Scott Wood scored 18 points to help North Carolina State beat Alabama A&M 82-51 on Tuesday afternoon.
Freshman Ryan Harrow added 14 points for the Wolfpack (8-4), who have won four of five games. Fellow rookie C.J. Leslie also scored 14 to go with 11 rebounds, three blocks and four steals.
Casey Cantey scored 14 points for the Bulldogs (3-6), who lost their fourth straight. Alabama A&M shot 32 percent and missed all 15 of its 3-point tries.
In its last game, N.C. State blew a 10-point halftime lead and needed a putback from Wood with 2.1 seconds left to beat Delaware State 72-70. Afterward, Wood said he thought it was a ''bailout'' way to win and that N.C. State ''probably shouldn't have won the game.''
N.C. State didn't have any such troubles this time, running out to a 42-20 halftime lead then increasing the margin to as many as 37 points late in the game.
It was an unusual gameday atmosphere at the RBC Center. The school had moved the tipoff ahead three hours so the game would end before the football team faced West Virginia in the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando. That left the Wolfpack and Bulldogs with a weekday afternoon tipoff in a sparsely populated arena, where seating sections were at best half-full and the upper-level end zone sections had maybe a couple dozen fans.
At least the Wolfpack gave the fans who showed up something to feel good about with the Atlantic Coast Conference opener just three games away.
Leading 25-16, N.C. State ran off 14 straight points to blow the game open behind Wood, who started the spurt with a 3-pointer off a feed from Harrow. Wood knocked down another off a pass from Lorenzo Brown before following that with a third 3 off another feed from Harrow to double the lead in a span of about, fittingly enough, 3 minutes.
After Harrow threw down a transition dunk, Brown capped the run with a catch-and-shoot 3 on an inbound play to make it 39-16 with 4:05 left in the half.
For the Bulldogs, their best offense in the first half seemed to be a missed shot - at least until N.C. State started boxing out.
Six of Alabama A&M's first eight baskets were second-chance scores, with the Bulldogs grabbing 11 offensive boards by midway through the first half. Those chances soon dried up, with the Wolfpack giving up just one offensive rebound the rest of the half. As a result, Alabama A&M didn't manage a field goal for the last 9 minutes and trailed by 22 at the break.
N.C. State didn't let up, pushing that margin to 61-31 on Wood's fourth 3 with about 8 minutes left and taking its biggest lead at 76-39 on a pair of free throws from C.J. Williams with 3:23 to go.
