Will Wade: “I’ve tried to give our guys some patience to work all this out…but the last couple days its been what I call a hostile takeover.”

For those of you who are blinded by years of NC State misfortune and mismanagement, and believe that Will Wade is just more of the same. I’ve got an interview for you to listen to.

Will Wade spoke with NC State play-by-play guy Matt Chazanow prior to the UNC-A game and he didn’t mince words. In fact, NC State fans, you’ve never heard a coach this candid and this blunt about his team. Give it a listen…

MC: Before we get into the Bulldogs, before we talk about the Auburn Tigers, tell me what it means to play with an edge.  What do you think it means when your team has the kind of bite that you’re looking for as we get into this back end of non-conference play?  Well, we haven’t had an edge to us even in our wins. We haven’t had an edge to us all year.

WILL WADE:  So I’ve tried very calmly and very nicely because look you can only go so far with the head coach leading.I’ve tried to kind of let the players take the reins on everything and do things,butit just hasn’t worked. This looks, you know,this looks nothing like our teams have looked in the past in terms of just our passion,how hard we play, and we’ve been playing some of the wrong guys

And so today, hopefully, look, it may not be pretty, but it’s gonna look gritty. It’s gonna look grimy. We’ve had terrible practices leading up to Auburn.

That’s the least confident I’ve ever been going into a game. And I was, you know, we were hoping something good would happen for us, something fortuitous would happen to us, but this game we practiced, you know, we had a heck of a film session on Thursday. We practiced well yesterday.

We practiced this morning on game day. We were in here at 7.15 to practice. And so I feel like we’re at least gonna play harder, tougher.

If you look at it, we have all this data. You can get all this data.  So you look at the data from the, I mean, Auburn cut 15% harder than we did.

They covered the court 16 more times than we did. They just played harder than we did. And it was very glaring for our players to see it.

I watched the entire game with them on Thursday, and we watched every bounce, and we were in there a long, long time. And everybody got to see it. Hey, I understand we’re gonna give some of these guys opportunity.

Some of these guys sitting on the bench are going, I mean, why the hell are they playing? I can do that. I can get out there and get beat defensively and throw up bricks. I mean, you know, they’re going, I mean, I agree with them.

I agree with them. I said, shoot, we’ve tried to settle it on this. So everything’s open, you know.

We went to the offensive glass like we were supposed to twice at Auburn.We got two offensive rebounds on those two possessions. We got guys who don’t want to go to the glass. We got guys who don’t cut hard.We’re not very aggressive with our switches.And like I said, I’ve tried to give our guys some patience to work all this out. But the last couple of days, this has been what you would call a hostile takeover, because I know how to do it.And we’ve done it everywhere we’ve been, and we’re going to do it here.And so this is a process, you know, we’ve just begun, but hopefully you’ll see a team that gets on some loose balls.

Like everybody in the Auburn game, you can go back and watch it. Everybody talks about the corner three that Hall hit. Oh, just terrible luck.

He’s fallen out of bounds in front of his terrible BS.  It’s not terrible luck.  Magwood, their freshman, beat us to a loose ball, beat our senior to a loose ball right in front of the bench.

Right, right, right in front of the bench. So they so then it was a jump ball and they got the ball. That’s not bad luck. That’s you not playing hard and then rewarding the team that plays harder. And if you look at it, we didn’t have anybody that played Magwood, not Magwood, frickin Hall and Overton played 36 and 38 minutes. And they played with way more force and way harder than we did.

So we’ve been doing all this, all this, all this sports science, all this, all this stuff. And that stuff’s great. And, you know, we’ve been worried about loads and we can only have this many loads to hell with all that.

We practiced on game day. We practiced for a long time yesterday. That’s that stuff to keep you fresh for the end of the year. The end of the year ain’t going to matter if we don’t start playing better. That’s out the window. And and and, you know, we’ll see how we look today. But I would I would suspect we’re a little better. If not, I don’t know what to do after that. But I’d suspect we’re going to look a little bit better.

But playing with an edge would be having your seniors get on loose balls over a freshman from Auburn, not having an Auburn cut 15 percent harder than you. Not have not have Auburn get up the court five and a half seconds quicker than you. Not have Auburn does not have Auburn cover 16 more times up and down the court with how hard they’re playing.

That would be playing with an edge, having everybody go to the offensive class, not getting beat on the ball, having aggressive switches. Some of those threes, some of those threes are all as bad luck as bad luck. Well, we switch inside the three-point line.

You’re supposed to switch with your heels on the three-point line. So we switch inside the three-point line, and it’s not bad luck, bad coaching, and it’s bad.  It’s bad playing.

And hopefully we’ll be better than that today because these guys, these guys are sixth in the country at ISO scoring.  And so fifty five for them. I mean, seventy-six percent in the mid range.

