CHARLOTTE, NC -- NC State head coach Will Wade discussed a variety of topics with the media during the breakout session at the 2025 ACC Tip Off. Check out what Wade had to say!
NOTE: Click the clip above to listen to the press conference.
I'd like to ask you, how is NC State, the City of Raleigh, the fan base, and the students helping you sell what you're trying to sell to the community?
We've got tremendous support, we've got a great fan base, best in the league, and look, you go to the home football games, it's sold out, people everywhere, the students are engaged, everybody's following what's going on, and so that part's been really exciting, and that's part of, certainly part of the package that we're selling with NC State.
The City of Raleigh, is that helping too?
Oh yeah, it's cool, great area, it's an area people want to be, it's a fast-growing area but it hasn't outgrown itself or gotten where it's so big that it's too congested, and so yeah, it's been a fun experience, I'm learning my way around Raleigh.
Coach Wade, you and your staff were tasked with a very short amount of time to put together a competitive roster, what were the most important characteristics that you looked for in the transfer portal or international, because you've got a couple of international kids too?
The first thing we're looking for is guys who won, I think winning's a habit, and you want guys who have won, especially when you're taking over a program that hasn't really won, and so I think that that is very important, and then you've got certain specific data points that you're looking at depending on positionally, and then you kind of roll it together based on, hey we get this guy, here's what fits with this guy, then we get the second guy and this fits with these two, and then you kind of get it rolling downhill from there.
Can you talk a little bit, there's new challenges this year as well for plays, can you talk about how your feelings are about that and how impactful that might be for you this year?
Oh the challenge plays, yeah, I mean look, I think it's a great change, I think anything that gives the coaches a little bit more jurisdiction over a few things I think is good, and so we certainly spent time as a staff talking about it and how to best challenge and how to best use our time, how to best use our challenges, and so we're excited to see how it goes, but I think it'll be a good process, I think we've got a good process in place.
And then my last one, what do you think the biggest impact from you guys all being together at bootcamp was on your team this year?
I think you get some comradery with the team, I think our communication gets better, just build some bonds, I mean look, we were at a place where there's no cell phone service, you're in a cabin with everybody else, you're in close quarters, I just think there's some bonds that can be built over that time that you can't do elsewhere.
On more European players transferring to play college basketball…
I think so, I mean look at the new rules. You said you couldn't get a donut, now you need to go pay their bio. So I mean, I think that certainly the schools you're familiar with, Virginia's got some really good ones, Virginia Tech's got a great one, you know, and so I think that look, it's just opened up a new market, and those kids, before, one, a lot of those kids didn't necessarily want to come over here because you couldn't make money, you couldn't make as much money as you were making over there.
Two, you had the amateurism issues, and now, everybody's, you signed, you played professionally for, you had to play professionally to play for your national team, you play for your national team, you automatically get a year. So, everybody can get a year, everybody can get a year now that's over there, so I think it's opened up new markets.
And look, when you've got a lot of schools like ours that are academically oriented, a lot of times those international kids are pretty good students, really good students, you can get them in school, they're very appreciative of the opportunity to be here. They have a level of appreciation of the opportunity to be in the United States, the opportunity to be in college that maybe some of our Americans don't always have. So I think that they're really good ads for most teams, I don't see the trend stopping as long as the rules and everything stay the same.
How different is the international game compared to your game? How quickly do you anticipate being able to adjust?
Yeah, I think they'll adjust, I think it's harder to adjust from the college game to the international game. When I was over at a Euro Cup game last month, I was sitting on the floor, I had the floor seats, and if you look at the physicality of that game, I mean, Valanciunas was playing, he was in the NBA, he was playing against high school kids. I mean, if you look at the physicality of that game, there's not 10 high school kids that can play in that game, much less maybe 5 that can play and make an impact.
And then, I think that, and there's, there were former ACC players in the game, there was a former SEC player in that game. I mean, those guys, I think, have a harder time adjusting to the international game than the internationals do.
Coach, we've got two transfers, specifically. I know that Terrance and Tre were both on some really successful programs. What was it about those two guys that really helped you target them the way that you did? And also, what have you seen from them early on that may have or have not surprised you?
