WATCH: Future NC State Men’s Basketball Coach Will Wade Talks Roster Construction, Offensive Philosophy & What is Needed to Win (with transcript)

Yesterday afternoon, news broke that NC State and McNeese St. Head Coach Will Wade have reached a verbal agreement for him to be the next Men’s Basketball Coach of the Wolfpack. Earlier that morning, Wade was interviewed by 247Sports’ Will Finkelstein, and was asked about the challenge of coaching at the mid major level, his roster construction strategy, his offensive philosophy, and what he was looking for in a new school. You can watch the video ABOVE, and read the transcript BELOW.

You’ve now won as a head coach at every level. And one of the things that occurred to me, this, this NCAA tournament, Rick Pitino was all over the news a couple of years ago, when he was at Iona, he said, it is harder to do it here than it is at the high major level. I wanted to get your perspective on that sentiment and which level is the hardest.

No question.

This level is the hardest, zero doubt. He’s a hundred percent right on that. I think there’s a lot of people, I’m not saying this about me. I think there’s a lot of people at this level that can go to the high major level…there’s four or five coaches in our conference that are excellent, excellent coaches and run great program, there’s not a ton, the number of high major coaches that could come down to this level and deal with all of the…just our players were joking yesterday…’Hey, we get to the tournament, we get a nice bus’. I mean, the bus company we use, we went to two games…we didn’t even have air conditioning in our bus. We deal with all the stuff. Our staff, we were at dinner last night with our players and we were joking…We had seats taken from us on a connecting flight back from South Dakota for the first game, so me and two of my assistants and one of our Graduate Assistants, we rented a car and drove back from Dallas. We gave our seats up to our players so they could get back. There’s just stuff like that, that happens at this level.

It’s just unimaginable to most people who haven’t been here, but you just roll with it, and it’s all good.

Also, the pressure in those tournaments, now we’re fortunate in the Southland, if you get a double bye to the semis, you only have to win two games in two days, and ours is on our home court, which is a huge advantage, but I mean the pressure…I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a game this pressure packed as when we played Lamar for the championship a couple of days ago. It was a back and forth game. They’re a great team. Coach Brooks has a great program, and we were very, very fortunate to win that, but the pressure where it all comes down to those 40 minutes, you play great for three months and it comes down to 40 minutes.

You just have more margin for error at the high major level, than you do at this level. It’s very, very challenging. It’s very, very difficult.

The common denominator at all of your stops as a head coach, when you have found success, you’ve always passed on the credit to the players. My question is, regardless of level, when you approach roster construction, is there a first domino, whether it’s an archetype or position that you prioritize initially?

Yeah, that’s a great question.

You’re not winning the Kentucky derby on a mule, so you better have the best thoroughbred you can have. I think every coach is different. For us, you need a good point guard and we’ve won with a lot of different point guards. If you’ve got a point guard, a scorer and some sort of four man…a one, two, and a four…if you’ve got those three positions and those three guys are good players that can play professionally at some level, you’ve got it, you’ve got a good team.

So we try to spend a lot of time making sure we find the right point guard, and we’ve won with point guards that can’t score. We’ve won with scoring point guards. We’ve won with small guards with Tremont Waters, big guards with Javonte Smart and guys like that.

We’ve got a 6’6” point guard, Quadir Copeland, here at McNeese. We’ve won with all types of point guards and then you get somebody who can score alongside of them, and you get a big, a four man who can pass and shoot or pass and drive it. We’ve got to have some sort of skilled big.

So we put a lot of time into evaluating those three positions and finding the right guys at those spots. If you look at it, just at McNeese, the conference player of the year, the last two years has been kind of our combo guard and the conference defensive player of the year, the leading rebounder has been our four man. We try to really hone in on those spots and then we can fill in the rest of the roster from there.

My question is from an offensive perspective, because I think that’s the end of the floor you have often spearheaded yourself. What goes into your philosophy and are there any primary influencers or mentors that have helped dictate that?

A lot of it’s just stuff we cook up, and we study other teams, and study other people, and try to put our guys in the best position to win. I mean, to me, basketball is a pretty simple game.

The team that can get in the paint the most, and the team that can keep the other team out of the paint the most is going to win. So we try to build our philosophies around that. If you can get in the paint, you’re going to create rotation.

