Will Wade has kept this team together by a thread all season long, and honestly, he was doing a good job at that until these last 5 games.
NC State entered the game pretty much in control of its 4th-place destiny. Win 2 of your last 3, and you’ve probably clinched the double-bye and finished in 4th.
Notre Dame had lost 12 of their last 14 games. NC State is better than them at nearly every position. Just roll in and take care of business.
But look closely, and you’ll see that this team has been falling apart in real time. The Pack has lost 4 of their last 5, and all 4 have been devastating losses. Beat downs from Louisville and Virginia, and complete late collapses against Miami and now Notre Dame.
Just call it like it is, this team has some serious issues below the surface. They aren’t connected, the body language is bad, and there are guys out there just going through the motions.
Will Wade hasn’t shied away from this either. He’s been sounding the alarm for weeks. He’s called his team soft, hinted that they get over losses way too easily, and told the media that they have no identity. He’s called it an ‘indictment’ on himself and continues to say that he’s tried everything to get this team to have some grit, but nothing is working.
For the glass-half-full crowd, this was being looked at as motivation through the media. There’s no way Wade is simply answering questions this way. He must be trying to get a message to his team by being brutally honest and somewhat critical in the press.
And you know, maybe it was a little of both, but it seems like, as a fan base, we should have seen these more as warning signs. No matter what his goal was with these statements, if you’re having to motivate via the media in February, then you have issues. And if these are simply truths about your team and you’re in the season’s homestretch, then you have issues.
So we can establish that there is a potentially fatal flaw with this team that Wade seemingly can’t crack.
Yes that’s on the players, but it’s also on the coach, and Wade continues to own that.
But here is the thing. Will Wade has never had this issue before, at least not that I have seen.
This is a guy who has always figured out a way to maximize his talent and motivate his guys. He did it at VCU and LSU. Heck, he did at McNeese just last season. So either Wade has lost his touch, or there’s a rift in that lockerroom.
How else can you explain what we’re watching?
The defense looks like an AAU team. Anytime a ball handler wanted to get to the rim tonight, they got their. Almost zero resistance.
This isn’t a system issue at its core; it’s a personnel and effort issue that is leading to a system issue.
If you are going to play this ‘switch-everything’ style of defense, then you have to have a cohesive unit. You need communication. When there are double-teams or help side, you need anticipation and fast rotation. That takes focus and effort. It’s designed to create a feeling of controlled chaos, but chaos isn’t easy to control and right now, what is supposed to play as an advantage is biting NC State in the rear.
There are guys who just aren’t here for it on that end of the floor. There are guys who are just floating around lost, as if they are completely confused on when to swtich, when to rotate, and when to slide into help-side.
You have other guys who don’t want to wall up, and when a guy gets going downhill, they’d rather let him to the rim than provide any sort of resistance.
It’s embarrassing as a fan, and it really should be embarrassing to these players. However, it doesn’t seem to be from the outside looking in.
So what do you do if you’re the coaching staff?
Well, look, this team might squeak into the NCAA Tournament, but they have more than proven the way they are doing things isn’t going to get over that hump and start picking off top-tier teams. Heck, they are liable to get beaten by the worst teams in the ACC on any given night.
So what are we doing here?
Are we really just going to keep rolling out the same strategy night after night down the stretch? We still have a shot here, and with only a few games left in the season, do feelings really even matter?
I say that because the staff has two options.
Change the entire system or change the rotation.
It’s March 1st. The system isn’t changing. NC State might press more or less; maybe they start throwing in a little more zone here and there to hide their flaws and throw off the opposing team’s momentum. But the style of defense you see is the style of defense you’re going to get. It’s what they’ve worked on all season, and it’s not changing now.
That leaves you with making rotation adjustments.
When you do that, you have to take this latest stretch into consideration…
Here are a couple of guys during the last 5 games (where NC State is 1-4):
Tre Holloman:
27 minutes per game
7 PPG
12-39 FG (31%)
5-19 3PT FG (26%)
12 rebounds (2.4 per game)
10 assists (2 per game)
Look, let’s just call it like it is. The Tre Holloman minutes lately make zero sense. Take away the Louisville game, and Holloman has been struggling bad. Over the past 4 games, he is shooting 5-26 from the floor. That’s 19%. And aside from the UNC game, where he tweaked his ankle, he has been getting 30+ minutes. Defensively, I’m not sure what the staff is seeing. I mean, sure, he does play some decent on-the-ball defense, but he was causing a lot of issues with his off-the-ball defensive reads vs. Notre Dame yesterday. Criticize me if you want, but reducing Tre’s minutes is where you start here.
