RALEIGH, N.C. _ It was supposed to be like this all the time, or at least most of the time, for N.C. State. This was the vision everyone had coming out of the NIT last spring, of a team with depth and skill and aggression, able to go toe-to-toe with anyone in the ACC.
Instead, what happened Wednesday night when it all came together for the Wolfpack was like seeing a comet streak across the sky, iridescent and brilliant, but only for that brief moment it existed.
Only N.C. State could barely show up for a loss at Boston College, an anchor dragging its NCAA Tournament hopes to the bottom of the ocean, only to come racing back to the surface three days later with a blowout of No. 6 Duke. It was unquestionably N.C. State's best performance of the season, sending the students streaming onto the court after a home win over the Blue Devils for the fourth time in eight years.
The Wolfpack ended up dancing home with an easy win, 88-66, and it never felt that close. It was an impressive display of everything N.C. State can bring to the table when it feels so inclined. It did in the win over Wisconsin. It did in the loss at Auburn. It did at Virginia, although that game was so typically excruciating it was hard to tell. But this is still a team that managed to lose at Clemson and Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech and Boston College, and it's impossible to reconcile the team that ran Duke off the court with the team that couldn't win at least one of those winnable road games.
N.C. State was fortunate to catch Duke on a night when the Blue Devils looked young and wrung out, perhaps the grind of the season catching up to them all at once, perhaps a little fat and happy after winning seven in a row, but fortunate is all that was. N.C. State wasn't losing to anyone on this night without a serious fight. Duke didn't have any fight to offer.
"That's our worst game," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said, "but they made us look bad."
Markell Johnson was spectacular with 28 points. Devon Daniels continued the best month of his life with 25. D.J. Funderburk (21 points) played Vernon Carey (27 points) to a draw. The Wolfpack couldn't miss. Shot after shot, 8 for 13 from 3-point range, each one pushing the crowd to a new level.
It was such a sublime performance, it only raised questions instead of feeling like an answer.
Where was this Sunday in Chestnut Hill?
Where was this all season?
Why can't Johnson, so mercurial, so dominant when he's good, so invisible when he's not, play like this more often? Does it always have to take ESPN's cameras and a big-name opponent?
"Markell Johnson, when he plays like that, they're an elite team," Krzyzewski said, a statement that underlines why N.C. State has not been close to elite for too much of the season, a middling 8-7 in an exceedingly mediocre ACC.
Even when things went badly for the Wolfpack, they turned out well. Moments after Manny Bates fouled out with 11 minutes to go _ not an accident, N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said, just a sacrifice in an attempt to defend Carey long enough for State to extend an insurmountable lead _ Duke had a chance to cut the N.C. State lead to single digits.
Tre Jones had dragged Duke into the game at that point, but he missed, badly, and at the other end Johnson pulled up and hit a sideways-leaning 3-pointer. When Wendell Moore missed in response, that was it. The rest of it was a slow-burning celebration that culminated in yet another PNC court-storming against Duke.
That part of it was as familiar as the energy and execution from N.C. State were not. This is what it was supposed to be like. The Wolfpack finally harnessed its talent and got it all pointed in the same direction.
Whether N.C. State can do it again is almost secondary to whether it's too late anyway.