You’re going to create offensive rebound opportunities, which our teams have been really good offensive rebounding teams. So we want guys that can create rotation and get in the paint, but my job offensively is pretty simple.

I get our best offensive players on their worst defensive players and give them space and let them go to work. Then they’ve got to be able to judge if there’s a height mismatch or a positional mismatch. If so, you got to drive that guy. If there’s a spatial mismatch, meaning the guy’s playing way off of you, you got to shoot it.

If there’s a numerical mismatch, you got to pass it. We basically make it that simple. Now it’s a little more complex than that, but we want to get our best offensive players on their worst defenders in space where they can make simple reads.

You were studying in college at Clemson to be a high school history teacher, if I’m not mistaken, and serving as a student manager at Clemson. I heard someone ask you how that shaped your coaching philosophy, and one of the answers you gave is that you saw it from a different perspective. You don’t accept universal truths. So I’m wondering from that contrarian standpoint, can you give me an example of something that maybe you’re a contrarian about, whether it’s in your coaching philosophy or approach to roster construction?

I’m not tied to the normal philosophies.

I think I mentioned some of it earlier. I think you can win a lot of different ways. We’ve won with a lot of different teams, the places we’ve been, wwe just try to go get the best players and then we’ll fit the systems around that.

We’ll figure out how to win with those guys. Sometimes we’ve played really, really fast. Sometimes we’ve played really, really slow.

Most of the time, we’re kind of a mid-tempo team, but you know, we’re malleable to whatever, whatever we’re able to get through recruiting. There’s a lot of things. I don’t believe in a lot of the norms with our program.

If it doesn’t affect winning, we’re not worried about it. I’ll spend one minute on stuff that doesn’t affect winning. Kyle Keller came down for a couple of days after he got let go at Stephen F Austin. He’s a good friend of mine. He came down and spent some time with us. He came in our offices and he said, ‘Golly coach, you got the same pictures up here from when Heath was the head coach. Now the pictures are like six years old. I was like, ‘yeah, it doesn’t affect winning. I don’t care.’

Nobody comes up here and looks at our pictures anyway. Like why are we going to waste our time and money changing out pictures? Let’s just put it on stuff that affects winning. From the teaching background, I teach a leadership class with the guys. We have a life lessons class.

We do some different things like that to try to try to help the guys out. Every coach says, ‘Hey, we need better leadership.’

Nobody teaches the guys how to be a leader. They just say, ‘Hey, you gotta be a better leader.’ They don’t know what that means.

So we’ve tried to put a little bit of meat on the bone there and put some stuff behind that where the guys understand, ‘Hey, this is how you lead. This is how you do things,’ and I think we’ve gotten some good dividends from that.

Obviously it’s no secret. Your name is being mentioned for a lot of different jobs right now. You’ve talked about how important McNeese and the people there are for you and that your next stop, wherever it may be, whenever it may be, is somewhere you want to be for a long time, mentioning your young family, and it needs to be a place that can compete nationally in this day and age of college basketball. What does that need to entail?

In this day and age, you can compete nationally in a lot of different places. Now that everything’s changed, there’s a lot of different places that can win.

If they get behind you and they’ve got the resources, there’s a lot of different ways to win. Whereas before, there were only a dozen places where you could realistically win a national title, I’d say that’s at least doubled and maybe tripled to places where you can win a national title. Obviously you need the resources for recruiting and then you’ve got to have infrastructure around that. Getting the good players is only half the battle.

Then you’ve got to put them in the right systems. You’ve got to hold them to the right standards. There’s a lot of other things that come with that.

So how’s the infrastructure? How’s the infrastructure to do all of that. That is critically, critically important. So that’s the sort of stuff when you’re interviewing with schools or talking with schools, that’s the sort of thing that you’re focusing on. You want to be resourced in the top part of your league.

If you’re resourced in the top part of your league, I’m not asking to be the best in the league, although that’s great if you’re the best in the league, but if we’re in the top four or five, then it’s on me. It’s my job to put the systems in place and to hold the line on the standards to make us pass some of those teams that maybe have a little bit better resources than we have.

I always put it this way. We don’t have to have the biggest mansion in the neighborhood, but we’ve got to have a nice house with the best manicured lawn. We’ve got to have our bushes trimmed every week.

We’ve got to do all the little stuff that allows us to win.