NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media following the 83-73 loss to No. 20 Auburn.
Will, you talked the last time we talked to you about you're trying to find that hard edge, trying to find, pull something out of these players that you're not getting right now. Where do you feel like you are after this game and what do you feel like you need to do to find that for this team?
Well, we were better tonight. We were better than we were in Hawaii tonight when we got four of our five game standards. I mean, reality is they made some threes and we missed threes and they made some tough threes.
But give Hall and Overton credit, they're two great players and they really, really did a great job. They did a great job tonight, but I'll say this. I mean, look, we don't ever want to lose, but this was way more encouraging than Hawaii in my mind.
Now we've got to build from here, but this was, this was progress. We made progress in the last week. It didn't show up on the score board today, but if we can keep making progress, I think we'll like where we'll be.
Auburn usually values possessions better than they did tonight. You forced 20 turnovers, what was your team doing there?
I thought we were good. We changed our ball screen coverage from what we typically do. So I think that got a little bit out of whack, trying to throw two people removed. You can usually throw it station to station against us, but we've made a few changes in our defensive coverages after
Hawaii and I think it caught them a little bit by surprise. Certainly frustrated with Pettiford trapping him off the ball screens.
And so we did some different things tonight than we typically do. And, I think they throw it around when they're trying to throw two people removed. We're more active. We're off to the ball. We're a little bit better there.
You mentioned it's more encouraging than last week, you know, other than the defensive forcing turnovers, what else sticks out to you that you're leaving here?
We had 14 assists, nine turnovers. The number was 11 or less turnovers, 14 or more assists. So we hit both those numbers. We had five turkeys. We had 33 deflections. We were getting one out of four game goals there.
We got four out of five tonight. The one we didn't get was the rebounding. I mean, look, we shot 64 balls. They shot 44 balls. They out shoot teams nine at the free throw line at home. They out shot us eight.
Like we got off the bus, we were down nine nothing. And it's just that's reality when you come on the road and play a good team. So we understood that when we got off the bus and we were down, we lost the free throw line by eight, but we out shot them 20 balls.
I mean, most nights that mask is going to work for you. Did the night because, like I said, their two guards went six of nine, our two went two of 11. And so that's those four threes of 12 points.
That's the difference in the game. And so sometimes that's just, that's just the way it goes. We had the same fortuitous thing happen to us against VCU. VCU out shot us, but we did the exact same thing. These things even out. We did what we did to VCU. We were fortunate to win at home. And that happens when you go on the road. So that's the way I look at it.
Speaking of VCU, you have that in your back pocket. You have the win over Boise State on the road, but now three losses and what could be, Q1, Q2 opportunities. I mean, how tough is that to kind of take when you're trying to build a resume early on in the season?
It's tough. Our backs are against the wall and we're going to have two more opportunities and we've got to start building towards those opportunities. We've got a quick turnaround. We're not going to get back until three or four in the morning tonight. We've got a quick turnaround to play Saturday afternoon against Asheville, a good team that beat Greensboro the other night.
We've got a really good Liberty team after that and then we all know who's next Saturday with Kansas. So, I mean, look, you can't keep kicking away opportunities. Unfortunately, our league's done better.
So we're going to have way more opportunities in the league, but I mean, you got to win the games. And that was what was backbreaking about Maui. I mean, look, this was always going to be pushing a border up the hill coming here.
They had lost a non-conference game, I don't think, at home since like 2015. So this was a tough assignment. But we don't give ourselves any margin for error when you lose a seat in the hall.
And so the seat in the hall is a great team, but, that's the ones that are killers. It's a lot easier in Texas with a great team. It's a lot easier to beat Texas on a neutral court when we have more fans there than to come to Auburn in front of 9,100 people and try to win.
So when you kick away those opportunities, put yourself in a tough spot. We're in a tough spot. We got to fight our way out. We put ourselves in it. We got to dig ourselves out. And we will.
Assuming that Hall and Pettiford are at the top of the scout for them, Overton's career high before tonight was 23. Anything specifically he did tonight that was...
He made shots off the bounce. He made some tough threes. I mean, he's a great player. He's a, he's a, he's a great player. We knew that we had Darrion from Texas Tech. We knew Overton from Texas Tech. We'd seen him play quite a bit. He's a really good player.
And he's had some, he's had some big games. And so, we knew, we knew coming in that, that, he, he had the, he had the ability to go off. You give him easy looks early, we fouled him on the first three.
We fouled him or Pettiford? No, Hall. Hall, yeah. We got Hall on the first three. But, it was just, just, disappointing because some of them were pretty easy shots and some of them were pretty tough shots. But we let them get going. But they're great players. Great team, great players.
Will, this season, y'all have had some situations where you've got a hard double team inside and then you leave a shooter open, on the perimeter. Can you estimate how many of those are kind of designed plays? And how many are just kind of, you're hoping that they miss?
We don't want to hope that they miss. So we post-trapped, but we called off the post-trap tonight. We went more solo in the post tonight than we've done all year. We haven't been turning teams over 20% on the post-trap teams and then shooting like 57% from two and 42% from three against us.
So we tried to stay home on the people and let them play, let them play one-on-one. We got caught in a trap tonight because of one of our, we forgot.
And we trapped with a, we had one of our smaller guys on and we just booked. Because we shot the three ball so well, we didn't do well tonight as we normally do, but if we shoot the three ball solo, we can afford to give up some twos. The math works in our favor.
We can't give up the threes, like you're saying. We've been giving up too many threes. So that was part of our defense that we were changing tonight. We'll probably change moving, moving forward, moving forward as well. But it hasn't been good for us this year. That's correct.
I mean, teams designed against it. Auburn was pitted in the back side. They also threw a couple of them out of bounds trying to do it. It's a hard pass to make. But, teams designed stuff against it, but we didn't do it nearly as much tonight as we typically do.
Will, you mentioned the shootouts 2-11 between Paul and Matt. How do you try to work through that, especially with Matt's last three games not being, what you expect or what he's expecting?
Yeah, I mean, look, we got a lot of confidence in those guys. Paul's a great player. Matt's a great player. We got a lot of confidence. I mean, we just got to, I thought for the most part, we took a pretty good shot with pretty clean looks. We executed a pretty good offense.
We got good stuff. I mean, we missed, you know, threes are one thing. We missed, we missed layup after layup after layup. We missed, I mean, we missed a bunch of layups at the, at the rim as well. But we have ultimate belief in Paul and Matt.
I think that they're, I think that they'll continue to get better. And this is, this is a tough learning experience. This is a tough place to learn, but we got to learn some lessons and get ready to get ready to move forward this next week.
