Tennessee appeared to be hitting its gear again as a second-half basketball team.
A pair of former guards the Volunteers faced in the SEC had the answers for North Carolina State.
In its first true road game of the season, Tennessee used a 10-0 spurt to trim a 17-point deficit to five midway through the second half, but the Wolfpack got a career-high 28 points from Ralston Turner to fend off the Vols in an 83-72 victory at PNC Arena in Raleigh on Wednesday night.
Former Alabama guard Trevor Lacey added 20 points, eight rebounds and four assists as N.C. State beat Tennessee for the second consecutive December.
"Give them credit where credit is due," first-year Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall told the Vol Network radio broadcast after the game. "We made them shoot over half of their shots from beyond the arc, which is usually a great statistic for us.
"Two things stick out: We put them on the foul line way too many times, and when you make 11 3s, and probably eight of those 11 were pretty darn contested, give their backcourt credit. They played well."
Turner, who played the first two seasons of his career at LSU, hit eight of N.C. State's 11 3-pointers, as the Wolfpack shot 51 percent for the game despite taking 26 3-pointers to just 19 two-point shots.
N.C. State (9-2) outscored the Vols 26-12 at the free-throw line and took 34 foul shots as the Vols (4-4) were whistled for 28 fouls.
Coming off home wins against Kansas State and then-No. 15 Butler, Tennessee was hoping to extend its winning streak to three games with a four-game homestand next on the schedule heading into SEC play.
Instead, the Vols face a quick turnaround for Friday night's visit from Tennessee Tech.
"Our first away game, we're not used to away games with a new team, new players, a new coach, so it's going to help us in the long run," said guard Devon Baulkman, who scored 10 points for the Vols.
Turner averaged 12.3 points as a freshman in 2010-11 and 9.1 points as a sophomore in 2011-12 at LSU before transferring to N.C. State, but he averaged less than two treys in 106 career games before Wednesday night.
He scored 17 of N.C. State's first 24 points and hit five first-half treys.
"A lot of environments we're going to go into in SEC play will be very similar," Tyndall said. "The talent level in a lot of SEC teams will be very similar, and this is a good team. This is the second-most talented team we've played behind Kansas.
"They're going to win a ton of games. They're an NCAA tournament team, and their backcourt was fantastic tonight."
Tennessee had a good night of its own from beyond the 3-point line, as the Vols knocked down their first four attempts from distance and finished the game 10-of-18 shooting on 3-pointers.
Back-to-back 3s from Detrick Mostella and Derek Reese capped a 10-0 spurt that trimmed Tennessee's deficit, which was 17 points after Desmond Lee hit a pull-up jumper at the 12:00 mark, to 56-51 with more than eight minutes left.
Turner hit his eighth 3 from NBA range three minutes later to push N.C. State's lead back to a dozen, and Lacey canned one from the wing with the shot clock running down that made it 72-62 with less than two minutes left.
"You've got to be very active on those shooters like that," Baulkman said.
The Vols jumped out to a 14-10 lead as the two teams remained close for the opening 16 minutes of the game until N.C. State outscored Tennessee 9-0 in the final 4:13 of the first half as the visitors finished 2-of-12 shooting after a 9-of-15 start.
The Wolfpack got back-to-back lob dunks and hit free throws during a spurt that gave them a 39-27 lead into halftime.
Tennessee made second-half runs in losses to Virginia Commonwealth and Kansas and erased a 12-point deficit in upsetting Butler, but the Wolfpack were too good offensively.
Josh Richardson scored 13 of his team-high 17 points after halftime, and Kevin Punter chipped in 14 points.
"The biggest thing is our guys compete," Tyndall said. "It's never fun to lose. It's never something that I'm going to be OK with -- that's not my makeup. We compete, and we make some mistakes a youthful, inexperienced team will make, and we'll probably continue to do that some. But we competed and played hard for 40 minutes against a really good team."