RALEIGH – There will be seven more chances for Wake Forest to win a road game in the ACC.

There might not be a better one than Tuesday night.

The Deacons led for nearly 36 minutes before faltering down the stretch, saving their worst for the final minutes of an 83-76 loss to host N.C. State at PNC Arena.

“I think over the past three years, that’s the worst half of basketball that we’ve played,” Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said of the second half. “It was embarrassing. We completely lost our composure on offense and defense.

“We got whipped on both ends of the court.”

There’s a whole to unspool from this one. N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts was thrown out late in the first half. Wake’s Hunter Sallis and N.C. State’s Mohamed Diarra were thrown out in the game’s final minute. The Wolfpack’s Ben Middlebrooks started the fiery exchange between Sallis and Diarra and he got a technical, which was his fifth foul. These teams will meet again in Winston-Salem — that one is 25 days away.

It's losing a road game that was there for the Deacons’ taking that drew the most ire.

“This was a big game for me to see how we would handle growing up from Florida State to N.C. State on the road,” Forbes said. “I thought we were tougher at Florida State, to be honest with you. We just imploded in the second half.

“I’ll take the blame. It’s my job to get them right. We were just completely discombobulated on offense.”

Wake Forest (12-5, 4-2 ACC) had a 10-point halftime lead. It’s always Forbes’ focus to open second halves strong and expand leads; N.C. State scored on the first two possessions of the second half, sandwiching one of Wake’s 16 turnovers — one shy of how many the Deacons had against Virginia on Saturday.

The second half wasn’t a complete disaster, these Big 4 teams yo-yoing between Wake Forest getting control and N.C. State wrestling it back to a close game.

Wake Forest was up by as much as 11 in the second half. The lead was four, at 69-65, with 3½ minutes left after a clutch 3-pointer by senior Andrew Carr, whose 28 points are a career high (the most of his two years at Wake Forest and two at Delaware).

On the other side of the under-4 media timeout, Efton Reid III missed the front end of a 1-and-1 free throw and committed a foul 16 seconds later — his fifth of the game.

Turnovers by Carr and Kevin Miller, respectively, led to N.C. State tying the game at 69-69 and led to the Wolfpack taking a four-point lead 57 seconds later. Miller scored 21 points but was 3-for-12 from the field (he made all 15 free throws) and committed six turnovers.

“Credit to them, they stepped up the pressure … in the halfcourt and they bullied our guards,” Forbes said. “We just kept over-dribbling instead. We kept telling them, ‘Drive it, look opposite. Wide open.’ We just didn’t.

“It’s not indicative of our players but it’s sad because, you know, we’re better than that. To play offense like that in the second half, it’s just not good. Especially when you have a chance to go on the road and win a game.”

Offensive offense bled onto the other side of the court, too.

Wake’s goal is to record seven “kills” — three straight defensive stops — in each game. The Deacons stacked their fourth and fifth kills of this game on top of each other between the 13- and 10-minute marks, taking a four-point lead to 60-49 with 9:48 left.

They never got another kill. Not only that, the Deacons barely got another stop.

N.C. State (13-4, 5-1) scored on its next eight possessions, and ended the game with points on 18 of its last 19 possessions.

It mattered that Reid’s minutes were limited in that time, as he was plus-9. It also mattered that Wake Forest made four of its last 13 field goals.

“If you’re not sharing the ball and people aren’t involved, then what happens? You’re not as engaged defensively,” Forbes said. “It’s just human nature.”

Wake’s human nature of this becomes attempting to repeat last week’s formula. The Deacons lost at FSU last Tuesday night and came back with a 19-point win against Virginia; they’ll play host to Louisville on Saturday before a quick turnaround to a Monday night trip back to the Triangle.

That’ll be at North Carolina, which enters a Wednesday night game against Louisville as the only unbeaten team in ACC play.

“I think we’re a lot better team than I felt like we showed,” Carr said. “The same thing kind of happened against Florida State, end of the game, last six minutes or so, almost every possession is either a foul or something at the rim.

“You know, when it happens twice, it makes us look at ourselves in the mirror. We’ve gotta figure it out.”

Keatts was ejected with 3½ minutes left in the first half, drawing two technicals in about 20 seconds from referee Jeffrey Anderson.

The play that elicited the response was Matthew Marsh — playing for the first time since Dec. 18 — defending a fast-break layup by Dennis Parker Jr. In a game that already had 14 fouls called, there wasn’t one called against Marsh.

That brought Keatts several steps onto the court as the Deacons brought the ball up, and that was the cause of the first technical. When Keatts kept going after Anderson at the scorer’s table, Anderson hit him with the second one.

TIP-INS: Marsh, playing significant minutes for the first time since Reid was ruled eligible, had two rebounds and didn’t score in 17 minutes. He was minus-14. … Wake Forest has committed 53 turnovers in its last three games; it averaged 9.4 turnovers across the previous seven games. … N.C. State didn’t make a 3-pointer, going 0-for-8. The Wolfpack is the sixth team in college basketball this season to win a game without making a 3. … For all of the consternation about the impact of DJ Burns Jr., who had 52 points in two games against the Deacons last year, he had 10 points in 19 minutes and was battling an illness. Middlebrooks and Diarra, both coming off the bench, combined for 22 points on 8-for-9 shooting and were the bigger thorns in Wake’s side, at least on the interior.