NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media after the Wolfpack's 94-70 home win over UAB. Check out what all he had to say!
NOTE: Click above to listen to Wade’s press conference.
On slow start in the first half from three...
“We didn’t take very good threes. The zones messed us up playing the 3-2, switching it up to man. We didn't get our inside-out threes. We were just passing around the perimeter, we were taking threes off bad passes, and we were falling out of bounds on one of the threes. Our shot quality was not what it needed to be, so that was pretty disappointing, but we were able to get that corrected as we went through the game.”
On preparing for unpredictable defense...
“We changed our defenses in practice. It's hard to get in rhythm; that's why they do it, and we do a lot of the same things. He's a great coach. He's done that for a long time, the way he changes his defense, and you know, we stick with the 3-2 zone for a while. They played the 3-2 and 2-3 when Quadir Copeland came in because his shooting numbers haven't been great. It's 3-of- 4 from three in these first two games, which is great. He's worked on it hard, and I'm proud of him for that. But you know, they mix up the zones, and so it's hard to get in rhythm against it, and it bothered us and we turned the ball over 14 times, it's way too many. Our two point guards had seven of the 14 turnovers between Trey [Holloman] and Q. You know, that's unacceptable, they understand that. I addressed that in the locker room, and we've got to be cleaner with the ball, but it reality, we had two turnovers on outlet passes, we had a turnover on a dribble to control. We had a lot of self-inflicted wounds, which we've got to get better at, that's not going to work, and so we've got to improve there and can be better.
On second half success from three...
“We keep firing. Look, we got good shooters, we got really good players. We needed to improve our shot quality and I thought we did that. It was big in the first half, Paul [McNeil] kind of got the lid off of it for us. But it's just little things like, we were supposed to have a clean look on the second play of the game for Paul on a gut screen and we didn't screen, and so what should have been a clean look for, you know, the game can go a lot different. That's in the margins right there. The game can go a lot different if we set the screen at the proper angle and we hit the guy, Paul gets a clean look, and maybe that goes in and we can make 20 threes and they don't play the zone, and they got to play a certain defense the whole time. But we contributed to them being able to, we had to play it at their pace for a while, which was difficult.”
On what is needed for defensive improvement...
“We got to guard the damn ball. Like, our defenders have to guard the ball one on one. We gave up 44 points in the paint tonight. All right, now luckily they shot 4-of-25 from three, but we just got blown by, started subbing guys out as they got blown by. Like we got to be able to sit down and guard the ball and our gap help gets too extended and we got to sit in the gaps and rake at the ball and not let them just straight line drive us to the paint. It was 44, 44 in the paint. We did a good job conversely, getting in the paint, when they get in the paint, that's how they get 17 offensive rebounds. So our guards have to be able to guard the ball, and then our guards have to be able to rebound down. I mean, giving up 17 offensive rebounds. We didn't crack down with the guards, that's not going to work. But we've got to be able to guard the ball, and we've been working on that in practice, but we just got whipped. And other teams are going to see that and do that, and we can't give up that level of dribble penetration, if we want to be a great team, and that's something that we're going to certainly have to improve on. And look, we gave up some stuff at the end of the press as well. I thought Musa [Sagnia] was phenomenal tonight. I mean, he really saved us, Ven [Allen Lubin] wasn't as aggressive after he got those fouls, and that hurt us at the end of the press. I thought Musa was phenomenal. But, you know, we've got to go guard the ball. At some point, you have to be able to sit down and guard the guy in front of you and keep his ass out of the paint, and if you can't do that, we got to go find somebody who can. And so we've got to be able to do that, and that is at the top of the priority list. The turnovers, the rebounding, being able to guard the ball one-on-one, shot selection is a distant fourth, but those are at the top of the list. I thought our free throw shooting was good if we wouldn't be positive. I thought we've been a good free throw shooting team, but 18-of-22, 82%, really good.”
On Musa Sagnia’s growth the past two months...
“It's been awesome. You could tell he never has a bad day. He's always excited and I was really proud of him. It's a massive amount of change. He was in Spain two months ago, two and a half months ago, and this is a different game. He picked up all those fouls. FIBA is a lot more physical than our game. It's a big time adjustment for him, and I think every game he's going to continue to get better. He was great tonight, did a great job, protecting the rim for us, did a great job rebounding it, kept a lot of balls alive, and so really, really proud of him. He's just going to keep improving and keep getting better. I’m really, really excited about his growth and where he's going to be.”
On UAB going 4-of-25 from the three point line...
“A little bit of both being a poor shooting night and good defense. Number 15 missed some clean looks, and he's a really good three-point shooter. Number 4 is a good three-point shooter where he shoots a ton off the bounce, so, I think he was a little rattled after the airball, or airballs. Some of it was they just missed some open shots. Number 12 did a good job getting them going at the beginning and getting them in rhythm. But it was a combination of they just missed open shots. I thought our three-point defense was solid. We had the right guys taking them a couple times, but sometimes they're gonna make them.”
On the team’s cohesion and selflessness...
“I think the number one thing I attribute it to is our best player is very unselfish. When Darrion Williams is your best player and he's unselfish - I don't know if y'all saw tonight, you know, Jerry [Deng] wasn't playing real well. Darrion gets off the bench and goes and talks to Jerry and kind of gets Jerry going like, when your best player is that guy, it feeds to everybody else. And so, I give all the credit to Darrion and those guys, and Q, you know, Q throws it to both teams, I'd rather throw it to the team in the white jersey, but he throws it to both teams. But Q, at his core, would much rather get an assist than score. So when you got a point guard out there trying to and looking to drive it to pass it to other guys, and Darrion’s looking, driving past it. It makes other guys more shot ready, everybody wants to play with them, then it’s contagious. You look at the fast break between Darrion and Paul[McNeil] , where they passed it back and forth, twice, and then Paul laid it in, that's the sort of stuff you're looking for, and that's the sort of stuff that's that's important. I’d be remiss too, Colt [Langdon] scored his first college points tonight, so that was awesome. He works extremely hard. I was happy to see to see Colt score after redshirt last year, at Butler. Colt's a hard worker, man. He's gonna be a really, really good player. People forget he's a redshirt freshman, so he's a redshirt freshman, he's young, and I was really, really happy that he could score his first points tonight.”
On philosophy regarding turnovers...
“No, I'm not okay with any turnover. I'm not saying we don't want zero turnovers, but I'd like to keep it certainly 12 and under 10. I mean, here's what our point guards have to understand, when you have the ball, you have our program in your hands. You have NC State in your hands. All the fans watching on TV, everybody who cares about our basketball program, you have them in your hands. You have to take care of the ball. Ball security is job security. If you want to be the point guard, then you have to secure the ball, and you're dribbling that ball for hundreds of thousands of people. There's a lot of people that care about our program. Look at our fans tonight. They’re incredible. The students were great having this place at nine o'clock on a Friday night. Are you kidding me? What did we have 15,000 in here, 16,000 in here? It was awesome. It was awesome. Like, you owe it to those people to take care of the ball, and we have to just do a much better job of that, and a lot of us when our offense gets stagnant, we just try to just play one on one. And I mean, shoot, it's hard to get by guys, one-on-one.”
