Late in the second half, Richard Howell was pedaling slowly on a stationary bike, going nowhere -- a tidy metaphor for N.C. State’s performance Saturday if you’re into that kind of thing.

Unable to stop Durand Scott, unable to muster much energy or emotion for much of the game, the Wolfpack failed to find redemption in the ACC tournament, just another loss that was all too similar to so many losses over the course of a season where N.C. State has consistently failed to meet expectations.

Miami is a very good team with a chance to claim a No. 1 seed with a win over Maryland or North Carolina tomorrow, and the Hurricanes present a long list of matchup problems for N.C. State, but if the Wolfpack was really interested in playing for the ACC title it was predicted to win, they were going to have to play far better than they did in an 81-71 loss.

GREENSBORO N.C. State shut down Erick Green and Joe Harris to get to the semifinals of the ACC tournament.

Miami's Durand Scott proved more difficult to defend. Scott's career-best 32 points carried the top-seeded Hurricanes to a 81-71 win over N.C. State and into their first ACC championship game.

N.C. State, playing for the third time in as many days, started sluggish and fell behind by double-digits midway through the first half and stayed in a hole.

GREENSBORO -- Florida State was tearing a hole through the soft middle of North Carolina’s defense when P.J. Hairston got hot, making the final score a poor indication of how much danger the Tar Heels were in during the first half.

That’s the yin and the yang of North Carolina at this point, the price paid to get the Tar Heels’ best players on the floor. It cost them in last Saturday’s loss to Duke when they couldn’t handle Mason Plumlee. It nearly cost them in Friday’s ACC quarterfinal against the Seminoles, but they escaped and put Florida State away, 83-62.

GREENSBORO — In the final game of the regular season, North Carolina learned what could happen – what would happen – when it failed to create quality shots on the perimeter. The Tar Heels’ lopsided loss against Duke was a painful lesson for a team that had been shooting well, mostly, since mid-February.

The struggles from the perimeter, though, proved to be short-lived. UNC regained its outside touch during its 83-62 victory against Florida State here on Friday night in the ACC tournament quarterfinals at the Greensboro Coliseum.

The victory, though, came with a price: P.J. Hairston, the sophomore guard who led UNC (23-9, 13-6 ACC) with 21 points, left the game late in the second half after suffering a gash between the ring finger and middle finger on his left hand. The cut was so deep it required eight stitches.

Maryland, which doesn’t even want to be in the ACC, had to go and screw up the tournament for everyone who does -- although, to be fair, Duke did most of the screwing up Friday night.

A thoroughly dismal defensive performance from the Blue Devils in an 83-74 loss to the Terrapins deprived the expectant crowd of a Saturday semifinal meeting with North Carolina, although the Tar Heels still had work to do against Florida State later Friday night, no gimme either.

It’s all falling into place now for N.C. State. C.J. Leslie is replicating his postseason form of a year ago. Lorenzo Brown is rounding into health. Scott Wood is making shots. Richard Howell is Richard Howell.

Virginia posed little opposition Friday N.C. State took control early as Leslie scored eight of N.C. State’s first 17 points, then pulled away when Wood hit 3-pointers on back-to-back-to-back possessions early in the second half for a 75-56 win.

GREENSBORO N.C. State beat Virginia at its own game on Friday at the ACC tournament.

The Wolfpack's defense, for the second straight day, stymied one of the top scorers in the ACC, this time in a 75-56 win over Virginia. N.C. State (24-9) will play top-seeded Miami on Saturday at 1 p.m. in the semifinals.

The Wolfpack held Virginia's Joe Harris to 13 points and got plenty of offense, and fight, from its veterans.

For a No. 1 seed that went 15-3 in the ACC, an unusual amount of questions exist about Miami’s postseason viability and how far the Hurricanes will go in the NCAA tournament. The Hurricanes answered none of them with a 69-58 win over Boston College in Friday’s first quarterfinal.

The late-season loss at Wake Forest had the distinct feel of a first-weekend upset, and while Larranaga later said he thought his team got a little fat and happy with that 13-0 record in the ACC, the lingering bad taste from that game, and an 2-3 finish in the league with losses at Duke and to Georgia Tech -- at home, with a chance to clinch the regular-season title outright -- left the Hurricanes with more to prove this weekend than the usual No. 1 seed.

Three Points from N.C. State's 80-63 ACC tournament win over Virginia:

1) The real Zo

Defense and rebounding, rebounding and defense. Lorenzo Brown took care of the Wolfpack's two biggest problems of the season all by himself on Thursday.

Brown blanketed Virginia Tech's Erick Green (15 points, 5 of 19 shooting), in a bounce-back effort from the troubling loss at Florida State, and he also had seven rebounds on Thursday.

It was C.J. Harris’ final game at Wake Forest. It was almost certainly not Jeff Bzdelik’s. Both those circumstances left Demon Deacons fans with their tie-dye in a twist.

A group of disgruntled Wake fans raised enough money to buy a banner ad at the bottom of the Greensboro News & Record sports page Thursday -- apparently, on each of the four days of the tournament -- demanding coach Bzdelik’s firing.

That movement will surely only gather momentum after Thursday’s 75-62 loss to Maryland, the Demon Deacons’ seventh straight in the ACC tournament. (They haven’t won an ACC tournament game since 2007, when the late Skip Prosser was coaching.)