AUDIO: Will Wade’s Postgame Press Conference After #25 NC State’s Win Over VCU (with transcript)

Head Coach Will Wade met with the media for his postgame press conference after #25 NC State’s 85-79 win over VCU this evening. You can listen to the audio above, and read the transcript below.

Box Score
Quick Hits
ACCDN Highlight Reel & Condensed Game

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What was the key to weathering that storm and closing it off? closing his game out?

I thought, look, I thought VCU played great. They’re a tremendous team, tremendous program. Look, we were able to make our free throws down the stretch, which was huge. We got a couple of timely turnovers, which helped us.

But give them credit. They played hard and went to the offensive glass hard. Before the first media, they had four offensive rebounds at the first media. #17, man, he’s motored up. He’s a really good player. And then #5, Evans from Bryant, he plays hard the entire game. It’s hard to sustain how hard he plays the entire game, and he’s a really, really good player.

We’re fortunate #15 missed some corner threes, and that’s where his bread’s buttered, there in the corner. And he missed some open threes, so we’re fortunate with that.

But look, it was a good game, two really good teams. And VCU’s a great team. They’re picked to win the Atlantic 10 for a reason.

So it’s good for us to step up in competition and play a really good team before we head to Maui.

Coach, a lot of teams won’t schedule a major like this. What value do you see in this type of game?

I mean, it’s a Quad 2 game for us at home. It’ll be a Quad 1 game when we return the game up there next year. I mean, it makes sense to me. Two hours away. I don’t know why we wouldn’t do it.

Look, I mean, you want to test yourself. You want to play good teams. I mean, I think everybody acts like…VCU’s not some charity program. This is a real program. They win 20-plus games every year, 22, 25 games every year.

So I mean, they’re two hours up the road. It’s a good home-and-home. It’s a Quad 2 game at home. It’s a Quad 1 game up there. I mean, I don’t know why we wouldn’t schedule them. I mean, they’re as good as many teams in our league. So I think it makes sense when you’ve got to build a resume to play good teams.

I mean, the games are going to be tough. But it makes a lot of sense to play good teams, and so it’s a good home-and-home for us. I mean, they’ll be on the bus and be home by midnight. And hopefully, we’ll be on the bus, be home for midnight next year. So it’s a good game, good series.

Coach, you went with Ven-Allen and Musa (Sagnia) down the stretch, right around the nine-minute mark. Went on the 6-0 run. VCU turned it over three times. Kind of what did you see from that lineup, and did it prove to him a little bit that he could do that?

Yeah, I just thought we needed to be a little bit bigger, particularly on rebounding. I thought that those two gave us the best chance to rebound. We played with those lineups in practice. We just hadn’t played with them much in a game. Sometimes you need different things. Sometimes you need shooting, and you put Jerry (Deng) out there.

Sometimes you need defense and rebounding. Musa and Ven give us a great chance.

I know Paul didn’t make any shots tonight, but he had nine rebounds. I think that’s a career high, eight defensive rebounds. So he did some things to contribute to help us winning.

But I thought that Musa and Ven played well out there together. They did exactly what they’d done for us in practice, and I thought that that was important, and that shows some of the versatility of our team and our lineups.

The guys talked about the turnovers?

Oh, it’s a major problem. You can’t turn the ball over. I mean, look, we were very fortunate to win. We got outshot by 12 balls, which is hard to do. I mean, we won it at the free throw line.

We drew a bunch of fouls. You know, we didn’t make 9+ threes. You know, Martelli’s teams have never won when the opponent makes 9+ threes, outshoots them, and out-rebounds them and we only got 1 of those 3. So you’re living very, very dangerously when you can’t get two or three of those things. And so, you know, we were fortunate.

We were hot from three to start, which masked some of our other issues offensively. We turned it over 17 times. We shot about another six turnovers. Shot five. We had five shooting turnovers in the first half. We had another one or two in the second half. So it’s hard to give away possessions like that and score how you need to. So we’ve certainly got to get that cleaned up.

I thought we got sped up, you know, but you’ve got to give VCU credit. They’ve got long athletes. They don’t let you reverse the ball. They’re sitting in the passing lanes. You know, they’ve got a very good, very good defensive scheme that’s very disruptive. Teams turn it over 22% of the time against them. We probably hit that number tonight. So, you know, they got a good group.

