Head Coach Will Wade met with the media after NC State’s 82-73 win over Virginia Tech. You can listen to his comments in the video above, or read the transcirpt below…
Reporter: It was obviously the top three-point shooting offense we used to see against the top three-point defense. What do you think you guys were able to do well to get going from down there?
Wade: They limited our attempts. We usually attempt 30, 35. We attempted a little over 20 today. But our best three point offense was in transition. It got us going in transition, and so that was really our best three point offense. Paul’s a weapon, and Paul can really get going. Missed that first one, and he hit his next four, I believe. Missed the last two, so he got relatively quality looks for how they were playing. And made a great back cut on the first play for a layup on the top block. So he’s learning how to play through that and settle in and make sure that the game comes to him.
Reporter: You guys got out-rebounded by five, 35 to 30. They had 12 offensive rebounds. You had five. What were they doing that made it hard to get off on the defensive side of the glass and on the offensive side of the glass?
Wade: Luwal’s a world-class athlete. We haven’t been a very good offensive rebounding team all year, so we don’t ever get any offensive rebounds. So that’s not really that different for us. They missed a lot of close-in shots, and they were able to dig some of those out because the Wall’s just a phenomenal athlete, and certainly Hansberry’s extremely, extremely physical. So those guys did a good job in the restricted arc against us.
Reporter: How has Copeland’s leadership skills grown? Do you think that’s a natural thing for him, or is it something he’s worked on?
Wade: He’s a natural leader. You just got to make sure he’s channeled the right way. So he’s certainly a natural leader. People are drawn to him because he’s got a good… The best thing he does is he gives other people confidence. All that talking and all that stuff, he gives the rest of your team a lot of confidence, a lot of juice. And so he gets other guys confident. But I think it’s more about harnessing it and moving it in the right direction, which is what he’s been better at this past year.
Reporter: What do you like about your defense on Hammond today? I believe you held him without a basket.
Wade: I thought the pressure bothered him. Tre did a great job. Tre’s been phenomenal for us defensively the last couple games. We wanted to make 17 initiate the offense because Hammond usually initiates a lot of the offense. So we were face guarding him in the full court, trying to make it difficult for him to get the ball. And Trey did that. Tre played great. Played 36, 37 minutes and held Hammond up and down the court. So I think by the time he got the ball, he was a little bit tired, a little bit fatigued, took some tough mid-range shots, fadeaway shots, settled for some threes. And so he’s a tremendous player. Makes over 50% of his off the bounce tough shots. And so we were able to limit him today. And I thought trying to throw their offensive rhythm off a little bit was helpful with that.
Reporter: In fact, they were, I think they held Williams to just one basket. And yet he still obviously executed the offense very well. But what did that do to him?
Wade: We just couldn’t get Darrion going. He missed some threes early in the game. He missed some open threes. And then we went back to him in the post and tried to get him in some long post situations. And just struggled today. They did a great job. Lawal’s a great athlete. You put athleticism on him, it’s sometimes a little bit tougher. But we know he’ll bounce back. And Virginia Tech had a great game plan. They’re very, very well coached.
Reporter: Coach, you talked about game plans. In the second half, it feels like they were able to counteract your runs more. What were they doing differently in the second half compared to the first half?
Wade: I think he did a great job using his timeouts. He did that in the first and the second half. And we just could never get a critical stop when we needed to. When it got down to three, we got the barrage of stops there. We hit the three and then we got going there. But they’re a good team. They’ve been on a week off. They were rested. This was a big game for them. It was a big game for us. And they played with desperation. They played how you would want to play in the situation that they’re in. And our guys answered those runs and answered those changes in momentum very well. I thought we did a good job staying connected, staying together. I thought we had a couple little things there where we weren’t quite as connected as we need to be. But for the most part, we did a good job staying connected. And that allowed us to counteract those. They’re a very good team. They’re going to make the NCAA Tournament. They’ve got two good players. Johnson, I assume, will be back here soon. He gives them another three-point shooter, cutter, offensive rebounder. Thank God they didn’t have him. Who knows how many offensive rebounders they’ve got. But they’re a really good team. And they had a lot on the line today, and they played that way. And our guys were good enough to respond and answer.
