Will Wade: Terrance Arceneaux becoming a big part of the equation for NC State

Ever since ACC play started, Terrance Arceneaux has been the guy they were expecting him to be when they landed him out of the portal from National Championship runner-up, Houston.

Look at Terrance Arcenaux’s advanced analytics in conference play.

Steal %: 4.7  |  Rank–> #1
ORtG: 150 |  Rank–> #1
Box +/-: +10.2 |  Rank–> #1
2pt %: 63.6%  |  Rank–> #1
3pt %: 54% | Rank –> #1
Usage: 10.6 | Lowest on the team

Need a translation?

He’s tied for 1st in steal %, he’s been the most efficient offensive player in conference play, and the team is doing great when he’s on the floor. He’s also not taking a ton of shots or turning the ball over, and when he is shooting, he’s making them. And he’s doing all of this while not needing the basketball in his hands.

Here is what Will Wade had to say about him this afternoon…

WADE:  He’s been awesome. Look, he was going through a lot of stuff, and he had some injury stuff. He just had a lot of things going on early on, and so I’m very proud of him. He stuck with it. It’s not easy to come back from two DNPs and start back playing and then to come in and make an impact.

He’s our most athletic guy. There’s two or three plays defensively every game that he’s the only guy on either team that can make them, and so having him out there, when you’re in conference play. Over 70% of your conference games are going to come down to three possessions or less, but when you’ve got a guy that can help manipulate two or three of those possessions in your favor. He’s very, very valuable, so you add his defensive value to him being very, very efficient right now, offensively making open threes, and then catch, shoot, rip, drives.

He’s doing everything that we ask him to do, and that’s led to him playing well. It’s led to our team playing well, too, but there’s more in there. You know, we’re not settling with Terrence. I think there’s more in there, and we’re going to keep working and trying to bring that out.

We’re going to have to guard a lot better than we did Saturday. We gave up 19 middle drives on Saturday to Wake Forest. They missed some stuff at the rim. They missed some open threes off the middle drives. I mean, if we give up 19 middle drives to SMU, they’ll score 120 points on us, so we’re going to have to be much more solid defensively, and Terrence will be a big part of that equation.