 on 3s, with McNeil making three of those. This was one game after tying the program record by making 19 shots from 3-point territory (in 40 attempts) in a 114-66 home win over North Carolina Central on Monday night.
Copeland, who shared team-high honors with Hollomon with five assists, was 5-for-7 from the field and McNeil made six of his 11 shots. Copeland had a crowd-delighting putback dunk in the final minute of the opening half.
The Wolfpack led 41-33 at halftime, though by then first-year NC State coach Will Wade had been assessed a technical foul for the second game in a row for his bench conduct.
Musa Sagnia finished with a game-high-tying 10 rebounds off the NC State bench.
UAB even struggled with shooting on free throws, going 8-for-14. Both teams ended up with 14 turnovers, but NC State did a much better job converting points off the takeaways it collected (21-16).
