Head Coach Will Wade met with the media on Saturday night after NC State’s loss to Kansas in OT in the Lenovo Center. You can watch the postgame press conference above, and read the transcript below.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Incredible, incredible performance by Council. I mean, it was a good a game. Probably will be telling his grandkids about that one. It was a great performance by him. Give him credit.
He had five threes on the year coming in. He had nine tonight. We adjusted and kind of moved back up. We were guarding him in the paint to start the game.
Then we adjusted after he made his third three. That was kind of our line of demarcation. When he was going to hit that, we were going to adjust. So we adjusted after he hit the third three, but he was in rhythm and got going.
Give him credit. He played tremendous and made big shots for him.
You don’t seem like the type to take moral victories, or anything along those lines, but this did seem like a much better defensive game for you guys overall. Just your thoughts on being competitive in this one, and pushing this one to overtime.
I mean, I think, look, it’s like I told the guys. The results right now are lagging from our work. The results haven’t shown on the scoreboard yet, but we’re massively better than we were 10 days ago when we left Auburn. The team’s a lot better.
Now, we’re going to have, you can splinter when you’re taking on water on these losses like this, but I don’t believe this group will. But we are getting better defensively.
Offensively, we’re playing a little bit better, but we got good shots. We missed a lot of threes tonight, but we are getting better.
Now, we’ve just got to stay together and keep making that progress, but we are making improvements. The scoreboard just hasn’t been able to show that yet.
Adjusting to Council Jr…
I mean, we made the adjustment, and we didn’t guard him in the paint. We just went under the ball screens instead. But I mean, look, you look at everything when somebody scores 36 on you, but I do think their offense was a little not as fluid with kind of how he was playing.
But I mean, look, give him credit. He made big plays. He made big shots at the start of overtime. Those two threes at the start of overtime were great shots.
This is NC State’s 14th straight loss to Kansas in school history. Can you talk about what does this mean for the program and how you guys plan to move?
I didn’t know that. This was my first loss to them. So look, we’ve got to get better no matter the opponent. We’ve got Texas Southern on Wednesday, and we’ve got to make progress the next couple of days and get better for them.
I didn’t know we played Kansas 14 times, but we just need to focus on ourselves and moving forward and getting better and improving.
With some of your past teams, what have you seen from them as they’ve struggled, gone through losses, and grown? And do you expect that same pattern from this team?
Yeah, I mean, look, I told our team after the game. I mean, our team last year that won the game in the NCAA Tournament, we were 5-5. We started the year 5-5.
Then we were making progress. Our team at LSU that won the SEC, we were like 5-4 at one point, 4-3 at one point. It’s staying together and continuing to make progress.
When the scoreboard doesn’t show it, we’ve got to continue to work, continue to be about the right stuff, continue to get better. Our defense is improving. Our offense is still good enough.
We’ve figured out some of the rotational stuff. We’ve figured out some of the parallel tracks that our guys need to run on. So we’ve made a lot of progress, and we don’t want to erase the progress.
And if we keep making progress, I feel really good about where we’ll be at the end of the year. I think we’ll like where we are, and we’ll appreciate the struggle. Sometimes to get to that side, you’ve got to go through some struggle, and that’s certainly what we’re certainly what we’re doing right now.
Handling end-of-game situations…
At the end of regulation, we had it in kind of a fast break situation. I don’t think we were going to get much better than Q (Quadir Copeland) shooting a little four-foot runner. I don’t think anything we drew up was going to get anything better than that.
Coming off the free throw, just with the timing, calling the timeout that we were trying to get the ball to half court, call timeout again, and then run one of the plays that we work on. So, I mean, look, you want to get a look at the basket, which is what we got. Wasn’t a great look, but with 1.1 seconds, you’re not always going to get a great look. So you’re trying to get a decent look, and we got a decent look. We could see the basket, and we threw it towards it. So I thought at the end of regulation, letting them play it out with the broken play, I think Darrion (Williams) was in a little bit of traffic there. I think that if he hadn’t been in traffic, we’d have gotten a little bit cleaner look, but I’m not sure we could have drawn anything up to get much better at the end of regulation.
You’ve been preaching effort for the last couple of games. You said there was a much better effort against Liberty, but you needed more against Kansas. One point overtime loss, were you seeing more of the effort that you wanted, or did you need more?
I’ll have to watch the film. I don’t think today was an effort issue. It was more of some execution and that sort of thing. I didn’t sense today was an effort issue.
