WATCH: NC State Coach Will Wade Meets with the Media After Intro Press Conference (with transcript)

After his introductory press conference this afternoon, NC State Head Coach Will Wade met with the media for a separate question and answer session. You can watch the video ABOVE, and read the transcript BELOW.

The General Manager role…

It’s going to be a combined role, the general manager role. So we’re still…Ican’t talk specifically about everything because we’re still working through HRwith some of these hires. We’ll give you guys information as soon as we have it.

It’ll be hopefully sooner, rather than later, but it’ll be a general manager kind of chief strategist type role, where they’ll certainly be heavily involved in the recruiting and then the strategy of putting the team together and how all of the parts and pieces fit together.

The projected quick turnaround…

We’ve got everything we need. We’ve got the relationships and the resources to get the players. This is a player’s game. It’s the horse that wins the race, it’s not the jockey. You’re only as good as the players. So we’ve got everything that we need to attract the best players in the country.

Starting tomorrow morning, that’s what we’re going to go do. The first order of business, I got to finish the staff. We got to finish the staff.

Then we’ve got to recruit. Then after that, we’ve got to get the schedule. It’s kind of the first order of business.

It’s a transition period, so we won’t have the program fully up and operational until summer school starts, May 14th, but when summer school starts, we hope to have everything up and operational.

How’s your wife in red and putting up the wolf hands? I mean, how does she feel about all this?

She’s good. She’s enjoying it. She’s happy to be close to home in Charlotte, where her family is and all of my daughters’ friends are.

She’s excited.

What’s your philosophy for building the roster? 

We’re going to have to be a little portal heavy to start, but in a perfect world, you get two or three freshmen, one impact freshman, a couple developmental freshmen. Get three or four out of the portal, and then you’re able to retain over half your roster. That’s the formula for building a good program and a good team, but he first two years, that’s not how this is going to be.

We’re going to have to go portal heavy this year, get some freshmen as well. See who wants to stay, and then hopefully by year three we’ll be able to bring in two or three freshmen, three or four portal guys, and then we’ll have guys that are staying and retaining those guys.

How quickly do you hope to get your staff set?

I mean, look, we’ve got to work through HR. So there’s some different processes that, you know, we’re a big state university governed by a state system. So it’s not like you just snap your fingers and people come.

We’ll have a shell of a staff set hopefully by later this week, early next week, and then, I would say after the Final Four, I’d say the middle of April, we should have a full staff. Close to complete.

A lot of people want to know, is Amir coming?

Look, we’ve spoken with Amir and I love Amir to death. So we want to do what’s best for Amir. If what’s best for Amir is to come to NC State, that’s what we’ll do. But, you know, he’s never been out of Louisiana. He’s from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

He went to high school there. He went to McNeese. Louisiana’s different. It’s hard to get those guys to roll out of there sometimes. I’m here to help Amir. He’s awesome. He volunteered for us for two years and he’s been phenomenal. If he wants to come to NC State, he certainly can, and if he needs my help going somewhere else, we’ll certainly help him with that, too.

NIL and Revenue Sharing

No, we just spoke about it. I mean, look, in this thing, it’s about trust. I mean, Boo told me what we had in NIL and revenue share and I get here and we got more than they told me we had. It was under. I’m on the plane yesterday and we’re talking about it, and that’s not exactly what they said in a good way.

We’re going to be competitive. Are we going to have the most? No, that’s not what we need. We’ve got to be competitive and that’s on me to spend it properly and to allocate the resources, and a general manager to allocate the resources properly. That’s what we’re going to do.

The One Pack NIL Collective had 600-plus members in the past two weeks. That’s more than the final four runs and the College World Series. What does that say about the fan support wanting to see this program take that next level consistently?

Yeah, I mean, they want to win and we’re going to win.

I think that that support speaks volumes. We love the fans. We love our fan base.

The foundation to winning right now is collectives and revenue share. I mean, that’s how you win. So to have that as a head start is huge.

In your eyes, what does an NC State player look like?

Well, it depends on what position you play. Every position is a little bit different. Just in overall characteristics, I really like kids who have overcome adversity.

I think if you’ve overcome adversity in life to get here, you’re going to be able to overcome adversity when you’re on the court. We want guys that are ready, gritty, that grind, guys that are tough. I always say, you don’t put championship rings on smooth fingers. You’ve got to be able to get your hands in the mud.

You’ve got to be able to dig in there. So we want guys that are going to do that and represent who we are.

Was there any concern from you after Coach Keatts was fired after taking the team to a Final Four after several decades?

