Check out what all NC State head coach Will Wade had to say after his first career win with the Wolfpack, a 114-66 home victory over NC Central.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the press conference.
Opening statement…
Alright, good win. It was a great night, really appreciative of our fans who came, our students. To have that sort of crowd on an opening night was phenomenal.
It was the work of a lot of people. When we got here, we started a group called Basketball 365. We've done it at other places we've been, where we try to focus on basketball and marketing basketball year-round. We sat in that first meeting, and there were about nine of us in there, nine or ten of us. Reed Vial from my staff handles a lot of it. He's the one who sets the agenda.
Brooke from marketing was in there, Craig and Annabelle from sports information. We had Brian, Bill, and John from Wolfpack Club and ticketing. We had Patrick, Katie, and Amy in there, who also work in marketing and ticketing.
We all kind of looked at each other like, How the hell are we going to do this? They did just a phenomenal job of pulling everything together. Stephanie and her crew just did a great job. Very appreciative of them, very appreciative of our fans for coming out and making it a great atmosphere for our students as well.
Happy with the way we played. I thought Darrion did a great job. One thing, we were a little jittery, but that's what you want your senior best player to do, is settle us in. His hitting those two threes allowed us to settle in. Tre got off to a little bit of a slow start. Paul got off to a little bit of a slow start.
Darrion being able to make those shots and get us going as a senior leader, I thought that was really critical to us being able to settle into the game and have enough of a cushion where those other guys could relax and settle in, and we could get going. Very pleased with how unselfish we were, 27 assists on 37 made baskets. We've got some things to clean up defensively.
Certainly, we were better at the back end of the press, but we still gave up a couple of easy ones at the back end of the press. We messed up some boards defense a few times, a roll and replace. We screwed up the X out a couple of times.
There are some things we've got to get cleaned up there. Our post defense, we weren't off to the ball enough. We should have picked off three or four passes, and we didn't. We got some fouls. There's some things defensively we need to clean up. I was very proud of how we moved the ball and how we played overall. We played with much more of an edge than we did last week. We've got to turn the page quickly. We've got a much different opportunity with UAB coming here. A team that's had a bunch of postseason success in the NCAA tournament and NIT. We've got to learn from this and get ready to go on Friday against a good UAB team.
Will, Darrion, you mentioned the scoring from him, but also the team lead with eight assists in this game. What are your thoughts on what he brings to this team as a whole, not just as a scorer, as well?
He does everything. He's a great player. He's a well-rounded player. Nineteen points, eight assists, one turnover. The one turnover was in transition. When he had the right play, our guy just tripped. He's just a really, really good player, good leader. It was important. I wanted to make sure he was calm. Me and him went to breakfast this morning, just me and him, to make sure. Like, look, you don't have to be Superman for us, but he was tonight. I said, look, we just need to hit singles and doubles. We don't have to hit home runs all the time. He was really, really steady. I thought, especially at the beginning of the game, he was able to get us going, and he makes the right play and gets other guys going after he gets going. He's just a really, really good player. He's a great person. He's just a really, really good player. Happy he's with the pack.
First college game for Matt Able, he finishes with double digits in the second half alone. What did you see from him tonight, and how good is it for him to get that confidence this early in the season?
I thought Matt was good. One of the biggest things, he was much improved defensively tonight. I was really proud of his defensive focus, his defensive effort. He had the steal and the dunk.
He was better with picking his spots to gamble. He's going to be a great player. He was awesome tonight, but I think by middle of January, he's going to be one of the best players in the country, one of the best freshmen in the country, for sure.
He's just going to keep getting better. It was great for us to be able to play him extended minutes tonight. He just needs minutes. Terrance needs some of the same thing, but his Achilles was bothering him, so we didn't want to risk putting him back in. We didn't want to risk putting him back in.
If we'd have played Musa some more, he needs minutes, too. Obviously, the foul trouble. He's adjusting. This isn't FIBA where they let you just body check everybody all the time.
