In a 51-50 loss at Maryland Wednesday night at lack of depth and poor shooting hurt NC State.

The Wolfpack, hot off of a win over No. 1 Duke, came out cold and managed just 16 points in the first half, trailing 22-16 at the break. The Pack didn’t score during the first seven minutes of the game and shot just 23 percent in the first half, by and away their worst half of the year.

“We were offensively pretty bad,” State coach Mark Gottfried said. “We bobbled balls, we had shots around the rim we couldn’t make and it wasn’t one guy. That was one of those nights. You’re going to have those and we haven’t had a lot of them this year.”

State came into the game leading the nation in field goal shooting at nearly 53 percent.

Defense kept the Pack in the game but the shooting woes shouldn’t last. Scott Wood was just 3 of 13 while Rodney Purvis was only 1 of 7. While those kinds of numbers should be rare this year, one lingering concern the Pack may have is with depth.

Only seven Pack men played with T.J. Warren going 0 for 6 in 15 minutes. The only other player who got in the game was Jordan Vandenberg, who played just three minutes. While State subs, who failed to score, totaled just 18 minutes, five Maryland subs put in 61 minutes and 14 points.

The margin of error is very small when you basically play six men. If someone gets hurt or a couple of guys are cold, you’re in a world of hurt.

The Wolfpack has an excellent starting five but they were cold on this night to drop to 14-3 and 3-1 in the league while Maryland, which had lost 17 straight games to ranked teams, improved to 14-3 and 2-2 in the ACC.