No.

I mean, look, we’re here to build a consistent winner. We don’t want to be a flash in the pan. Coach Keatts had an incredible run.

He did a really, really good job here. Somebody I’ve known since he was a part Hargrave Military Academy. But, the expectations are pretty clear.

Here’s the thing. If you can build a consistent winner, it will break your away sometimes. You look at the Virginia team that won the national title.

That wasn’t his best team. He’d probably tell you that. But he kept being at the top.

He kept being in the top two or three of the ACC every year. Kept getting protected seeds in the NCAA tournament.

And, eventually, the bracket breaks your way. I think that’s what we want to do here at NC State. We want to consistently be in the top four in the ACC starting next year.

Then we want to consistently get good seeds in the NCAA tournament. If we do that for five straight years, one of those years it’s going to break our way. Two or three of those years we’ll probably go to the Sweet 16, Elite 8, and one of those years, we’ll probably get upset in the first round.

That’s just the way of the tournament. I mean, that’s just the reality of it. That’s just the way that deal works.

It’s like winning the lottery. The more ping pong balls you put in there, the better chance you’ve got to win the thing, right? We’re trying to continually put deposits in there, but we’re competing at that level.

Eventually it will happen. So, my charge is to build a consistent program and a consistent winner that is not reliant on crazy runs and that sort of thing. We need to be consistently and reliably in the top four.

What do you think about the mix of first-year players, players coming in, players that you have for multiple years? How do all those meet together now in today’s world?

I mean, look, the difference today is you’re no longer building a program. You’re just building a team every year. So, you just got to build the best team you have and then you turn around and try to keep as many of those guys and then go build the next best team you can the next year around the guys that you’re able to build on this year.

So, it’s just continually trying to build the best team. That’s what it is. We’ve got a formula.

We’ve got intel on stuff that allows us to do that in a pretty good way.

Did you get to meet with the current players?

I met with the team yesterday. Yeah, I landed at three and met with the team at four.

The first thing we did was go see the team.

How did that go and what was your message to them?

You’d have to ask them. No, I mean, look, I was direct.

I told them, ‘Hey, this is what I believe in NC State basketball. This is why I’m here and here’s what you’re going to get if you choose to stay.’ So, I mean, as you all know, I’m a huge advocate of the player movement. I’m not against the transfer portal. I’m not against any of this stuff.

So, you know, I told someone, ‘Hey, you can put your name in the portal. We’ll still meet.’ I’ve got some individual meetings tomorrow with a lot of the guys, and we’ll still meet and if you still want to come back, that’s fine. I’m not one of those, once your name’s in the portal, you can never come back. Like one of our best players, he put his name in the portal, and when he came back, he was the two-time defensive player of the year. What an idiot I’d be to just cast him off, right? It’s just stupid. But, so, you know, I told him, ‘Hey, you put your name in the portal and we’re still going to meet.’

So, look, we want guys who want to go to NC State. We want people that are excited about being at NC State, excited about what we’re about to do and the road that we’re getting ready to take. Whoever that is, we’ll coach them and love them up and get them ready to compete at the top of the ACC.

Enjoying doing this job…

It’s a joy. I enjoy being around the players.

I get energy being around the players. I get energy being around my staff. I enjoy being around my staff.

My staff, I’m going to get people I enjoy being around. I don’t want jerks. I want people that I enjoy being around.

I love kind of fitting the puzzle together and figuring out all the pieces every year. So that sort of stuff gives me great energy.

Has your wife had to burn any Carolina gear?

She burned that a long time ago.

Now, the good news is my daughter hates Duke. I’m just joking.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her wear Carolina gear since I met her.

What’s a trendsetter or a postsetter for you?

You’ve got to get somebody you can build around in recruiting, right? You’ve got to have one main cog that you can build around. That’s what we’re going to try to go find and ascertain here in relatively short form.

Will, how have you learned to balance confidence and cockiness?

I think confidence…the way I define that is being secure in yourself. You know, what got me in trouble was thinking that this had to happen this way.

If I didn’t get this, it was going to be the end of the world. Confidence is, I want to get, I want this, but if it doesn’t go this way, I’m not going to take a shortcut. There’s another way to go get the same thing done. This isn’t life or death. This isn’t the end.

So I think that’s the balance between cockiness and confidence.

I’m still very confident, as you can probably tell, but we’re not backing down from anybody. But, we’re not going to blur any lines. We’re not going to think that we’re invincible and that everything is just going to work out.