Lorenzo Brown scored 20 points and North Carolina State embarrassed Wake Forest on its home floor once again, routing the Demon Deacons 76-40 on Saturday for its most lopsided ACC road victory in more than half a century.
C.J. Williams added 15 points and Richard Howell had 12 points and 12 rebounds for the Wolfpack (13-5, 2-1 Atlantic Coast Conference). They never trailed in claiming their fourth straight win in the series and second straight by at least 30 points.
N.C. State - which entered allowing an ACC-worst 70 points per game - held Wake Forest to just over half that on 29 percent shooting (16 of 55) and gave up only two field goals during a stretch of roughly 14 minutes.
C.J. Harris had 10 points on 3-of-12 shooting for the Demon Deacons (10-7, 1-2), who were 2 of 20 from 3-point range and have lost three of four.
Scott Wood added 12 points and DeShawn Painter had 12 rebounds for N.C. State, which led 33-17 at halftime and then pulled away by outscoring Wake Forest 30-8 to start the second half. Brown pushed the Wolfpack lead into the 20s when his 3 roughly 3 minutes into the half made it 43-21, and Wood made it a 30-point game when his free throw with 11:37 left stretched it to 54-23.
By then, the only question was whether the Wolfpack would surpass the 112-72 rout at Clemson in December 1954 as the most lopsided ACC road victory in school history.
They threatened that record here for the second time in 11 months, after N.C. State routed the Demon Deacons 80-55 at the once-inhospitable Joel Coliseum last February for its most one-sided road win in ACC play since that 1954 season.
The Wolfpack did even better in an encouraging effort from start to finish after the team was challenged to play better defense by new coach Mark Gottfried after Georgia Tech shot 51 percent against them in a double-figure win Wednesday night.
The players certainly got the message. The Wolfpack's defense was the story once again - this time for all the right reasons. N.C. State held Wake Forest to just 17 points in the first half, the Demon Deacons' worst half of the season.
During the final 13 minutes, they put the ball through the basket from the field only once - on Nikita Mescheriakov's drive through the lane. The only other field goal during that time came when Leslie was called for goaltending on Travis McKie's drive. Wake Forest went to the locker room with more turnovers (nine) than buckets (six), no Demon Deacon player had more than one basket and the game was essentially over by then.