He's adjusting to that. Really, really proud of Matt. He works really hard. He's a great player. He's a great teammate. I thought he did a nice job tonight.
Will, I asked the players, and they said it didn't quite feel like Christmas morning. He walked out. How are you feeling leading up to tip-off? Did the game meet or exceed all of the environmental expectations?
I think we're pretty routine-oriented, so I do the same thing every game day. I do the same thing at the same hour almost every minute of every day. You just focus on that. It's not really trying not to get ahead of yourself.
We need to have a good film session. Our guys were really locked in. We give a quiz on the scouting report. Our guys did really well on the quiz today before shoot-around. We needed a good shoot-around. Then we had to have everybody in here for the pregame meal, and we did some final preparation at the pregame meal.
Then you go to the stretching, and then you go to the activation lift. It's just one thing after another. You just stay focused on all of that. All that stuff has to be done right to give us the opportunity to play right. I thought the atmosphere was phenomenal. Our fans were great.
Our students were awesome. The students bring a ton of energy and a ton of juice. They were great.
Our pep band's good. It's huge. The pep band's great, it’s huge. We just got good energy in the building. Credit to our guys. You have to embrace that. You have to be able to use that and channel it in a proper way. I thought we channeled it for the good of the team tonight, so I was very pleased with that.
You mentioned energy. How much does your team feed off the energy you bring to the game? It doesn't matter the score. It seems like you're going to be the same guy.
Yeah, I mean, I thought the last three and a half minutes we let some stuff slip. I know we had some guys out there, but you can't foul like that and just give a bunch of points at the free throw line. But, look, we've got to play to a certain standard. We've got to play to our identity the entire time, and so we're not very forgiving on that sort of thing. They're all very aware of what I think and how I feel. But our guys, overall, for about 36 minutes, it was a good night.
Were you upset being up 50, or were you just excited to see Tony Henderson again working one of your games, getting the purpose technical there? That wasn't for tonight, right?
Well, we had Tony in the NCAA tournament. I was at McNeese last year. But he's a good official. He's a really good ACC, SEC official. We had him in the SEC, and he moved to ACC primary. So he's a good official. We'll probably see him seven times this year. But he's a very, very good official. I was a little frustrated. It was Musa's fifth foul. I thought we could have maybe let that go and played for somebody else. But he did a good job. The officiating crew was good.
Will, earlier in the season, you talked about Paul McNeil and how you wanted to utilize him more. He kind of had a slow first half, but kind of caught fire in the second half. Can you speak on him and his development?
Yeah, that was real progress for him. Like I said, he kind of got off to a slow start, but he was able to get in the swing of the game and get in the swing of things because Darrion got us going. If we can leave Paul in there and he can stay in there, he's going to have a barrage where he hits two or three in a couple minutes. That's just what he does and who he is, and we go right back to him after he hits one.
He got fouled in the corner and went over there. We believe in him. He's a great player and an elite, elite shooter. I think he'll be one of the elite shooters in the country. We have a strong belief in him. We're going to keep putting him out there, and he's going to nail them more often than not.
Seems like connectivity is a big thing with you guys, not just within the team, but with the community, with the fan base and such. The uniforms today, everybody was really excited about that, obviously. If you don't mind, sir, just speak to that. Do you feel like honoring the lineage is part of that connectivity?
Yeah, absolutely. Look, we've got the uniforms. I was part of the 365 group. I was telling you about Reed kind of spearheaded that. There's some guy that hits Reed. He told me about it.
Some guy hits Reed every morning on Twitter since we've gotten the job about wearing these uniforms. So hopefully he'll stop hitting Reed now, whoever that guy is. But, I think that, look, the noise.
There was some stuff that we wanted to be careful in picking the right stuff to honor the past, and that was a lot of the discussion in some of those meetings was making sure that we pick stuff that can tie some of our fans together because now you've got folks who grew up in that era who now have kids, and we want those kids to be able to experience some of the same things that their parents experienced instead of just hearing stories. They can see it. Now, the noise meter's a little different here than it is at Reynolds, but it's the same type thing.