I think winning's, I think winning's a habit. We have six guys on our team that won NCAA tournament games last year. Terrance obviously played in the national championship. Trey played in the Elite 8. Darian, who's here with us, played in the Elite 8. And so I think that, I think Terrance is a disruptor defensively. His offensive game's better than he's been able to show, and I think he's going to be able to show that for us.
And Tre's somebody that was a captain of Michigan State. He's a leader who's tough. Get in your face, greedy, grimy, kind of like we like it. So I think he's somebody that brings an edge to our team. He's somebody that somebody else won’t like so much.
Is there a particular guy on this team that you feel, and this is just my own personal opinion, that you feel very, I guess, just interested in just personality and the way that you kind of get at it. You're not afraid to, you don't bite your tongue. Is there someone on this team that's kind of embraced and just kind of very similar personality and mentality?
Yeah, man, I think we've got a lot of guys like that. I think Holloman's like that, Copeland's like that. Those two are for sure like that. It's what you want to watch. I mean, as a coach, you recruit guys to fit your personality. Sometimes you've got to ask yourself in recruiting, would I rather play against this guy twice a year or be with this guy every day?
I mean, you want to take the guys you're going to be with every day and you let loose the ones you don't know about playing against twice a year. And so, I think that Copeland and Holloman for sure have that edge.
On the ACC moving from 20 to 18 games and how that affected non-conference scheduling…
Yeah, I think the league did a great job going from 20 to 18 games. It was a very smart move. Now, we had a little bit of a heads up that it was heading that way. So, it wasn't like when it got announced that was official, but we had a pretty good heads up that it was heading towards 18 games. We added the Ole Miss game to Greensboro. I felt like what really changed for us is I wasn't anticipating our two permanent opponents.
Our two permanent opponents are Wake and Virginia. I thought we'd maybe have a different permanent opponent. I'm not going to say who, but I thought we'd maybe have a different permanent opponent. And so, when that happened, it changed the arithmetic on some quad one and quad two games. And so, we had to go get another game.
So, with our extra game, we started with neutral, neutral with Ole Miss, and then we bought a high end. We bought UAB. So, we bought a really good American conference team.
Does that delve into you're thinking with the schedule, it's going to play to make sure that they're…
You want to play teams that are going to win? Yeah. Win a bunch of games, whether that's at the bottom. If you want to play a team that are going to win tons of games in their league, because that's going to help their net, or in turn, help you win.
Will, you can see the defensive versatility on this roster on paper. How is that translated in practice in what you've seen so far?
It's been great. We've got seven guys, seven foot plus wingspan. I think we should have a top 10 or 15 defense in the country. Our biggest issue is going to be defensive rebounding. We're going to get stops. Can we get the ball after we get the stop? I feel good about the group we have defensively.
Two weeks ago at the first day of practice in Raleigh, you told us that your team's better than you thought after going through summer workouts. Now that you've gone through two weeks of practice, do you still feel that way?
Yeah. We're good. We've got a good team. We're going to win a lot of games. We've got a good team.
Who's the most underrated player on this roster to this point, do you think?
Underrated? I think Paul McNeil's been really good. He averaged four points a game last year, so he probably doesn't jump off the radar of many people. Averaging four points a game, but he's a really good player. He's going to score four points by the first medium, but he's a really good player, a really talented player, and I think he'll have a good year for it.
What's the biggest shift you've noticed in him from earlier in the preseason to where you guys are now?
I think just taking everything. I don't want to say he didn't take it seriously before, but taking everything very seriously, understanding what it means to be successful, to put yourself in position to be successful. I think the consistency of that is something that maybe he's been missing that he's there now.
Coach, you've got a busy schedule ahead of you. Obviously, you're going to Hawaii. I'm sure you're excited about that. You're going to be one of the better teams in the country. Obviously, you've got VCU. I'm sure you haven't played them since. We went up there and got our ass whooped at LSU.
Just your overall thoughts on maybe being able to get a little bit of a kickback against them, move out and see what it's going to do to you.
