After NC State’s dramatic 84–83 road win over SMU, head coach Will Wade met with the media to break down one of the most remarkable point guard performances college basketball has seen in years. Wade discussed Quadir Copeland’s historic 16-assist, zero-turnover night, the Wolfpack’s continued three-point barrage, defensive concerns moving forward, and the balance between confidence and humility as NC State pushes deeper into February.
Below is the full transcript from Wade’s postgame press conference in Dallas.
Copeland’s Impact While Only Taking 4 Shots
I don’t wanna be like hyperbole, but I can’t tell you if I’ve ever seen 16 assists, no turnovers, a double-double or rebounds and assists. I’d have to think long and hard, so it’s been a while. Maybe if we had better crowds in the Southland he’d have done it for me last year. I guess he likes playing to the crowd on the road a little bit. He’s unique.
Our goal, in their (SMU) four losses, every team had 16 plus assists against them. I told him in the locker room afterwards, I didn’t mean you personally get 16 assists, but that’s nice. I wanted the team to have 16 plus assists, but pretty impressive and even more impressive is that he picked up his third foul early in the second half. We played him for a while with the three fouls, and he didn’t foul the rest of the time. We’ve got to build a trust there, because we are a different team when he’s not on the court. We know that, you know that, the other team knows that. Everybody knows that. So, I thought that showed some growth for him tonight as well.
Shooting Almost 40 Three Pointers
Well, we wanted to move the ball, and made 16. I think that’s like our sixth game where we’ve made 16 plus threes. So look, we thought if we could get good looks, if we could move the ball…you know, we kind of barraged them there. I think we hit three or four straight. A great pass from Tre (Holloman) to Matt (Able) to get what I thought was a huge. We went from down two to up one. That kind of broke the dam, because we had been cutting it to one possession.
They’d come down and score, cut it to one possession. So they were able to kind of keep it at arm’s length. But that pass by Tre was tremendous. Matt got great looks in the first half. We were telling him at halftime, ‘man, you’re gonna keep getting great looks. Just fire, man.’ I thought he did a tremendous job going on that mini run. I was very, very pleased with him.
Didn’t Love the Defense
I didn’t love the defense tonight either. I loved the defense by Tre at the end on (Boopie) Miller.
I mean, look, they’re, they’re very talented. Their guards are as good as any. Those three guards. Miller and Edwards…Edwards has improved a ton. I’m very impressed with him. And Pierre. I mean, they’re as good as you get. Three guys that, I mean, shoot like 80% of their shots off the bounce combined and shoot over 50%. You’d have to research if there’s another back court in a high major that can do that. There’s under three. I don’t know of another one. I mean, those three guards are as talented as any guards.
I think Washington’s the X factor. He made a couple threes. We lost him a couple times. He made a corner three to cut it from six to three, which was poor on our part. I think he’s kind of the X factor for them. But we did a good job. Usually when he gets going, it’s ’cause he gets going in transition. We did a good, and he makes a bunch of twos in transition. We didn’t let him do that tonight.
NCAA Tournament Caliber Game
These are two teams, or hopefully we’ll make the tournament. I think if it ended today, we’d both be in. It’s a quad one game for us. They’re a great team. Like I said, their guard play is really, really good. So yeah, we gotta turn the page quickly. I mean, we’re used to it. I just mentioned it. We played in the Southland last year. That’s where I was. We played Saturday, Monday, so that’s what we did. So we kind of have a plan on how to do that. And we have two of these Saturday – Monday turns.
So, look, we’re gonna get back late tonight or early in the morning. Really early in the morning. Then we will rest tomorrow and kind of go into our routine and get ready for a really good Virginia Tech team on Saturday.
Did you Ever Expect to See a 16 Assist and 0 Turnover Performance in Copeland When you Brought Him to McNeese?
No. Never. I mean, never in a million years. I mean his growth. I mean, look, he still has some moments, but never in a million years could I have imagined he’d be playing this, this…that he’d come on the road against a team that was in the top 25, a great team and have 16 assists and 0 turnovers. I mean, shoot, he couldn’t do that on East Texas A&M last year. I mean, if he couldn’t do it against them, how could I have thought he would do it in the ACC.
Give him credit. He’s worked hard on his game. He’s worked hard on his mental prep. He’s worked hard on a lot of different things. So I give him all the credit. I mean, look, I just give him the roadmap. He’s got to navigate everything and he’s done it.
Growth Opportunities in February
We want to be confident. We’re 6-0 on the road in the ACC. 8-2 overall. Yeah, our best start in a while, right? So we should have confidence from that.
But you have to humility as well, and the humility comes from, there’s a lot of stuff we can get better at, and if we don’t do a better job in our ball screen coverage than we did tonight. We tried a different ball screen coverage tonight and we probably didn’t spend enough time on it in practice and we got a little messed up on the fives.
If we’re not humble enough to understand that we have to get that fixed, then we are gonna be humbled on Saturday. We should take confidence from how we’re playing, how we’re finding ways to win, how we’re doing it. But you have to have a humility about you that if we don’t get this stuff fixed, then it’s gonna be a problem down the road.
There’s no rest for the weary. We’ve got a lot of basketball ahead of us and we turn the page quick and have to get ready for Virginia Tech on Saturday.
