NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media following the Wolfpack’s 85-84 loss to Stanford at the Lenovo Center to close out the regular season. Wade addressed the team’s struggles in close games, missed free throws, Darrion Williams’ performance, and where NC State stands heading into the ACC Tournament in Charlotte.
Full press conference transcript below.
Question: Coach, you just had multiple one-possession losses in the last couple of weeks.
Wade: Yeah, we’ve lost three like this with Notre Dame, and this one, and Miami. When you lose close games, it’s on coaching. So, we haven’t made the plays that we needed to. I thought Stanford played with great poise and composure down the stretch. I just give them a ton of credit, and they played with incredible poise, incredible composure. Some of the shots they hit at the end of the shot clock, the free throws they hit. I mean, they just were really, really good. But we’ve just had some lapses that really hurt us. And we’ve lost quite a few, this is like the fourth game like this that we’ve lost. And it’s a difference between a good year and a great year, an okay year and a good year. And we just haven’t been able to close these out. At the end of the day, it stops with me.
Question: How frustrating is it to lose a one point game or even a one possession game when you miss nine free throws today when you have 34 opportunities?
Wade: Look, we got to the free throw line a bunch. We can’t complain about that. But, I mean, we missed a technical free throw. We had some inopportune misses. I mean, look, when you leave nine points at the free throw line, it’s tough.
Question: Just your thoughts on Darrion’s (Williams) performance today. He finished one of eight. Overall just four points in this game.
Wade: We’ve got to find a way to get him back going. He’s been struggling. I mean, I haven’t done a good enough job helping him out, but we need him to play better for our team, and I need to do a better job of trying to reach him and get him to play up to his capabilities. But tough day for him, certainly a tough day for him.
Question: You talked about losing some of those close games, two of them this season are against teams that won’t make the ACC tournament. Is there an elevator pitch to make in terms of your NCAA tournament resume?
Wade: I mean, look, you’re judged on the body of work. The last couple weeks haven’t been very good, but we’ve banked. I think we’ve got top five or top ten in terms of quad one and quad two wins. We’ve banked a lot of good wins, and that’s why it’s judged on the season. So look, our resume’s not complete. We’re gonna have some opportunities in Charlotte. We hopefully can close them out and take advantage of them if we have to. But look, we’ve banked a ton of quad one and quad two wins, and this is a quad two loss.
Question: Just on the impact of Jordan Snell and getting his first start today.
Wade: I’ve always tried to do that on senior day, start our seniors. Alyn’s (Breed) got another year because of his injury. Scottie (Ebube) kind of went through senior day last year, so we had seven. So it was tough to decide on, but I’ve always started the seniors. I just feel like it’s the right thing to do. Snell’s made a great impact on our program. He’s been here for a long time. He’s made an impact through multiple coaches. But he stuck around with us. And I just thought it was very appreciative of everything that he’s done to help us out and help us get going here.
Question: Ebuka Okorie had 33 points today. Can you just talk about what the plan was for him and how tough it was to guard him tonight?
Wade: I mean, he’s a great player. Tremendous, tremendous player. Early on, he got going from three against the zone. In the second half, he got going in transition. And so he’s just, he’s electric with the ball. That’s why he’s gonna be a potential first round draft pick. He’s just really, really good. The team feeds off that. I mean, they’re 2-9 when he scores under 21 points, and he just can’t have the scoreboard up enough when he doesn’t score. But he was great today. He’s just got a very stoic demeanor, same demeanor at all times. And it’s very, very impressive, his whole deal.
Question: Part of the thing with Okorie is that he shortens the game a little bit, too. Could you tell the last five, six minutes that they were basically gonna go until about four or five seconds on the shot clock?
Wade: Yeah, well, they ran their over-under stuff, and then we didn’t help. We gave up two offensive rebounds, one on a jump ball. I think they had the ball from like 4:14 to 3:20, just based off of offensive rebounding and that sort of thing. So we didn’t help. We gave up a ton of offensive rebounds, 15 of them. Look, they were gonna milk the clock and get the ball in. Give them credit, they played with great poise, great composure. They made a lot of tough shots at the end of the shot clock. I mean, both of 5’s threes were deep and late in the clock. So give those guys credit, they made some plays, and we left some plays out there.
Question: Well, what’s been the most surprising thing coaching in the ACC this year in the regular season?
Wade: I don’t know if anything’s been surprising. I mean, every league’s a little bit different, but I’m just disappointed we haven’t been able to finish some of these games out. That’s my main disappointment. That’s my main focus. Trying to get our guys to be better and finish these out. I still believe in this team. I think we’ve got some good stuff ahead of us. I think we can do some good things the next couple weeks. But we’ve gotta go make it happen.
Question: How much of the bracketology stuff will you pay attention to, or do you pay attention to?
Wade: Not a lot, I mean, I really don’t.
Question: Have you had a team in this position before? Obviously, McNeese is a one bid league, so you’re not—
Wade: We’ve made it as an at large multiple times.
Question: Right, with the LSU ones, I feel like you kind of were in, you knew you were in.
Wade: We did it one year VCU, we were a #10 seed, we were the last group in. We had to win a game in our conference tournament. I don’t know if we had to, but we had to win a game in our conference tournament. We actually won a game. We beat Oregon State in the 7-10 game. We were the 10, Oregon State was 7, but I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention. I know we’ve got a ton of quad one and quad two wins. Our metrics are gonna be decent. Look, there’s a reason all the teams are on the bubble. They all have warts. We certainly know of our warts, because we’re here every day, but all the other ones have warts too. So I think we’ll stack up pretty favorably. But we certainly don’t wanna risk it by going one and done in Charlotte. That would certainly put us at further risk. Not that winning one secures anything, you don’t necessarily know that. But I think that we’d be well advised to win our first game.
Question: Snell said anything can happen in March, obviously. He was part of the ACC championship team. Even though this group is different, how important is it maybe to have a guy with that perspective on the game?
Wade: Yeah, we spoke about it last night. I mean, shoot our VCU Final Four team, we lost to James Madison on senior night. We needed a tip-in to beat Drexel in the conference tournament, the first game. So okay, weird things can happen, anything can happen, but we gotta make it happen. We can’t hope and talk about it, we gotta make it happen.
Question: How do you convince your team to kind of get reset after all this, once you head into Charlotte?
Wade: We’ll get together Monday, and I thought we had a pretty good couple days of practice for this one, and we’ve had some tough things happen to us this year, just in terms of, you make your own luck. So I don’t wanna say we’ve had bad luck, I disagree with that. But we’ve just had some fluky things happen throughout the course of games. And we haven’t been able to make the plays, we haven’t been able to grab some balls, we haven’t been able to grab some loose balls, some rebounds. We just haven’t been tough enough to make those plays, to deserve to give ourselves, to deserve the opportunity to win. That’s why our record is what it is. We should certainly be three or four games better than we are. But we’re not, you are what your record says you are. And unfortunately for us, that includes a bunch of close losses and overtime losses, and you don’t get points for trying. You get points for winning, and we haven’t won enough.