You touched on it briefly about the scheduling. Coach Martelli praised you for scheduling this home-and-home. Why was it important for you to have this in your schedule in your first year here at NC State?

I think it’s important to play good teams. I mean, I look at the scheduling from a numeric standpoint, and the numerics fit, and they’re close. So it makes a lot of sense. It’s pretty much that simple.

I mean, the fact that I had familiarity, I mean, it was easy. Ed texted me and said, do you want to play? And then I just ran the numbers. And I’m like, well, shoot, this makes a lot of sense. We need some quad two and quad one games. Like, this makes a ton of sense. Let’s play.

It wasn’t real hard. Any time you can get on a bus and go play somewhere, it makes sense for a lot of people if it’s two good programs, so it just made a lot of sense.

The fact that, you know, I had a history at VCU or I coached there or whatever, that was all part of it, part of the relationship to get the game. But, I will say this. We sent that contract, and Ed and Mac had that sucker back. We sent it at noon. That sucker was back at 3 o’clock. I don’t even know if they ran it through legal. I don’t even know if they ran it through the GC’s office at VCU. That thing was back. That was the quickest I’ve ever gotten a contract back when we sent that bad boy out.

But, you know, it was just a good game. Good programs and teams are going to win a lot, and teams that help in the metrics. I mean, we help them in the metrics tonight, and they’re going to help us in the metrics moving forward. It’s a win-win.

Terrence Hill didn’t score as much in the second half. Was that a kind of a halftime adjustment?

Well, yeah. I mean, Terrence hit three threes. He’s a great shooter. He had three threes in the first half. We lost him a few times.

You know, the defensive rebounding, we had four. I think they had 12 offensive rebounds for the game. They had four at the first media. The first four minutes or five minutes of the game, they had four of those. So we did a better job of that, and that was a huge point of emphasis coming in.

I mean, look, we’re not the biggest team. We’ve got great guards. We’ve got good bigs, but we’re not huge. So we have to rebound as a team, and one thing that’s unique about VCU that stresses your rebounding is most teams send three to the glass. VCU sends four to the glass. In theory, we can rebound three on two against most teams. I mean, we can rebound five on three against most teams. Here, it’s five on four. So there’s an extra body you’ve got to check, and it’s a 6’6″ athletic body most of the time, just with who they have.

So it puts a lot of stress on your defensive rebounding just because of their personnel.

Looking ahead, what do you take away from a game like this as you move forward to the Maui Invitational?

Yeah, I mean, we’re just going to continue to step up in competition. This was just the first step. We’ve got a big game with Seton Hall to open in Maui next Monday, a week from tonight. So it’s just a natural progression. We scheduled Central, and then we scheduled UAB, who’ve traditionally been really good. They just beat High Point. Then we scheduled Greensboro. Then we scheduled VCU.

So we’re trying to progress up, and I think this was a good test, and we’ve got a lot of stuff we’ve got to learn from it. We’ve got to value the ball more. There’s a lot of lessons that we’re going to learn from this that you can’t learn until you play a great team and that things are moving at a fast pace. So we’ll break down the film and get better from this the next couple of days.

I promise I won’t always ask you about officiating, but it’s five technicals now in four games. What is your concern level?

Zero.

This seems to be a pattern.

Zero.

Do you going to have a conversation with your group? 

We’ve had a conversation, but I mean, look, a lot of that, some of that’s just luck. I mean, I’m not worried about that. We’ve got to play with an edge. I’d rather tell them woah than go. So we’ll back them off a little bit, but I mean, he made a three tonight, whatever. I’m not worried about that.

It’s the same player, but I think I’ve read that (Darrion) Williams is one of the more efficient people that y’all tracked.

The most efficient.

The most efficient.

You got to see it in person tonight.

Yeah, I got to see it in person, but what is it that he does that makes him just so hard to stop?

It’s just, first thing, he plays at his own pace. Like, he plays at his pace, and he’s got great vision and can move the ball around. You know, it’s hard. It’s great when your best player is your most unselfish guy, too. You know, he led us in assists coming in tonight. He had 14 assists, one turnover.

