NC State head coach Wes Moore met with the media after NC State's 71-58 win over Coastal Carolina.
Opening statement...
Yeah, the Tale of Two Cities. Has anybody read that book? I had to go back in high school. First half, thought we played so much better. Defensively, we were solid, did a great job there. Offensively, we pushed it and if we didn't have a good look, immediately we swung the ball, shared the ball. Good first half, we're up 21 points.
Second half, went back to our old ways, ball sticking, one-on-one, having breakdowns defensively of things we've gone over and that they should understand and buy into and we end up getting beat by eight in the second half. So, got to put 40 minutes together, got to clean a lot of stuff up or we're gonna, as the competition keeps rising, we're gonna be in trouble if we don't figure it out and everybody buy in.
Well, what was it like seeing Maddie go out there and give you a really good effort?
Yeah, extremely proud of her, first half especially. Someone that's, paid her dues, been in the program for a couple of years, been loyal to the programs, stuck it out, stayed with it. It's awesome to see her get rewarded like that so and we needed that obviously. We chilled out, it was good to see her step in, hit some big shots for us and, she's a pretty smart player, usually makes good decisions so it's a lift for us, definitely.
What do you think of your front court group as a whole right now? Where are they at and where would you like them to get to?
Now, again, I'm not going to limit this to them. My whole team's got to get better and, with Tilda out, that, is a factor obviously. She's been playing probably as well as anybody. Again, they just, we need to, first of all, we need to get on the ball some. I don't know if we got on the ball enough.I'll see when we look at the film.
Then they need to make reads. If they're a double team, they need to slow down and make the pass out because, when I look at the turnovers, I think, we had two interior players with five turnovers and maybe four turnovers, three turnovers. But again, our whole team had too many turnovers, 21 turnovers, 20 assists.
Again, it's a step in the right direction. So hopefully we can continue that trend. But yeah, I mean, I think the whole team, maybe the coaches too, coach, we just need to do a better job and clean this stuff up in a hurry.
Do you know about how long they'll be without Devyn?
No, I mean, we're hopeful. She's got her eye poked and scratched or whatever a little bit. So hopefully in the next day or two, it'll be better. We'll have a day off tomorrow and then still have a couple of days to get ready. And so hopefully she'll be ready to go. But of course, it's up to her and the medical staff. So we'll see. When you, on Sunday, you were talking about energy and want to see more energy from your team.
Did Maddie in the first quarter kind of, fill a box that you hadn't seen yet?
I thought the whole team in the first half was pretty good. What did we hold them to? 13 points. So I think that was great defensively. And then offensively, like I said, I thought we pushed tempo and we swung the ball, we penetrated and kicked and, and part of it's, unfortunately, when we sometimes we get open looks where we got to knock them down. I mean, we're struggling a little bit with that.
So I'm trying to, again, hate to put that on them. At the end of the day, we got to we got to find people who are going to knock down those shots. We got to be able to score at a better pace. So but yeah, I thought the interview I talked to him about today is before practice and after practice and film, focus and energy, focus and energy. We got to cut out the mistakes. We had there in the second half, we've gone over a set where when they come around the corner swinging it that they try to go back door and we gave up a backdoor layup there in the fourth quarter.
Inbounds play, talked about that particular play player, we got to chase it and be on her tail. And instead, we try to go through the gap and gave up a three. So just stuff like that. And it adds up, when when you have mental breakdowns or just are not prepared the way you need to be. And our coaches put in a lot of time, usually as an assistant coach is assigned to each game and they try to watch four or five games, I try to watch a game or two plus all their clips, I go through them.
We're trying to help them and they got to buy in and got to be willing to really look at film, look at a scout. And I got to hold them accountable. Even if it means sitting your best player some, we got to all we're going to just be here where we're at the rest of the year. We got to get better. I'm more than you want to hear.
I was gonna ask you about Rhode Island. You got that coming up.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I haven't looked at them yet. Coaches as soon as we get upstairs, they'll hand me the scout, the film and all that. But I do remember from playing them a couple of years ago, they're long, they're athletic, and it was a very close game. So like I said, the games are getting tougher. And we're gonna have to grow up, clean it up, fix it in a hurry, because we're fixing to get into, again, the competition's rising.
You feel like some of these schools that don't have the number in front of their name is still really good and can pose those type of problems?
Oh yeah, you just look at the upsets going on all around, you know. And yeah, I mean, a lot of power forward teams getting beat by mid-majors. So you got to show up every night.And like I said, you got to put the preparation in, which like I said, that's worrying me about this team. Great teams I've had, they bought in. They wanted to watch film. They wanted to take away the other team's go-to stuff. They got excited about shutting down a certain set, certain offense, whatever. So we got to hope we can reach that point with this team.
