AUDIO: Will Wade’s Press Conference Before NC State Heads to the Maui Invitational (with transcript)

Head Coach Will Wade met with the media today before NC State hops on a plane to play in the Maui Invitational next week. You can listen to the audio above, and rad the transcript below.

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Your offense is 5th in effective field goal percentage right now. Is it where you want it to be?

No, I mean we’re going to have to value the ball more. We had 17 turnovers against VCU. We had 6 shooting turnovers, so 23 total turnovers. Seton Hall, who we play Monday, they’re third right now in the country in forced turnovers. They were eighth last year. They’ve been Top-50 in five of the last six years under Coach Holloway.

We’re still giving away way too many possessions. What we did against VCU, what we have to understand, it’s not sustainable. We took 19% of our shots from mid-range, which is way over our number. Over half of our shots were off the bounce. There was one team that made the NCAA tournament last year that took 46% of their shots off the bounce. One team.

So what we did against them was an outlier. We were very fortunate to win. We were very fortunate to win our way. But that’s not a sustainable way to play offense. We got blown up on our cuts. We were soft on our cuts. Turned the ball over way too much, as I mentioned. Got a lot of work to do there.

What would you say, through the first four games, you kind of come away and say, ‘Okay, this is the kind of start I was hoping for, better than I had hoped…the things you’re most pleased with as a starting point.

I’m pleased we’ve won. That’s good. We’ve got a lot of work ahead.

Defensively, we’re soft in the traps.

I’ll say this. Look, we look like we’re holding on for dear life sometimes rebounding, because we are against some of these bigger teams. Our defensive rebounding numbers are better than we were anticipating, and we were anticipating a little bit low. So our defensive rebounding numbers are better than I thought, and our offensive rebounding numbers are a little bit better than I thought. So I’d say that’s been a pleasant surprise.

We’ll talk after Maui. Look, Boise’s a great team. USC’s a great team. USC’s the third-tallest team in the country. See if that can hold up against them. Boise has had a Top-25 rebounding margin all but two years under Coach Rice. So, I mean, we’ll see if that can hold up. But so far, that’s probably been the one thing I’ve been a little bit better than suspected.

But against our two Top-100 teams, UAB and VCU, which when we get into ACC play, everybody’s a Top-100 team. So you can throw out all the other stuff. Against those teams, we’ve given up 13 offensive rebounds a game, and our assist-to-turnover ratio is 1-1. It’s going to be really, really tough if our assist-to-turnover ratio is 1-1 and we’re giving up 13 offensive rebounds against the teams we’re going to play, probably all but three or four games the rest of the season. This is kind of nice.

What are some of those other things you need to see get to a championship level as you guys try to get a trophy down there?

I mean, look, we need to put all our focus into winning the first game. I mean, that’s really what I’m focused on is Seton Hall. Then we’ll figure out Boise or USC, based on our result and their result. But I’ve learned in these things, you put everything into the first one and then you kind of get the momentum going.

But Seton Hall has done well in these things. They beat VCU last year in the opening round at Charleston. They had a big win over VCU down there. So, you know, we need to be ready, and they’re very, very good defensively. They’re Top-25 in the country defensively.

I mentioned their third in turnover’s…fourth. They’re physical. They’re tough. If we don’t play with a little bit more purpose than we did on Monday night, we’ll be swimming in the ocean.

You guys are going to Maui. Obviously a lot of different options. Why did you guys specifically want to go to the Maui invitation?

Well, it was signed way before I got here. But Maui, I mean, Maui’s the second best tournament right now. If you look at Players Era, obviously they’ve got the best teams, but Maui has the second most Top-50 teams right now. We’ve got four in Maui. We’ve got six Top-100 teams and four Top-50 teams.

I think Players Era’s got like 17 and 16. I mean, it’s gotten so big, but Maui’s the second best of all the rest of them that you mentioned.

Look, we still get what we’re looking for from a numeric standpoint out of it in terms of Top-100 and Top-50 competition on a neutral court, which is really what you’re looking for in these events. But yeah, this contract and our contract for next year, these things are signed five, six years in advance most of the time.