I think he had two assists, three turnovers tonight, something like that, but he led us in assists coming in tonight. He always makes the, not always, most of the time, a vast majority of the time, he makes the right play, and, you know, he can score it.

You know, he’s just efficient. In the first half when VCU went on the run, we went about three minutes and couldn’t get him a shot. Then we got him in the post. We got him in the back down on the 41 pistol, and he hit the fadeaway, and then he got the and-one. We were able to get him back going, but we can’t go that long without him. He didn’t even touch the ball during that span. Like, he’s got to touch the ball because good things happen for NC State when he’s touching the ball, whether it’s for him or for somebody else.

This was the first time that this group has really been tested. They have a lot of experience from different places. What did you make of that under six? The guys mentioned the last six minutes weren’t great, but how they responded still gutted it out.

Yeah, I mean, we work on the six-minute games. That’s a huge part of what we do. And, look, we weren’t clean. We didn’t value the ball like we needed to, but we made our free throws, which was enough in this game. We made our free throws. We got enough stops. We made a mistake at the end when we were up five and we didn’t push back…we let them throw it over top the 1-3-1. We were freaking guarding the elbow, which who cares about the elbow when there’s a guy in the corner for three and you’re up five, like, let them throw it to the elbow and do whatever the hell they want with it from there.

So there’s some stuff like that we’ve got to get cleaned up, some situational things, but you can only clean that stuff up when you’re in those situations, which we were in tonight. So we’ll learn from it and get better. Our group’s been really good at getting better when we need to every game, and I think we’ll continue to do that.

Coach, I know you said this is a good game for you guys. It’s a good metrics game, but you also have played other good programs, but we had Mike Jones in here and you got Mike Morrell coming in here. How much fun are you having? You know, you got all of us VCU fools in here. How much fun are you having?

It’s been good. Bringing your boys in here. It’s been fun. It was good to see Coach Jones and it will be good to see old Mikey Moe here in a couple of weeks.

But I mean, look, they’re all close too. I mean, Jones needed some money, and Greensboro, they came the day of the game. It was an easy trip for them. Mikey Moe had been begging me for a game. So you can come here and try to whip our ass.

But, you know, it just kind of happened that way, but we’re all still close. We’re on a group text. Ed puts us on a group text. It’s kind of a cool deal we’re all so close to each other. You know, Richmond’s up there. Greensboro’s an hour. Asheville’s a little bit further. So it just kind of works out.

Tre Holloman…

Tre’s been really, really good. I’ve been very pleased with him. You know, he shot it well his sophomore year. We were banking…he didn’t shoot it well his junior year. We were banking on the fact we could get him back to how he shot it his sophomore year, which so far, that’s checking out.

You know, we’ve got to cut down on some of the turnovers. We’ve got to cut down on some of the silliness on some things, but he’s getting more and more professional. He’s getting more and more business-like, and I think he’s going to continue to grow throughout the season. So I’ve been very pleased.

It seems to be like Ven-Allen Lubin establishes himself more and more each game, not just as a rebounder, but as a scorer. Can you touch on that?

Yeah. 11 points and 9 rebounds tonight. I believe he had five offensive rebounds. Did a great job keeping balls alive. You know, a fortunate part the last couple of games is he’s picked up a foul before the first media. He did it against Greensboro. He did it again tonight, and that makes him a little bit timid.

He’s not used to playing for a coach that’ll play a guy with two fouls in the first half. We’re going to make the officials foul us out. We ain’t going to foul our players out, sitting them on the bench. So, you know, it’s made him a little bit more timid, and that really shows up on the defensive end because he’s our paint protector, not necessarily blocking shots at the rim…that was a hell of a block Musa had tonight…but not necessarily blocking shots at the rim, but meeting people at the red zone, keeping people out of the red zone, keeping people out of the paint.

So, if we can get him off to where he doesn’t foul as much, he’s going to be in there even longer and he’s going to be even more effective and he’s going to be better, but really proud of him. He’s really picking it up. He hit the three tonight, which was great. I know some people were oohing and aahing or gasping, but that hitch is a lot better than what it was. Still got a hitch in it, but it had a major hitch in it before. So, our staff’s done a good job with him and I think he’s going to continue to progress and continue to get better. Very proud, very proud of him.