Reporter: Well, I saw a social media clip from after the SMU game where you used one of my favorite phrases, good to great. What do you see as a path from good to great for this team?
Wade: We’re just going to be more consistent. We haven’t been as consistent as we need to be. But we’re getting closer than we were. But it’s really about consistency, complete game. We’ve been very good in spurts. We’ve been great in spurts. But we need to be great consistently. And so we’ve talked about that, and I think we’re making progress towards that. But we’re not there yet.
Reporter: What was it like to interact with the basketball alumni the last 24 hours?
Wade: It was great. We had a bunch of them in practice yesterday, a couple of them at the hotel this morning. And we tell our players all the time, drink from the well, but don’t forget your ducat. There’s a lot of people that work really hard to make sure that this program is where it is and that it’s well thought of nationally. And so it was great to reconnect with those guys and spend some time with them. We had some pregame talk this morning. So it was just a good time. We hadn’t been able to do it, I think it was the first time in five or six years we’ve been able to pull this off. So it was something that was very important to us. And our staff did a great job doing that. And I hope everybody felt welcome. We’re going to make this an annual tradition where we can bring them back and spend a little time and reconnect with our roots a little bit.
Reporter: Inaudible
Wade: I thought early in the game we were going to double it, which we did. We kicked it out for two open threes. We let number two open in the corner for three. And then he kicked it out opposite to, I believe, zero for the first three of the game. And so we kind of called off the double and just tried to play a one-on-one. I think they weren’t necessarily prepared for that in the first half. And then second half they just put it down and he just started getting fouled. And he’s a great player, he’s a physical player. But we’re going to live with him doing what he does without us giving up rotational threes.
Reporter: And then you mentioned number two, Jaden Schutt. He hit a three with 11:20 to go to cut it to three. What did you think about how your team executed a little bit better after that down the stretch?
Wade: Yeah, it was a big three. It was out of an offensive rebound. Schutt is an absolute weapon, transfer from Duke. Shoots 50% on transition corner threes. Shooting over 40%. They do a great job getting in looks on baseline, sideline, out of bounds. That was all from a broken play. And so the timeout there was really just about to regroup our guys, calm our guys down, and to get our guys back in rhythm a little bit.
Reporter: Inaudible
Wade: It’s a lot easier. We showed up, we had way better players than everybody else. That won’t be the case Monday.
Reporter: You play a really good Louisville team, and how concerned are you, when I say concerned, how important is it to be on point with preparation?
Wade: Oh, shoot, we get embarrassed if we’re not on point. So yeah, it’s very, very important. We’re actually flying out tonight. We’re going to go there tonight and start our preparation tomorrow. So it’s a great opportunity for us. It’s a great opportunity for our program. First year, we’re on big Monday. We have one of those time slots with Louisville, so it’s a big opportunity for us, and hopefully, we’ll be able to prepare the right way to meet the moment on Monday.
Reporter: Six wins straight, what’s been the most positive aspect of growth you’ve seen in the 20 straight since that loss to Georgia Tech?
Wade: Yeah, I’m still mad about that loss to Georgia Tech. But I think we’ve found different ways to win. We’ve really found different ways to win. We just got to weigh about us where we find it. Sometimes Darrion’s playing great, we win. Sometimes he didn’t play great like today, and we win. Sometimes Q makes mistakes. We’ve just found different guys. I think Trey’s really stepped up. I thought Matt Abel gave us some good minutes again in the second half. So we’ve just been able to find—we’ve done it a lot of different ways, which I was worried about Virginia Tech’s physicality today. We haven’t really played well against physical teams. They did in the ball screens coverage against Q. They did what a lot of—they did what Virginia did. They did what Georgia Tech did. We’ve been working on that to try to make sure that when that happened again, we wouldn’t be in that situation. Our guys did a much better job responding to that coverage today. So I just think we’ve found different ways, which is the mark of a solid team, is being able to do it a lot of different ways.
