The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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136 ■ THE WOLFPACKER as the point guard, but through 21 games he was struggling, averaging 10.5 points and 3.5 assists and showcasing a 1.5-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Then, as basketball coach Mark Gottfried described it, Cat started being Cat. Over the final 14 games of the year, Barber averaged 15.3 points and 4.0 assists and had a two-to- one assist-to-turnover ratio. After shooting 5 of 20 (20.0 percent) on three-pointers in the first 21 games, Barber made 22 of 51 over the final 14 (43.1 percent). ■ Most Improved Team Head football coach Dave Doeren's first season at NC State was a struggle. The team went just 3-9 and was 0-8 in ACC play, suffering its first winless conference slate since 1959. All of that is in the past after a successful turnaround in year two for Doeren. The Pack started the season impressively, winning four non-conference games while scoring at least 42 points in the last three. Then NCSU hung tough with No. 1 and defending national champion Florida State before succumbing 56-41. The same Semi- noles team had led 35-0 at the end of the first quarter when the two teams played in 2013. NC State suffered three more consecu- tive setbacks, but rallied to finish the season strong. It began with a 24-17 win at Syra- cuse, ending a 12-game ACC slide. The Pack closed with back-to-back authoritative wins over in-state rivals Wake Forest (42-13) and UNC (35-7), the latter on the road. NCSU earned a bid to the Bitcoin St. Pe- tersburg Bowl against Central Florida, a nine-win team that had won the Fiesta Bowl a year before. Playing in front of a crowd partial to the nearby Knights, NCSU rolled to a 34-13 lead before holding on for a 34-27 win. The five-win improvement tied five other Wolfpack football teams for the best turn- around in school history. ■ Best Men's Team Win It's a tie between the two highest pro- file sports on campus taking on NC State's archrivals in Chapel Hill, N.C. The first was the football team's manhan- dling of UNC at Kenan Stadium Nov. 29. The Pack ran the ball down UNC's throats, gaining 388 yards on the ground. NCSU only attempted 11 passes in the game and probably did not even need to try that many. On the other side of the ball, the Pack de- fense knocked Carolina starting quarterback Marquise Williams out of the game and held UNC to just 207 total yards, the fewest in Chapel Hill head coach Larry Fedora's three years as the Heels' coach. The result was a 35-7 thrashing of UNC that emptied out Kenan Stadium well before the final seconds ticked off. A few months later, Feb. 25 to be exact, the men's basketball team tipped off at the Dean Smith Center and did something they had not done in 12 years — leave Chapel Hill with a win. The Pack's 58-46 victory was led by a stifling defense that held UNC to its low- est point total ever in the history of the Sophomore point guard Cat Barber averaged 15.3 points and 4.0 assists, shot 43.1 percent from three-point range and had a two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio over the final 14 games of the season. PHOTO BY KEN MARTIN