AUDIO: Will Wade, Terrence Arceneaux & Darrion Williams After NC State’s Win Over Boise St.

Will Wade, Darrion Williams and Terrence Arceneaux met with the media after #23 NC State’s 81-70 win over Boise State. in their 2nd game of the Maui Invitational this afternoon. You can listen to the audio above, and read the transcript underneath.

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What do you think of your team’s performance today?

Wade: I thought we played better. We were tougher. Defense in the first half was really good. We were more physical, but not as good as we need to be, but we were better than we were. So give our guys credit.

We were able to turn it around pretty quick against a really good Boise team, and so it was a good win. We needed it.

Terrence, for you, first game with double digit points in an NC State uniform. First of all, what was it like to have to sit out those two games and now getting back and kind of rounding into form here in Maui?

Terrence: It was hard, but I knew what I had to do for myself to get better, and coach understood that, so big credit to him. But like I said, it was hard watching my guys out there playing, not being able to, but I know I had to sacrifice a couple games just to get where I wanted to be.

For both players, obviously it’s a quick turnaround. What was your conversation amongst you as players last night as you prepared for today?

Williams: Oh, just be more aggressive. I think we got punked yesterday just to be blunt about it, so we just wanted to come out and be aggressive today.

Arceneaux: Exactly. We had to get together between each other, and it’s like, ‘Hey, we want to have a good season, so we’ve got to be more aggressive. We’ve got to know the things that affected us this game. We can’t let it affect us this game,’ so everybody’s just locked in and focused.

Darrion, I do want to ask you about Terrence’s performance today. I mean, what he gives you guys defensively is pretty clear, but what he gave you offensively today, how much did that help you guys?

Williams: I think it helped us a lot. I think I’ve been telling him since the summer, coach can tell him since the summer, just be confident in your shot, and be confident in your work. I think he showed that today, and even when he was sitting out, he was still a really good teammate.

If you’re around him, you can’t do anything but laugh, but yeah, he’s just been a great teammate, and yeah, he got to show what he can do today.

You talked a lot about the defensive performance yesterday, and how it wasn’t up to snuff for you guys. You ended up creating 11 turnovers in the first half, finished with 24 points off turnovers today. How did you feel the defense stepped up today?

Wade: It was better.

We fouled too much at the end, but Boise’s always one of the 25 best teams in the country at drawing fouls. When Buchanan gets the ball, there’s nothing you can do to stop from fouling. Southern Cal had their best defender on him last night, yesterday, and they fouled him.

Our goal was to keep them, but I thought we were more active. I thought our guards were more active. We weren’t getting blown by as much.

We did more in the second half, but we told on ourselves. We’ve been able to do that in spurts, but having Terrence helps. He covers up some mistakes.

He blocked that corner three. He covers up some mistakes and helps us there, but we still have got to be better than we were today. This was just a step in the right direction. This is nowhere near where we need to be.

Just your thoughts, since I’ve asked everybody else about Terrence’s performance today. Just your thoughts on his overall performance, not just what he did on defense, but also give you guys a lot of points on the offensive end of the court today.

Wade: It’s about time. We had a spirited conversation last night, me and him, and I told him I’m tired of waiting around. You can either do it, or you’re asking us to sit, and we’ll just say your Achilles is hurt. We’ll just move on, but everything’s been cleared. It’s time to play.

I knew he’s capable. That’s why we signed him. He’s a good player, but he’s got to play. He did a good job today, and now we’ve got to do it consistently because we got to turn around and do it again tomorrow.

We’ve got some work to do on that. Hopefully, we can get him to flip it around and have a little bit of consistency to him.

Coach, in terms of one or two things that you’d like to see, we talked about this transition again between today and tomorrow to build on those building blocks. What are those couple of things that you’re looking to do?

I thought we held our own on the glass tonight, but they’ve been out-rebounded six times in two years. That’s what they do. They have, coming into yesterday, they had a 78% defensive stop rate. They got a stop on 78% of their possessions with the defensive rebound. 80% of the time in the half court, they get a stop on our rebound. They’re one of the best rebounding teams in the country.

These teams have been that for a long time. We’ve got to cut down. We can’t give up 14 offensive rebounds.

We gave up three team offensive rebounds to them, which is where we’re fumbling the ball out of bounds and that sort of stuff. We’ve got to go get rim-level rebounds, two hands at the rim. We need to certainly do a better job there.

Offensively, we’ve got to be a little cleaner with our execution on some things. We had some different lineups in there. I was also proud of Alyn Breed. He hadn’t played a whole lot, but he’s somebody I really trust. When you’re in a tight spot, you go with the guys you trust. I have a lot of trust and a lot of belief in Alyn. I was proud of him stepping up, hit a three, hit a couple free throws. That was a positive. Anything else for Coach?