But look, we’re happy to be in it. It’s a great tournament. It’s a historic tournament. This is the second time I’ve been fortunate enough to take a team to it. It’s a cool place. It’ll be a good experience for our players. Ven’s (Lubin) been there back-to-back years. Tre’s (Holloman) been there back-to-back years. They both went with Carolina and Michigan State last year. It’s the new world we’re in.

Have they talked to you about that experience at all of them going with other teams here?

Not really. We joked about some things, but we haven’t really talked in depth about it too much.

What are you doing to prepare the team in terms of the long flight and the big time difference?

That’s a good question. We actually had a meeting on that earlier this week. We’ve got an incredible performance team that’s put a ton of time into it, led by Greg Golden, our director of performance, with Allison Wade, our nutritionist, and Steve, our strength coach, and Sean, our athletic trainer. Then we’ve got a bunch of data scientists as well that work on this.

We actually changed our flight time. There’s a bunch of different things we’ve done. To be frank with you, I don’t understand all of it. They explain it all to me and I’m like, ‘Yeah, this sounds good. This is intuitive. This makes sense.’ A bunch of stuff with circadian rhythm and all sorts of other stuff.

We’ve changed the flight patterns, the meals, the hydration, where everybody’s sitting and what they’re wearing. All sorts of stuff. They’ve been all over that. We do have a plan for that. It’s a massive ten hour flight. You can get to Europe quicker.

We have a plan for that. Our performance team, like I said, Greg, Allison, Steve, Sean, the data folks, they’ve crunched all the numbers on that. They’ve done a great job. We’ll be as prepared and in rhythm as we can. We’re landing at 5:30. The sun sets at 5:44. We need the flight to go smoothly and right. It resets your body when you can see the sun set. We’re supposed to land 14 minutes before. We should be on the tarmac and our guys can see that, which will help.

There’s some other things that we can do. We have a good plan for that. We have a good plan for the hydration and eating on the plane. We’re adding some extra meals. We’re adding some extra hydration when we can, and can’t sleep on the plane. That sort of stuff. We have that pretty locked in. Those guys have done a good job.

We actually got a meeting with our players tonight about it after practice to go through. They know generally what we’re doing, but to go through all the details of everything that we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it, how it helps us win and how it helps us prepare. Actually, before I came down here, I was just in a meeting on our load management and our practices going today, tomorrow, when we get there, what we need to do and what drills we can and can’t do.

We’ve got that planned out as well as we can, as well as anybody could. We’ve got great people that work on that. Those guys do a great job.

Are you telling Craig (Hammel) when he can and can’t sleep?

I’m not telling Craig that, but the lights are going to be on on the plane on certain times when the guys can’t sleep. Craig’s going to have to sleep through the lights if he wants to sleep. We’ll see how good of a sleeper he is.

I know you talked about Seton Hall’s defense forcing a lot of those turnovers. What makes them unique in their ability to do that?

Coach Holloway was a phenomenal player. He committed and played for Coach Amaker. When Coach Amaker was there, a guy I worked for at Harvard. Coach Holloway was one of the Top-5 players in the country, maybe the number one player in the country when he committed there and went to Seton Hall. He’s from Jersey. That’s how he played. He’s a tough, pit bull of a guard, pit bull of a player. His team takes on that personality.

He’s got good guards that can hawk the ball. He’s got bigs back there that can block shots, affect shots at the rim. They blow things up. If we don’t cut harder than we cut on Monday night, we’re going to get annihilated. They’re just going to blow us up. They’ll send us out of the gym. We need to be much cleaner with that.

It’s just personnel, system, and mentality. They pick up and full court press like VCU did. We get sped up and turn the ball over and suppress. Those are areas that we certainly need to be much cleaner Monday morning…Monday afternoon here, Monday morning in Hawaii.

You talked about offensive. How much of an impact has Coach Howard had on that?

Coach Howard’s been great. He’s overhauled a lot of our systems and a lot of our flow offense. We do a lot of shooting stuff. I’m really pleased. We’re shooting 43 percent on I think 137 threes or something like that. 142 threes. 143 threes. Something in there. 137, I think. We’re shooting 43 percent. That’s a product of Coach Howard’s system, but also Coach Hamilton overseeing our player development and those guys doing a great job with the player development as well and our guys putting in the work.

You’ve had my brain turning since you said something after the VCU game about allowing people to do what they want to do from the elbow on defense. I’m curious.

