NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media to discuss the Wolfpack's matchup with No. 19 Kansas tomorrow, the remaining schedule, and much more!
When you look at Darrion and the way he's played in the last three games, he's taken I think four less shots than he did in the first game. Do you like the way he's kind of playing right now?
We want him to be more aggressive. We always want Darrion to be aggressive. So, I thought, I mean, last game, he didn't play all that much.
We were trying to rest his shoulder a little bit, and make sure that we had him as healthy for this game as we could. So, the game before that, Ashville and Auburn, I think that our offense wasn't running how it needed to run. I think we ran it a lot better the other night. Hopefully, we'll run it a little more, but we always want Darrion to be very aggressive.
Where do you feel like the shoulder is at this point after getting a little bit of time to rest?
It's better. It's better.
Does tomorrow feel like an opportunity to reboot the season a little bit?
I don't know about that. I mean, it's an opportunity to play a really good team at home. I'm not, if we win tomorrow, great. If we lose tomorrow, there's still 20 games left. There's a lot of games left. It's a long season. So, I don't look at tomorrow as some sort of reboot or must win, but it’s, certainly an important game.
Will, Darryn Peterson has been out, was out seven games, came back. So, there's been two different Kansas’ we've seen this year. What's it up to you when he has been in the lineup in those limited games?
Well, the number one thing is just that he gets so much cleaner looks for the other guys. The other guys just get a lot cleaner shots when Peterson's playing. He's going to be a top three draft pick.
He's a tremendous player. Tremendous talent. A tremendous person. Really good worker. Good family. And so, he's a difference maker when he's out there.
Because he just creates so much gravity that you have to put multiple people on him and run multiple people to him, and that leaves other guys open. Tre White's having a career year from 3, part of that, he’s career low 30s, and is shooting mid-40s right now. If you look at him in the Missouri game, he had a crazy one at the end of the half.
A lot of the other ones were just simple penetrating pitches, so he’s getting cleaner looks than he did at Illinois and Louisville, and Southern Cal. And so, I think that everybody is better when he’s on the court because when you are a point guard you can make everyone else better, and that’s a really good trait.
How do you anticipate the matchup with him? Do you run multiple guys at him or try to or leave it to one? Or how do you want to do that?
We'll see. We do a lot of switching. So, we're going to have a lot of different guys, a lot of different guys guarding him. A lot of different guys that’ll be on him at one point or another, so we’re going to have to do it by committee.
Are you worried about Kansas being as good of a shot-blocking team that Seton Hall was back in Maui? Is there a better way to make sure that doesn't happen again?
Well, yeah. It looked like we were playing volleyball against Seton Hall, throwing those things all over the gym. Kansas is a notch up from that obviously. Flory is an elite, elite shot-blocker, Council is an incredible athlete, number 15, Bryson Tiller, he’s a good shot-blocker as well, so we’ve got to be smart when we’re driving in there.
We weren’t very smart, when we’re driving in we got to be smart when we’re playing ISO basketball one on one, guys coming from the weak side. They do a great job. They're the eighth best defensive team in the country. No matter what their scheme is, they switch a lot, like we do.
They do a bunch of different things. But whatever they do, they keep Flory by that rim, so they keep their rim-protector, their goalie back there by that basket. So, they’re going to be a major challenge for us tomorrow defensively.
That's why they're elite defensively. They've got great shot-blockers and they don't let you shoot threes. They've also made, it’s one of Self’s staples. He's had a top 30 3-point defense for 12 or 14 straight years, so if you don't give up anything at the rim.
You don't give up a lot of threes. The math works in your favor most nights. They’re always going to be a pretty stout defense.
Obviously coming off of a 40-point win is different from the previous results in the last two weeks. How much have you seen still that buy-in from the guys, not getting too big-headed after that game?
We just stick to the routine. We stick to what we do. We did the same thing yesterday that we did after Asheville. We do the same thing today. We sticked with the routine and do what we do.
I think our guys certainly understand that there is a different buzz about the game tomorrow. We focused on what matters and focused in on the details. You've got to narrow, the bigger the game the bigger the focus.
A lot of times in a bigger game, you try to do a bunch of different stuff, but you've got to hit singles. We don't need grand slams. We just need to hit singles and do the things that are necessary to put ourselves in a position to win.
