Lipscomb edges NC State in NIT thriller

N.C. State has been playing basketball a long time.

No visiting player has ever scored more points against the Wolfpack than Lipscomb’s Garrison Mathews did on Wednesday night.

So naturally it was Kenny Cooper who scored the final five points for the Bisons in a wild, 94-93 win over the Wolfpack in the NIT quarterfinals.

Wait, what? Kenny Cooper? Yep. Mathews, who had 44 points, actually gave up the ball after Cooper’s steal set the wheels of Lipscomb’s win in motion with 24 seconds left.

“(Kenny) has been an incredible player for us all year long and I’m so proud of him,” Mathews said. “We all trusted him to take those shots.”

Down 91-89, Cooper stole an inbounds pass from N.C. State’s Torin Dorn, who had a career-best 34 points, and then found Mathews on the left wing. Two N.C. State defenders closed out on Mathews, who found Cooper alone in the corner. Cooper, who was 1 for 5 from the 3-point line before that shot, buried the open shot for a 92-91 lead.

“Kudos to (Garrison), he had two people on him and he had 44,” said Cooper, who finished with 12 points. “I was like, he should shoot this ball but the selflessness of him to swing that and make that extra pass and give me that shot, that speaks a lot about him.”

Markell Johnson, who scored all 19 of his points in the second half, gave N.C. State the lead with a layup 9.6 seconds left. But Johnson scored too early. Cooper took the inbounds pass and drove the length of the floor. He got past Johnson and then pulled up at the foul line and made a shot over Dorn with 1.7 seconds left.

Johnson got off a 3-point heave before the buzzer but it never got to the rim.

“It was a great game,” N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said. “If you’re a fan, you loved it. It’s unfortunate that we had to come up on the short end of this but that’s how it goes sometimes.

Lipscomb (28-7) is on its way to New York for the NIT semifinals. N.C. State (24-12) saw its season come to an abrupt end.

The game, the third in nine days, was another trip back in time in front of another raucous crowd at Reynolds Coliseum

Only five players have ever to scored more points at the “Old Barn” than Mathews did on Wednesday. David Thompson, the best player in ACC history, and Rodney Monroe, the leading scorer in N.C. State history, are two of them. That’s incredible company for the 6-5 senior from Franklin, Tenn.

“We knew coming in he was a big-time scorer,” Keatts said. “I’m leaving the game saying he was the best scorer that I played against this year.”

That covers a lot of ground, notably Duke’s Zion Williamson. But so does Mathews’ record for points by a visitor against the Wolfpack. N.C. State played its first game in 1910.

There were plenty of echoes of yesteryear while N.C. State erased a 65-60 deficit in the second half. Johnson scored 11 straight points, after being benched early in the second half, Dorn made 15 of his 22 shots and Keatts picked up his first technical foul of the season.

The decibel level peaked after Keatts’ technical for contesting a goal-tending call by official Steven Anderson.

“I’m amazed at how loud it was in here and how crazy everybody was,” Mathews said. “It was an incredible environment. It was one I’ll never forget for sure.”

Not many people will. Not Mathews’ scoring, not the game and not Kenny Cooper’s unlikely delivery in the clutch.

This story was originally published March 27, 2019 at 11:14 PM with the headline "Lipscomb edges NC State in NIT thriller."