I thought you were going to ask me about technicals again.

I told you I would not ask you every time. I am a man of my word. You should already know that. You said, ideally you let people at the elbow do what they want, which is a very analytical thought. I’m curious. What does your ideal, average, half-court defensive possession look like?

Pretty simple. The ball doesn’t touch the paint. You keep the ball out of the paint. You force a non-paint shot. You contest the non-paint shots, and you’ve got a better chance to rebound it. That’s simplistic.

I guess they took 41 threes. I feel like a bunch of them were open. I think some of them were by design open, and some of them were where you said we can’t let that corner three because obviously, as all analytics know, the corner three is the easiest shot.

That’s not true. That’s not true.

Not true?

See, that’s the BS that they’ve spread to college. It’s the easiest shot in the NBA because in the NBA, the line’s closer. It’s not the easiest shot in college. They trick you into thinking that because it’s the NBA. Now, it’s a really good shot. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a really good shot, but its point value’s not as high, as it is in the NBA, in college.

I understand your question. Our defense, if you look at our defensive profile, we’re going to give up a lot of threes. It’s the type of threes that we’re giving up. I thought the type of threes we gave up to VCU for the most part, about 85-90% of them were the type of threes we want to give up.

I know to the lay fan and the lay person, it looks like, ‘Oh my God, they’re giving up a bunch of open threes.’ There’s a method to it, and we know the percentages that they’re taking. They’re taking the type of threes that we want, which about 85-90% of them were. It looks like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s an open shot,’ but it’s not nearly as high a percentage shot as you would think if it’s the type of three that we want taken. Our defense is built to take those type of threes. We’ve got five years of data to back that up, but it does look like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a wide-open three.’ Some of those wide-open threes or late-contested threes are way in our favor.

There are going to be many more teams that hoist 35-40 threes against us.

Now you say the kind you want. That’s dependent on the player or dependent on the position on the floor, or both?

More the position on the floor, but somewhat the player. Depends on the player and how good a shooter he is, but a lot of it depends on the positioning on the floor. I don’t want to get… I’m not trying to avoid your question. I don’t want to get too deep into it, because there’s some things that play to our advantage that teams don’t understand play to our advantage. I don’t want to just give away the farm on what we’re doing. I’m not trying to be a jerk and avoid it, but I’m fine with the majority of the threes they took. It was an advantage for the Wolfpack on a lot of the threes that they took. The numerical advantage was in our favor.

I’m trying to learn, that’s all.

Yeah, I’m not trying to be evasive, but I don’t want to tell exactly how we have it all charted, we know it, and I don’t want to go into exactly how it all works, because then it would hurt our chance to win.

All of your games have been at home, and now on to neutral site games. In what ways, if you’re even thinking like this, are you preparing your team for March with the slate of games next week. 

Yeah, I think it’s great. The neutral site games are great in terms of the NET and everything that we have there. This venue, I don’t know if you’ve been there, but the venue is very cozy, let’s put it that way. It’s compact.

We hosted the first and second rounds here. The Lenovo is way more apropos for an NCAA tournament and what those venues look like.

I think that it’s more three games in three days, preparation for potentially the ACC tournament, preparation for that. The NCAA tournament is not as really… In order to get to the NCAA tournament, you’ve got to pick up some good wins in these type deals. I think that’s important, but I think it’s important for the opportunity to play really good teams on a neutral court, the opportunity to expose our program in three national TV games, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at a time when a lot of people are watching. Our fans have seen us…those who didn’t have YouTube TV the first couple of games.

Most people nationally haven’t seen us. They may see our scores and see some other things like that, but they haven’t seen us. It’s a chance for us to step onto that national stage against other really good programs and national brands.

You mentioned how Maui is a great experience for your players. How are you taking advantage of the fact that you’re going to be in Hawaii and there’s other things to see and do? Is it all basketball all the time?

I used to be all basketball all the time, but we’re going to do Saturday night, we’re going to take them on a cruise. We rented a boat. We’re going to take them on a cruise. I’m a much more softer version of me. When I went last time, I didn’t even see the ocean. I didn’t even know where the ocean was.