THE POTENTIAL MOVE: Reduced Minutes, play Matt Able and Alyn Breed
Darrion Williams
29.0 minutes per game
12.6 PPG
26-64 FG (40.6%)
10-30 3PT (33.3%)
17 rebounds (3.4 per game)
11 assists (2.2 per game)
These numbers aren’t horrible, but they aren’t the numbers you want from your ‘volume’ shooting guy. This is another reason NC State is losing. Darrion Williams is needing to ‘get his,’ and it’s costing us wins. That might feel harsh, but that’s exactly what looks like is going on. Sure, he’s playing to win, but when NC State gets up and he has a chance to unload, he does. It doesn’t matter if he’s guarded or not. It doesn’t matter the situation. The Darrion Williams forever green light makes no sense with his percentages. Meanwhile, Ven-Allen Lubin, a guy shooting nearly 70% on the season, has taken 20 less shots during this span. Paul McNeil Jr, the best 3pt shooter in the ACC, has taken 16 fewer shots during this span. And McNeil has only taken 6 more 3’s than Williams during these 5 games, despite McNeil hitting 12 3s and Darrion hitting 10. Defensively, Williams hasn’t been very good either. Yesterday, he was late on help and letting guys get to the rim at will. As for rebounding, let’s put it this way, Matt Able is averaging 5 fewer minutes per game (without the UNC game in which Williams was injured, it would be 9 minutes mintues less per game) and has 1 more rebound than Williams during that stretch.
I don’t know what you do here. Musa just isn’t built for this level of competition. It’s too fast and far too physical for him to be out there. If you go with Ebube and Lubin, you’re lumbering and will be beaten on quickness. If you go with Arcenaux at the 4, you’re way too small. This is the conundrum and the problem that has no solution. But this is why I think you have to get creative on defense and mix in some zone. As much as you hate it and as hard as it is to rebound out of it, You can at least hide some of these issues. I mean, you’re already giving up tons of open 3s out of the ‘switch everything’ defense. What’s the difference with a zone?
THE POTENTIAL MOVE: No idea. As Darrion goes, so goes NC State? Go zone and sit Darrion for poor shot selection?
Matt Able
23.6 minutes per game
10.6 PPG
17-39 FG (43.6%)
11-25 3PT (44.0%)
18 rebounds (3.6 per game)
2 assists (0.4 per game)
Time to move Matt Able into the starting lineup. I know Holloman is struggling, but he does give you another guy who CAN handel the basketball, and create SOME rim pressure. But it’s just not enough to warrant his minutes. It’s Matt Able time. It has to be. It can’t get much worse and Able has come alive lately. He’s going to be a key part of next year’s roster, and at this point, I think you just commit to him and take whatever lumps that get you.
THE POTENTIAL MOVE: Matt Able starts, gets the lion’s share of the minutes at the 2, split with Alyn Breed if you need ball handling.
Terrance Arcenaux
18.8 minutes per game
4.0 PPG
7-22 FG (31.8%)
2-10 3PT (20.0%)
16 rebounds (3.2 per game)
3 assists (0.6 per game)
There is another fall off happening that is hurting the Wolfpack, and it’s been the offensive efficiency of Terrance Arcenaux. The rub here is that he’s probably your best defender, and he’s one of your best per-minute rebounders from the wing. When you play him, your defense gets better, but your offense seems to struggle. There is a place for Arcenaux, but it seems like Wade has been right about his minutes all along. You have to balance things here, and that’s been hard. I think you work in TA where you can.
THE POTENTIAL MOVE: Arceneaux gets minutes when McNeil needs a break, or when you need to sit Darrion, but against a bigger team you might need to hide in a zone or some kind of junk defense in an attempt to cover the fact that you are severely undersized during that span (and the ‘switch everything’ and double team the mismatches is just WAY too much for this team to handle, it seems.
One thing NC State fans loved about Jimmy V was his willingness to try anything to win games, and that meant throwing junk defenses that some purists may scoff at, if he had to. Will Wade may be in a situation where it’s either stay the course with something that isn’t working or pull out all the stops and mix things up.
Remember, in March last season, when McNeese faced Clemson, they threw a zone at the Tigers that completely took them out of the game, and helped McNeese secure the upset. That was the first time Wade deployed the zone all season. He had been saving it and hadn’t used it even in the conference tournament. McNeese played man-to-man on about 96% of possessions during the regular season, so this was a deliberate wrinkle pulled out specifically for this matchup in March.
You have to wonder what cards Will Wade is holding on to as they get into the ‘survive and advance’ stage of the season. Or is he going to be forced to bluff all the way to the finish line?