Look, the VCU game is a great game. It's going to be a quad one game, quad two game. We've got a great program. We've got to be smart to schedule them in a home and home at that. It's going to be a really tough game. They're picked to win the Atlantic 10. They've got really good players.
Coach Martelli will do a great job. That will be a big game. Hawaii, Maui is one of the best tournaments. The inside of a hotel ballroom looks the same in Maui or anywhere else you are. I don't know how much we'll see of everything else. It's a cool tournament. This will be the second time I'm taking a team out there. We're at LSU. It's a cool event. It's going to be a great event. I think this game will be a big game.
What are the vibes you get from the fans? We talked about you being very cool. You say exactly what's on your mind. You talk about the reckoning and that kind of thing. This is a fan base that's very proud. I would imagine that the vibes you've been getting from them, they like you talking like this.
I don't know about that. I'm not for everybody. I get to the office before the sun comes up. I leave after the sun goes down. I have interactions more like at the football game. Everybody there is drunk and happy. Of course they're going to say good stuff. I think everybody is excited. We've got good reason to be excited. We're a good team. We've got a commitment from everybody. It's time to win. We've got a lot of work to do.
Damn, the ACC can't even get our best players' picture right. You think that would happen to Duke or Carolina? Just imagine if Duke or Carolina's first team all ACC player, first team all American has a picture right now. We've got a lot of work to do at NC State to kind of work our way up here. We obviously don't have a lot of respect, it’s a damn shame.
How important is it to win year one and to win year three or four?
It's important to win every year. We win year one, they're going to expect us to win year two. We win year two, they're going to expect us to win year three. Every year it's important to win. But I do think, to your point, Charlie, I think you want to get the wind behind your sails. You don't want to be sailing against the wind. You want to get the wind behind your sails and get moving. And so I think that winning in year one will be good. We're going to win. So I think we'll be able to get off to a good start.
We're excited about that. But once we win in year one, it's not going to be like, all right, pack one in year one. Let's give them a pass for year two. It's going to be, no, let's go win in year two. We never win in year two. It's going to be, let's go win in year three. That's just the way it works.
How did being a student manager shape the way you are?
I think as a student manager, we've got great student managers at NC State. I think you learn to wear a lot of hats and kind of look at things differently. That's why I always have good former players on my staff. Vernon and Adam and those guys, because I need their perspective. Joe Joe was a good player. So I need those guys. I need those guys' perspective on things. And I think that it gives you a different perspective on it.
Coach, talking to Kyle Smith a little bit yesterday about just coaching in the Ivy League, is there something about that league that sort of produces power five, power four coaches?
Kyle's a good coach because he won at Columbia. And I don't know if you know how hard it is to win at Columbia, but I think the only job in the Ivy League that's harder than Columbia is probably Dartmouth. Just because Dartmouth's Columbia and the woods in New Hampshire. At least Columbia's in Harlem, New York.
So, I mean, look, I think the Ivy League's a great league. I was actually texting with Coach Amaker a couple weeks ago at Harvard. I think they're going to have a great team. I mean, you just hope that with the way basketball is now, that the Ivies don't just, because they've got different policies. So just hope that they don't just go away. But it's a tremendous league. I mean, it's a coach's league. You've got to turn around quick, Friday, Saturday.
I don't know if you've ever made that bus ride on Friday night between Cornell and Columbia, but it's a long ride. It ain't fun. And you're not on sleeper buses. So, I mean, it's a bear of a league. A lot of really, really good coaches and a lot of really good programs. Everybody in the Ivy League's now invested in basketball. It used to just be Penn and Princeton. They had their hold on it. Then Cornell under Steve Donahue showed, hey, we can win in basketball too. And then Harvard got in. Now Yale's gone all in. Now everybody's decided they want to be good at basketball. So it's made it a really competitive league.
You have a handful of players who are having new roles this year. You're asking them to do more, and I'm sure they came here because they wanted to do more. What is that like with Tre or with Terrance or even Musa to a certain extent?