Look, we're not going to wear those jerseys every home game, but I think it's important that we do wear them and our guys understand. We've had somebody from each different era the last month speak to our team every week to talk about the history of NC State basketball and what NC State basketball is about, and I think that it's important to have an understanding of that because I tell our guys all the time we drink from a good well, but don't forget there's a lot of people that dug it. There was a lot of hard work that went into making this program what it is, a lot of hard people that dug that well, and we're drinking pretty good water right now.
So let's not forget that. Let's tie into the past. Shoot, we won a lot of championships in the past. I don't know why we wouldn't want to bring those memories back. It seems kind of dumb to me that you wouldn't want to do that. So, you know, we've tried to honor the right stuff. I think that's been where we've been kind of toeing the line there.
But, yeah, it's great to connect with our fans. And, look, it's all of us together. It's not the Will Wade Wolfpack. It's not the Darrion Williams Wolfpack. It's the NC State Wolfpack. NC State Wolfpack is our students, our fans, our administration, and our team. It's all of us together. And I think that some of these things bond everybody together a little bit.
Coach, your build showed some promising signs with guys like Jerry and Matt, Musa, what do you see in this bench?
Yeah, we've got a lot of firepower on the bench. I was really proud of Jerry. He really had a good week of practice after South Carolina. He didn't play up to his standards against South Carolina. I thought he really had a good week of practice, and I was proud to see him rewarded. He got some really good two-handed traffic rebounds, above-the-rim rebounds. That was something we've really challenged him on. He obviously made some threes. He got a couple of layups on a couple of slip actions against the zone.
So I'm very, very pleased with him. Matt, like I said, is going to keep coming along. And Musa just needs time. Musa's going to be a really good player. Those two or three rebounds. He's the only guy on either team that can go get them that he went and got tonight. And so he's going to be really, really good with time, and we've just got to continue to get him up to speed on things.
Coach, you got a shot 40 threes. Made 19. You're above 50% for most of the night. Is that how you need this team to play? Is that how you want this team to play? Is 40 the right number of threes, or is that too low?
That's probably a little bit. I mean, look, it's based on what they're going to give you. We've got a good shooting team, and they played a bunch of zone tonight. They started off in zone. They played almost exclusively two-three zone in the first half.
In the second half, they played a one-three-one for most of the time, and then about the last eight minutes, they played man. So, look, we're going to take what they give us. We've got a good shooting team, and we got pretty good inside out, open looks from three. We took some bad ones at the end trying to chase the number to get the 19. We took some pretty bad ones at the end. But I'm glad for Snell to hit that one.
He's going to be in the history books now. We'll never hear the end of it from him. But no, it was good for Snell. He's one of our team captains, him and Ven. But, I thought most of them were good looks. I mean, most nights we're going to shoot somewhere between 30 and 35.
This is probably on the higher end of what we'll shoot. But, look, we've got good shooters. We're going to let that thing fly. They're open. I mean, we don't want any hesitation. Let it fly.
Coach, from the way in which you interacted with the fans to getting a tag while up 50-plus points, how do you think that feistiness and that tenacity has impacted your team so far?
Yeah, I don't know. You'd have to ask the guys. But, look, we've got to be who we are the whole time. You can't relax. Like, you've got to understand that these type of games are tough, too. Look, we talk about we're all sitting in here because we had 27 assists on 37 made baskets.
You've got to understand you're in that type of game and you have a guy who drives it in there, throws up some BS shot, and he's got two people open from three. That can screw your team up after the game. So, like, you have to play to the standard.
You have to make sure everybody keeps doing what they're supposed to do. And, the technical as much as anything was, like, look, I'm still fighting, I'm still here, I'm still paying attention to everything. Like, that's how we have to be because you can get way too loose in that, and it can create problems within your team when you're loose in those situations.
And so we wanted to make sure we kept playing the right way. We played to our standards for 40 minutes. I thought we did it for about 36. We've got some work to do there.