I mean, if we can’t guard the ball any better, eight of eights, a really good three point shooter. I told our guys, hey, there’s an NBA scout here today for them, not for any of any of us.  We had three GM’s at the at the Auburn game and we play like that.

And it’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing. We had guys who think they’re, you know, we had guys that, you know, think they’re going to be in the NBA next year.

It’s a joke. It’s a joke. And and and, you know, I mean, they’re coming to look at two of Asheville’s guys today and I don’t blame them.

They’re both good athletes. They’re both they’re zeros. One of the top five ISO scores in the country gets, you know, shoots the fifth amount of runners in the country and does it at a high clip.

So, you know, we’ll see how we’ll see how it is today. But it was all systems breakdown,n and from Maui to Auburn.And I’ve tried to let itself correct, but sometimes you’ve got to step in. That’s my job. And, you know, I don’t care about being liked.I don’t care about how everybody feels. I’m not into any of that. I don’t like the taste of the food after we lose. I want my damn pizza to taste better after the game.

So that’s that’s all I’m worried about. And and and and that’s that that’s how hopefully we’ll play today.  I’m sorry I took all your time.

MC: Perfect. Please don’t ever apologize. One of the great interviews I’ve ever done. You kidding me? That’s beautiful. That’s great. We’re going to talk about we’re going to talk about the taste of your food after this Bulldog game.

We’re going to talk about minutes load because Asheville has some eye-popping numbers in that regard.  And we’re going to do it next. Also, by the way, you know this head coach has been extremely well for the UNC Asheville Bulldogs.

We’ll take a break. We’re talking ball here with Coach Wade as we get set for UNC Asheville here in Lenovo.You mentioned minutes load in the previous segment. UNC Asheville is one, two and three for individual minutes played in their league rankings in the Big South.They have the one, two and three minute load guys playing like thirty three to thirty five minutes a game.Three of them. It is all on their top three guys. You said there are some NBA scouts here. They’re picked toward the top of the Big South this year. They could win their league. How good are these guys? What are we dealing with here today with Asheville?

WADE:  They’re good. I mean, they’re, you know, everybody’s good against us. So, I mean, they’re there. I mean, some of those guys, they should be happy the scouts are here. They get to play against our defense. But I mean, look, they got a good team. I mean, you know, it’s hard to build depth sometimes. So you got to look your best players tired a lot of times are better than the guys you got sitting on the bench fresh.

And so, you know,  we did the same thing one year when I was in another league. I mean, we had the top we had four of the top six guys in the league in minutes. We had a guy who played 40 minutes the last like eight or nine games a year.

We never took him out. And we only played six guys, seven guys. We came in second in the league and had a good year.

We went to the NCAA tournament. So, I mean, you could you could you could do it. (And look, I mean, they got they got three good ones. Fifty-five’s a great player. Zero’s a great player. And three’s a great player. They’re going to have the ball in their hands.  I mean, they shoot the ball.  You know, the three guys who are out there a lot shoot the ball the most, too.  So, I mean, look, Mike’s a coach. Morel’s a great coach. And look, it’s hard to build depth sometimes in this era. And so you got to ride with you got to ride with with your studs and ride with who you got.

MC: Well, listen, we’re going to try to make that pizza taste good. That post-game pizza we hope is delicious today.  Chucky and I are going to work on that.

But, you know, they’re running out. And, you know, thank goodness for us, our league’s doing better. You know, I don’t like having to rely on the league. I like, you know, the league having to rely on us.  But they’re going to have to prop us up a little bit this year if we’re going to get (12:10) where we want to go. And so, thank goodness, you know, the league’s doing better.

And, you know, we’re going to have some opportunities here ahead of us.  But it’s not going to matter if we have the opportunities. We keep playing like we’re playing.

And if we don’t get any toughness and, you know, look, you can lack some toughness and some physicality. Like, I can only get us, you know, 8 to 10% tougher and more physical. But you can’t lack that and not be alert and aware. And we don’t have either. We’re not alert.We’re not aware. We’re not tough.  We’re not physical. We’re none of that.

And so, like, you can make up for some of that if you have some alertness and awareness to you about what you’re doing. (12:50) And so, we don’t, you know, I can fix some of the alertness and awareness. And you’re going to see that today.

We quiz people before games and I’ve kind of let some stuff slide. Shoot, you didn’t know that answer today. I’m not messing with it.

And so, we got some guys who’ve played a little bit more that aren’t going to play as much. And I don’t really care because you get what you earn. And, you know, I had to explain to them what a meritocracy was. We’ve been living in a democracy. And now we’ve spent, this is day three in our meritocracy.  I had to get them to look up a definition of that on Thursday.