I'm asking them to do more? I don't agree with that. I don't think I'm asking them to do more. I think they've done what we've asked them to do in spurts. They haven't done it consistently and haven't been given the opportunity to do it consistently. Darrian's done what we're asking him to do in the NCAA tournament.
He's done what we asked him to do when they had problems in Houston when they had a kid get ejected for the elbow. He's done it, and he's shown he can do it. But he hasn't done it for a whole season. So we're asking them to extrapolate out and do for longer stretches of time what they've showed we can do. It's not like we're hoping that they're going to be able to do this. They've shown they've been able to do it.
Tre had a higher usage rate last year. He had a lower usage rate his sophomore year, but he had better numbers. So we're hoping he can adjust to the higher usage rate that he had his junior year with the numbers back from the sophomore year, which is so far what he's done for us through practice.
Terrance was a starter for Houston up until the Arizona State-Arizona trip, and you could argue that he won the Arizona game in the last couple minutes, and they started somebody else at Arizona State, and that changed some of the dynamic of their team. He was a starter on a Final Four team for half the season and a good player. So I don't think that we're asking them to do new roles. We're asking them to do roles that they've had for an extended longer period of time than they've been asked to do it.
So we love your stats. Say for a three-point percentage in practice, how does that translate to games?
Well, the practice, so typically in normal shooting, you could take off 11% to 12% just shooting with no defense, but I'm only giving the stats for guarded in game three. So those shouldn't be off much at all. Those should be straight up.
Do you want to explain the wristband?
Oh, the wristband? Yeah. So the first one is Wade Sims, a player at LSU who was murdered. He was murdered in 2018, the day before practice started. Here we won the SEC. He's a great kid. Worst day of my coaching. Everybody always says, man, coaching must have sucked to get fired up. It sucks to watch your kid you care about, carried into the morgue in the hospital at 3:45 in the morning. That's no fun. So just remember him.
His father has since passed. He wore number 44 as well. His father passed away with a heart attack a couple years ago. His mom stays. She's still going strong. She'll support the Pack. She'll come to a few games. Great, great lady. Rock solid.
And then the other one is a brief bracelet. We do meditation and breathing exercises. It reminds me to calm down. The last one is Be Better, Be Different from a consultant, Phil Beckner, that we use. He was with us actually a couple weeks ago. He's an NBA trainer. Basically says the best at what they do are either better than everybody, just straight out talent, or they do things differently. They have different ways to do things. So just a reminder that if we want to be the best, obviously we have good talent, but we've got to look at things differently and do things differently.
You kind of looked down at him. It seems like you intentionally went with him. Yeah, I've worn him for years, and I've just kind of added to him. But I think that, I mean, look, Wade was a kid who really turned the corner and changed his life. I was really, really proud of him. It's just, sometimes when you look up at the clock it can be 1:44 seconds, and I just have a peace about you. It's just a subtle reminder of how quickly things can change. Love your players. Pour into your players.
The day before practice or the concert, I was protecting his friend. I was shooting his friend, and I was shooting him right through his head. It just reminds me of him. I love you guys. I love you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I never know when the last time I'm going to see you. It's a good reminder.
That's kind of been the early reports from the players. It's not what you've done off the court. Off the court, that's kind of what you've done off the court, what you know about some of the players that you've had this year. Is that kind of your message or your motto when you're communicating with the players then? Or do you talk to them more? Do you have a relationship with them off the court, or is it more just trying to get coached off the court?
No, I mean, you want to have relationships with them. I mean, you're with them all the time. You want them to move forward. I feel like if we move them forward off the court, they'll move forward on the court. So, we spend a lot of time with our guys. Staff's young. A couple of our guys are having some of the players over for dinner tonight while we're gone. I'm taking these two to dinner before we fly back. So, we want to spend as much time.
I want to give them a great experience. I don't ever want them to leave NC State or play for us and just say, man, he got me better at basketball. I want them to know how to manage money. I want them to know how to, I tell them, like, a lot of you guys are good enough to make the NBA. We want to make you great enough to stay.
