Will Wade After NC State’s 29-Point Loss to Virginia: ‘We’re not ready to compete with the top of the league right now.’

A humbled Will Wade spoke with the media this evening after NC State’s 29-point loss at Virginia for his postgame press conference. In a nutshell, he gave Virginia for being the better team. You can read the full transcript below.

Q: Coach, you said during the week you were concerned about their physicality. How did you think your team matched up in that regard?
Wade: Not very well.

Q: Will, can you walk us through the skirmish early in the second half and what happened there from your perspective?
Wade: I was calling a timeout, and then whatever happened, happened. I didn’t get a good look at it because I was trying to get the timeout.

Q: The season’s been very up and down. How do you get more consistency here at the end of the year?

Wade: Look, we’re not ready to compete with the top of the league right now. That’s just a fact. We’ve had our doors blown off twice by Virginia. Virginia’s a great team. Give them credit. They’re better than us. They’re better than us at almost every spot Their bench is better than ours. They’re more physical, and they’re a great defensive team. You’ve got to give Virginia credit. In both games we’ve played them, it’s gone basically the same way. That’s a credit to them. We’re not at that level right now.

Q: Where were the struggles with the offense in the first half?
Wade: We couldn’t get any clean looks. We didn’t move the ball. The clean looks we did get, we didn’t hit. Some of our poor shots led to their transition baskets. Defensively in the first half, we were all right. But you can’t give up 70 percent in the second half. That was our bigger issue.

Q: Where was Virginia so tough?

Wade: They blocked 12 shots. They were playing volleyball at the basket. They blocked eight, I think, in the first ten minutes. You’d have to double-check that. Our lack of size is very evident when we play a team like Virginia.

Q: How much did Qaadir’s struggles in the first half affect what you wanted to get going?
Wade: The way he played today, I’m not sure him being on the court much more would have helped us. So I’m not going to blame it on that.

Q: Is De Ridder better in transition than you guys maybe thought?
Wade: Damn, we didn’t guard him in transition. Anybody can score one-on-zero. He’s a great player. His spin move got through two different times. He spun through three different people. He spins on every finish. He can go through us, and we try to go around. It’s pretty simple.

Q: The season doesn’t end today, but the regular season is getting shorter. How do you move forward from this?
Wade: We’ve got a game Saturday. We’ll get ready to play Saturday. We’ve been up and down all year. It’s kind of who we are. When we lose, when we’re bad, we’re really, really bad. That’s just who we’ve been. We’ll get ready to play Saturday at Notre Dame.

Q: In the past, NC State has been known for the post-Carolina win letdown. You had an open day Saturday. Did you feel like things were back to being ready to play?
Wade: This team’s so funky. We’ve practiced well the last couple days, which I was joking it probably means we’ll play terrible. So I was right. You just have no feel with this group. I don’t know anything about the post-Carolina letdown. Virginia’s a great team. They can go to the Final Four. They’re one of the best defensive teams in the country and the third-best offensive rebounding team. This is a really, really good team, and they steamrolled us. They’re better than we are. If we played them ten times, I’m not sure we could beat them…maybe once on a neutral court if we get lucky. But they’re flat better than us. We can sit here and talk about De Ridder’s layups or whatever, but they’re better than us. They’re a better-coached team. Odom’s done a much better job than I have. From the bench to the team, they’re better than us. I don’t know how else to put it more simply.

Q: When they took Copeland out because of four personal fouls, did that play a part in the loss?
Wade: I don’t know. We got off to a bad start when he was out there early. I don’t want to blame it on that. Q’s got to be more disciplined. He picks up fouls. He had two in the first half, including his second on a flop. When you play better teams, all the energy and rah-rah stuff isn’t enough. You’ve got to have that with an edge and discipline. We have all the rah-rah. We’re great at that, but we’re not very good at the edge and discipline part. It starts with him, and it starts with me. I haven’t been able to get us to do that. He picks up fouls almost every game. He’s got a reputation with officials for fouling quite a bit. But that’s not an excuse. Halftime was only 12 or 13; they didn’t blow our doors off until the last nine or ten minutes of the first half. But overall, no excuses.