You’re clearly not panicked about where the team is. Have you always just kind of had that perspective for your teams, or when did you develop that?
I mean, look, time’s running out. I’m not hitting the panic button, like you said, but there is an urgency about what we’re doing.
We’ve scheduled these games, and we haven’t won them. We’ve also played the toughest non-conference schedule in our league by a pretty wide margin, but we haven’t won the games that we needed to win. That’s just a fact.
But our team is good enough to win a lot of these games. And our team, if we’d go back and play some of the games before this one and played like this, we probably would have won a couple of them.
But we’re not there yet. And we’ve got to, I mean, look, I’ve been around long enough. It’s a long season. It’s 30 games. We’re a third of the way through the season right now. We’re a third of the way through the season.
Are we where we want to be? Absolutely not.
I appreciate our fans today. I thought the crowd was phenomenal. The fans were absolutely awesome, and I’m disappointed for them. I’m disappointed that we haven’t been able to put a better product out there for them. But we will. We will.
I feel like, in short order, this team is going to continue to get better. We’re going to continue to move forward, and in the coming weeks, we’re going to be a lot different team, a lot better team, and a team that everybody will be proud of.
But we’re not there yet. But we’re making progress.
What was the explanation that you got with the elbow late there in the game?
They didn’t really say anything. Just said it was a common foul.
Can you talk about coaching Quadir? After Liberty, you said you got to make sure he doesn’t get off the rails, but I mean, he played great tonight. But then there’s also that time where he gets going. Do you just let him go until he stops, or do you want to-
I mean, sometimes you got to reel him back in. The six turnovers tonight were pretty, you know, some of those were pretty detrimental to our cause of winning. So, you know, there’s a fine line there.
We’re always straddling a fine line with him, but you take the good with the bad. But it’s been more good than bad, for sure.
Just your thoughts on Ven-Allen Lubin and the consistency that he’s shown for this team. Eight straight games with double-digit points at this point, and three of the last six games, he’s had a double-double.
He’s a warrior, man.
He’s cramping. I mean, we’ve got to continue to get Musa (Sagnia) better. Musa’s a better player than he showed. We’ve got to continue to get Musa better so we can give Ven some rest. You know, we can’t keep asking him to play, you know, 40 minutes a game. You look at the Texas game, he played all those minutes.
He just gets so worn down. So, you know, we’ve got to continue to develop those guys behind him. But he’s been phenomenal. He’s an unbelievably consistent, unbelievably hard worker, and just a tremendous, tremendous person.
Maybe this is just the football season a little bit, but does it feel like these games are kind of referendum somehow on the program or on the progress, and kind of got to change the way people kind of think about every game? You mentioned it’s a long season. You’re only a third of the way through it. Or does it feel like these games are taking on maybe too much importance at one point at this point?
What do you, I don’t follow. I’m sorry.
I know some of your quotes, you know, about this not being a must win or not being a reboot. Does it feel like some of these games, particularly, you got Ole Miss coming up I think next week, sort of are taking on more of a sense of like a referendum on where your program is already. And you’re trying to say, ‘Hey, wait a second, it’s a long season. We’ve got a lot of time to do the things that we want to do.’
I don’t know about referendum. I guess I don’t really follow what you’re asking. Just ask what you want to ask. I mean, we’re off to a crappy start. Like, do we need to win games? Is that what, I mean, I’m not being a smart ass.
Yeah, I mean, look, we haven’t won, you know, some of these bigger games that we’ve scheduled. I mean, that’s just a fact. We haven’t won those, but I do think we’re close to winning them. You know, I don’t think that every game’s a referendum, but we certainly got to start winning some of these. I mean, at the end of the day, we got to start winning some of these.
We let an opportunity slip by today. Like, we’ve got to start winning some of these, and we’ve got to start making progress, you know, making progress on this. That’s where I see where we are.
Well, winning aside, just the atmosphere. Was this the kind of thing you envisioned when you came here? Just the atmosphere, the passion out there tonight.
Yeah, the atmosphere was phenomenal. Our fans were great. I’m so disappointed that we let them down and couldn’t pull out a big win for them. But, you know, hopefully they’ll keep coming and keep supporting us.
Good things are going to happen. Good things are coming. Good things are going to happen.
I believe that. I believe in this team. I believe in this group.
We’re going to continue to work, and we’re not giving in. We’re going to dig in and battle harder.