I do think it’s important that they have a good… Look, for those guys, this is the first time those guys have been…Musa (Sagnia) had no idea where Hawaii is. We do want to make sure that we have a good experience, that they have a great experience and that we have some time to have some fun.

Look, it’s a business trip. We’ve got a lot of stuff to do. There’s a lot at stake for our team and for our season as we move forward. How many other times are some of our guys going to get to go out there? How many other times are we all going to get to go out there? Even if we go back, we’re only doing it one time with this group. Let’s enjoy it. Let’s have as much fun as we can around those sort of things.

We’re going to do the cruise, and then we’re going off-site to a nice restaurant that we scouted out to take our guys to a nice dinner on Saturday night afterwards. Sunday, there’s a luau that the tournament does, which is really cool. I don’t know if you guys have seen it. It’s really cool. It’s at the hotel. They have the Hawaiian dancers, and teams get up there and do hula hoop contests and different stuff like that. The tournament does a good job of giving you some of that culture. We’re going to do the boat and all that sort of stuff.

If we lose, it’ll be, ‘Why’d you put them on the boat, coach? You should have had them practicing.’ You can’t win, but we are going to try to have a little bit of an experience. I think that’s important. Five years ago, we would have been no telling what we’d have been doing. Not on a boat.

What are some things that you’re telling your guys to keep their mindset focused?

You’ve got to narrow your focus into what you’re doing. You’ve got to be in the moment that you’re in. I can’t control anything but sit in this press conference right now and try to have as good a time as I can with you guys, and then I’ll move on to the next thing.

When we get there, we’ve got to watch the sun go down. We’ve got to go eat. We’ve got to get to bed at a certain time. We’ve got to get up and get practice. We’ve got to get up and get lunch. We’ve got to get up and do our film. Then we can put our fun hat on, go on the cruise and go to dinner, come back, and the next morning we’ve got practice.

You’ve just got to wear a lot of different hats. I think our guys are used to that. I think it’ll be fine. If I didn’t trust our guys, I wouldn’t be doing it either. I trust the group. I like our guys. I like what we have. I know when it’s time to be businesslike, they’ll be businesslike. When it’s time to have fun, they’ll have fun.

I think that’s part of it, too, is having a team that you can trust.

This is the longest you’ve been away with these guys. A long flight, a long couple of days playing ball, putting on your fun hats, all that stuff. What do you learn about this group with all this time that you’re going to have together going on a road trip, flying on a plane, doing all that stuff, and also doing basketball? What do you learn about them as men?

We’ll see. We spend a ton of time together as a group, going to meals together and doing a lot of different things here. Certainly, when you travel you have a lot of other outside noise and some distractions and that sort of thing.

The biggest thing in these events is you’ve got to turn the page quickly. Win or lose, you’ve got something big coming the next day. You’ve got another opportunity coming the next day. Win or lose, you’ve got another opportunity coming the next day. That’s why you’ve got to put everything into that first game. You can’t look ahead. It’s got to be that first game. You’ve got to have a narrow focus on that first game, locked in on that first game.

Our guys all get along really well. We’ve got a great belief and trust. We had our leadership class this morning in here. They were sitting in the same seats you guys are sitting in. We got into a lot of stuff. I like where we are. I think we’re probably going to have some adversity on the trip. I think our team’s built. I think our foundation’s strong enough right now to withstand some adversity. Whatever’s going to come at us, I think we’re built for it. I think we’re going to find that out about ourselves as we go through the tournament.

You talked at your initial press conference how you wanted to get the rotation down to 8 or 9. You’ve done that every single game outside the two blowouts when Snell and the guys got to play. 

We like it when Snell and him get to play.

With Terrence (Arceneaux) being injured…

I think Terrence will be back. I should have told y’all that. I buried the lead. I think he’s been cleared. He got a good checkup. We had some scans done yesterday that all came back really, really good. I feel like he’ll be able to help us in Maui.

Look, we’ve got 10, 11 really good players. These are the type tournaments, three games in three days. We’re going to need different guys to step up at different times.

Jerry Deng’s a really good player for us. We love Jerry. He didn’t play as much as he wanted to, or that we kind of had initially planned in the VCU game, because we had to play the two big lineup down the stretch to rebound.

Some games are going to call for ‘We’ve got to get rebounds,’ some games are going to call for ‘We need to space them with five guys and shoot it.’

