BERKELEY >> Coach Justin Wilcox sounded like a man not quite sure which way to turn for answers after his Cal football team dropped its fourth straight Atlantic Coast Conference game — by a combined margin of nine points.

“We had a lot of missed opportunities,” Wilcox said after the Bears’ 24-23 loss to North Carolina State in front of 35,303 fans at Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoon. “It sounds like a broken record. Everybody’s tired of hearing it. I’m tired of saying it.”

The Bears (3-4, 0-4) led 23-10 in the fourth quarter against the Wolfpack (4-4, 1-3), who were playing their first game on the West Coast in 64 years.

N.C. State scored on back-to-back fourth-quarter drives, covering 155 yards in 15 plays over a span of exactly 6 game minutes to take the lead on freshman quarterback CJ Bailey’s 41-yard touchdown pass to Hollywood Smothers with 6:32 left.

Alas, there was no Hollywood finish for the Bears.

New placekicker Derek Morris, who turned 19 just nine days earlier, had made field goals of 41, 26 and 24 yards in his debut performance. But the freshman from Franklin, Ohio, who replaced erratic senior transfer Ryan Coe, pushed his 28-yard, would-be game-winner wide right with 1:34 left on the clock.

“I was sure he was going to make that kick,” Wilcox said.

There is nothing certain involving Cal football right now. The Bears won three in a row to open season, but their inaugural venture into the ACC has been a smorgasbord of different ways to lose games. They fell 14-9 at Florida State when they missed two field goals. They swallowed a 39-38 defeat to No. 8 Miami after building a 35-10 lead in front of an ESPN audience. And they succumbed 17-15 at No. 22 Pitt a week ago when Coe misfired from 40 yards with 1:50 left.

Since the start of the 2020 season, Cal is 6-18 in games decided by a single score.

Against the Wolfpack, the Bears used those three field goals by Morris and touchdown runs of 49 and 7 yards by Jaivian Thomas to forge what seemed a sturdy lead.

“I thought the defense was playing well,” Wilcox said. “I wouldn’t have thought we’d give up those two (touchdowns) late.”

The Bears have been outscored 42-9 in the fourth quarter of the past four games, even as they pitched a fourth-quarter shutout at Pitt.

“Frustrating to lose that way,” said linebacker Teddye Buchanan, who had 15 tackles. “The feeling right now is it hurts, but we’re going to come back and regroup.”

Persistently upbeat quarterback Fernando Mendoza echoed that comment but declined to speculate about the Bears turning their season around with a big run.

“To be on a run,” he said, “you’ve got to get the first one.”

The next one for Cal is a familiar opponent. Former Pac-12 rival Oregon State visits next Saturday for a nonconference matchup.

Mendoza was 30 for 42 for 282 yards without a turnover, and tight end Jack Endries topped 100 receiving yards for the second week in a row, hauling in nine passes for 101 yards. Thomas, starting for the third time this season in place of injured star running back Jaydn Ott, rushed for 78 yards.

But the Bears managed just 152 yards in the second half, were 2 for 14 on third-down conversions and scored just one touchdown the four times they drove inside the N.C. State 20-yard line.

“Getting in the red zone and not scoring touchdowns is a big deal — we’ve got to score touchdowns,” Wilcox said.

The Bears had struggled to protect Mendoza all season, ranking second-to-last nationally in sacks allowed with 24 in six games. They kept him upright through three quarters but the Wolfpack sacked him three times in the final 10 minutes.

Cal’s defense sacked Bailey six times but the elusive freshman also escaped pressure repeatedly to deliver timely plays. N.C. State converted 10 of 19 chances on third or fourth down.

“We’ve got to find ways to win, obviously. Everybody knows that,” Wilcox said. “I’ve got to do a better job of coaching the team so we can get another point, another two points.”