Winthrop men’s basketball to face N.C. State on Nov. 27

N.C. State men’s basketball released the non-conference portion of its 2015-16 schedule and it includes a date with Winthrop the day after Thanksgiving.

Pat Kelsey’s Eagles will visit the PNC Arena in Raleigh on Nov. 27 to face the Wolfpack for the ninth time in program history. N.C. State has won all eight of the previous encounters.

Winthrop is coming off a 2014-15 campaign in which it again came up one game short of an NCAA tournament bid. For the second year running the Eagles fell to Coastal Carolina in the Big South Conference tournament championship game in Conway, S.C. They finished 19-13 and have won a combined 39 games the last two seasons.

Junior guard Keon Johnson, the Eagles’ leading returning scorer at 11.5 points per game, and Xavier Cooks, who made the Big South All-Freshman team, are back for Winthrop, as are a number of other contributors.

N.C. State’s roster for the upcoming season has no seniors, and the Wolfpack will have to replace its top-two scorers in Trevor Lacey and Ralston Turner. Mark Gottfried’s team was 22-14 last season and won two games in the NCAA tournament.

Brett Redden, from Winthrop’s athletic communications department, said Winthrop probably won’t release any of its schedule until the end of August, early September.

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Winthrop men’s basketball to face N.C. State on Nov. 27."