With the eight, ninth spot, we’ve got three or four guys floating around that can all play. A lot of it’s going to be situational based on who we’re playing, how we’re playing, how certain guys are playing. I intended to play Alyn (Breed) a little bit more against VCU as well.

The big lineup kind of messed that up. Matt (Able) had a great first half and then banged his shoulder a little bit in the second half. I probably should have given him another run.

Look, we won, but we’ve got a lot of good pieces. We’ve got a lot of guys that can impact winning and help us win. We’ve got to keep everybody on the page and ready. If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. We want our guys to stay ready so they don’t have to get ready when it’s their time. That’s the challenge with some of those guys.

Our guys have been great with it so far. All those guys I just mentioned, we’re going to need every one of them in Maui. Three games in three days, a lot of things can happen. We’re going to need every single one of them. I believe in all of them. I think they’re all going to be ready to step up and make an impact and help the Pack win when we need it.

Just kind of a random question, but I’ve had a lot of conversations with coaches and administrators at different schools about sports gambling and kind of the seriousness of it, both in terms of mental health implications for players and prop bets, but also maybe players getting into betting and gambling themselves. What kind of conversations have you had with your players?

That’s a great question. We actually had a speaker come three weeks ago who’s licensed by FanDuel to come in and speak about gambling. He was a great player. Randy Livingston is his name. He came in and spoke with our group about all those subjects. That’s something that’s front of mind. It’s everywhere.

I was laughing, not laughing, but they’re sitting there on ESPN who is just killing the betting and all that stuff. They’ve got the bet stuff going across the bottom line. They’re all profiting off of it. It’s certainly a danger.

We addressed it in our initial team meeting with the guys. We address it at least once or twice a month with different speakers or different articles or different things.

You saw the interview with Dae Dad Hunter. They were in the Southland where I was, New Orleans was. One of the kids from Farmville Central was caught up in it. Some of that stuff is close to home. We’ve certainly talked to our guys. The one good part about all of them just being wide open is that it’s way more regulated too. When it wasn’t as open, some of this stuff was probably still happening. It just wasn’t able to get caught by all these monitoring services. They are on it. I’ve seen some of those reports. They know what’s supposed to be done. They sniff that stuff out quick. It’s way more available to everybody, but it’s also got way more regulations on it, which is able to catch some of those issues. I tell our guys, ‘Man, I’ve seen the geo-tracking. They can get you.’

You look at what happened with Iowa football and that sort of thing. They had those guys right in the locker room on the geo-tracking. We have a lot of conversations with our guys about that. That’s gone way up the list of issues in the last three or four years.

How have you seen the volume of boards involved with this group? Particularly with a guy like Paul (McNeil Jr.) who didn’t score the other night.

Eight defensive rebounds. We’ve got to rebound with our guards. I’ve been all over our guards about rebounding. We still need more from Q (Quadir Copeland) and Tre in the rebounding department. Q, what good is it to be a 6’6″ guard if you don’t rebound great? He’s leaving money on the table literally by not rebounding. Everybody makes a big deal about the height and all that, but at the end of the day most teams, VCU is unique. I think I said this after the game. They send four to the glass. Most teams send three. You’re still rebounding five on four if you can get all five guys in there.

The key is getting all five guys in there and in the fight. Staying out of the rotations. You let that thing in the paint, you’re going to be in rotations. When you’re in rotations, you’re in rotational rebounding. You’re going to have cross-match rebounding. That opens up a whole can of worms. I think that getting those guards to rebound five on four, five on three, we should be able to scratch enough of those out.

Look, we’re not going to be the world’s best rebounding team. I’ve said that. I think I said that in the first press conference. We’re not going to be the world’s best rebounding team. We don’t have to be. We’ve just got to hit our numbers. Right now we’re about three percentage points above the numbers that we need to hit. If we could stay there, it’s going to be some foul money that we weren’t expecting.

We’ve got to get all those guys to help us rebound. And to Q’s defense, he had a championship level blockout at the end of the game that got us a huge rebound. He had a championship level blockout. Ven does a good job. He had a great blockout, set the tone in the first minute of the game on a crackdown, on a corner cut. We’ve seen it in spurts. We’ve got to get way more consistent with that.