There's a difference between being good enough to make it and great enough to stay. You want to be great enough to stay. That encompasses a lot of stuff that doesn't just deal with basketball. And, yeah, so we invested in it. I enjoy that part of it. That's the fun part of it. And, it's tough love, but at the end of the day, I know we care for them. I know they need us. They can always call us. I know they see our former players coming back all the time.
We've had players from almost every school I've been at, we've had players come back through our facility. So, I know we're fiercely loyal. We'll do what we say we're going to do. We try to stick to that. The last thing I want to be known for is fraud. You may not like what we do. You may not like what we do. But we're not fraudulent. We're going to do what we say we're going to do. We are who we say we are.
You said it was intentional, but you have found in players who have played for some great coaches, Jim Bay, Kevin Sampson, Tom Izzo, do you ever talk to them about, oh, what did this coach do or what did that coach do? Because, obviously, you've got winning backgrounds with your players.
Yeah, I mean, they're great coaches. And so, Q played for Bayheim the first year. He's very much known for that. Q's experience was a little different there, so I'm not sure how much is going to translate. But certainly, like, I've known the Sampsons for a long time. Kellen, Kelvin's son, the coach of weighting, is a good friend of mine.
So, we talk frequently anyway, whether it's about, whatever it may be about. We're talking training ideas and talking hoops. But certainly you ask their opinion on things. I've asked Tre some things. Hey, what do they do here? What do you think about this? How is this different? What do we do that's different? That sort of thing. So you get their feel on certain things, especially areas where those programs are really, really good. If you think there's a shortcoming in your program and they can help you, those guys are great coaches.
On NC State being Ven-Allen Lubin’s 4th school…
I think Ven gets a bad rep, everybody thinks, oh, it's his fourth school. Well, his coach, Mike Bray, left Notre Dame. His coach at Vanderbilt, he'd still be at Vanderbilt today. Jerry Stackhouse. In his last school, he wasn’t used properly. So he left. So, I mean, it wasn't like, like two of them were coaching teams. I think if you talked to him today, he'd still be at Notre Dame or Vanderbilt today probably. He's one of the finest human beings I've ever coached.
He needs none of my help. He can help our players. He needs zero help. He's the most mature, ready person I've ever met. He's engaged. He's so far ahead. It's like he's 35 years old. He moves like he’s 20. But, no, he's somebody that's been rock solid for us. Quite frankly, he's one of the most valuable guys. Kind of like Noah's Ark. We've got two of a lot of everything. We ain't got but one of him. We've got two point guards. We've got two shooting guards. We've got two wings. We've got two four men. Like, we can move guys around. We ain't got but one of him. So we need him to be healthy. We need him to be right. He's, we can make up for a lot of stuff in other spots. We're one of him. So we need him.
We've been waiting for this season for a long time. Just seeing all of the ACC branding and being here kind of make everything feel real.
Yeah, I mean, yeah. It's great. I care about NC State. The ACC is great. I think the ACC showed us today what they think of us. So they're not real fond of us or don't pay much attention to detail at NC State. So I think we've got a clear picture today of where we stand in this thing, especially where we stand in our area.
So I'm worried about NC State. We're going to worry about NC State. We're going to make NC State the best we can be. And hopefully if we do a great job this year, maybe they'll know who we are next year.
Do you remember when basketball became a thing in your life and you made the decision that this is the course you wanted your life to take on?
I think, look, my mom was a principal. My mom was a coach. My degree is secondary education, history and geography. I was going to be a high school history teacher. And then the guy I worked for as a manager was like, hey, if you're going to student teach, if you're going to be a teacher, let me at least get you a graduate degree, make a few more bucks, graduate degree. And he kept me on as a GA, and I kind of never left. It goes back to your original question though.
His name was Charles. But at my core, I'm a teacher. At my core, I hadn't lost being a high school teacher, and the reason I went to be a high school history teacher was to impact kids' lives. I thought you could impact kids' lives in high school. Well, you can do the same thing in college. I just didn't know it at the time. So I've kind of taken that same approach when you go to college.
So how often do you refer to history when you're talking to your players?
They get so sick of my analogies and history lessons and questions and then chiding them because they don't know history and they don't know something I think they should know. So they get very irritated.