On what Coach Wade expects to see from Kansas…
Darrion and Terrance both have experience against Kansas. They both said, thank God we're not playing them at Kansas. Those guys have been helpful in the scouting. Those guys have both up.
Both guys have very, very high basketball IQ. They trapped Darrion last year. So we have to be aware of that. But, it helps a little bit just to have a sense of what they do and what they’re gonna try to do against some of those guys.
On the importance of Darrion Williams’ passing if he gets double-teamed…
We have the ultimate trust in Darrion. We want to put the ball in his hands because when you do that, he's going to make the right play most of the time. The season's shown that.
His career has shown that, whether it be, scoring, assisting, a gretzky, a hockey assist, whatever it may be, he's going to make the right play. That's important when he gets the ball.
He has the ball because when the ball's in his hands, something good typically happens for us. So we need to make sure he’s got it in his hands as much as possible.
We have a historical program in Kansas coming into this arena here. Talk about the opportunity and the buzz that they have.
I think it's great. I'm appreciative of Coach Keatts and playing the first part of the home-and-home. That was a challenging deal going to Allen Fieldhouse.
It’s great that we’ve been able to start the home and home, and I appreciate the back-end of it. It's a great series. It's awesome when you can get your place or play in a home-and-home. We're excited about it. And excited about the opportunity that we have tomorrow, and I know fans and people traveling here are as well.
How difficult is it to schedule marquee games like this? The ACC going from 2018, for example, gives a little bit more room for you to work with now, but is it a difficult thing to get a home-and-home with a marquee team, but they want to play neutral courts now? What's your experience as you start your own scheduling process?
A lot of the neutral court games pay the bills. That's why people pl,ay the neutral court games. You get NIL money for those things. You can make money on those deals. I think a lot of the neutral courts are important, because you don’t come up short on your bill. Home-and-homes, you can get home-and-homes.
You can still find home-and-homes. I got called yesterday on a big-time neutral court game for next year. They were talking about the opponent, and I was like "how much are you going to pay us?”, I'll play whoever if the number's right. We'll play whoever. I don't care about that. Tell me how much you're going to pay.
What's our cut of the deal on this thing? We've got another team. We've got an SEC team we're in negotiation with right now for a home-and-home. We'll see how that goes. I think that you can get plenty of those games.
I do think that scheduling's shifting. With the rev-share and with NIL and all that, I think teams are much more apt to play more high major games.
You look at Kansas, they're at us. They were at North Carolina. They played Duke on a neutral court. They played three high majors, Notre Dame, Syracuse, and Tennessee. On a neutral court.
They played Missouri, somewhat neutral court, but had the Jayhawks in the middle of it in Kansas City. They've played, I think I just read it off, about seven high major games out of their 13 non-conference games. I think they’ve got a couple of “buy” games after us.
That's a lot, and look at ours. By the end of ours, we played 3 in Maui, we played Auburn. These guys, we've got Ole Miss to go. We've got VCU at home. We've both played six or seven.
Our strength is schedules are quite a bit better than everybody else in the league. I think we're like 20 spots ahead of the next closest team in terms of the toughest schedule. It’s only going to get tougher after tomorrow, we’ve got Ole Miss.
But, I think teams are more open to all of that because you need to drive revenue for home games, season ticket sales, and non-conference games. People want to be a part of big non-conference games.
You've got to drive revenue on the neutral court games. I think all of that is important. We need to sell more tickets in Greensboro in a couple of weeks, for Ole Miss. Everybody's watching. Buy some tickets for Greensboro.
You guys have one more power conference game after this with Ole Miss. How important is it to just capitalize off this opportunity against Kansas and that one as well?
I think all the opportunities are important. I think people get caught up in, like, we've got to beat these power conference teams in this park. It's all about the metrics.
You could not win a power conference game in the non-conference and still have pretty good metrics. Our numbers are pretty good right now for where we are. We haven’t beaten anybody, that just blows your socks off.
I think that people get overly wound up over some of those things. But certainly, we want to take out the power conference. Kansas is a great team, a great program. 17th in the country. It's a great opportunity for us. But all these games are important.
Even the games people don't think are important, the margin and how you win and how you do it, all that stuff's very, very important now – Thankfully for us, the league's been better. We're going to have tons of opportunities in the league. Our two partners who we play twice, Virginia's been great.
They’ll be quad one both times. Wake's going to be quad one, quad two. Quad two probably here, maybe quad one there.
We've got a lot more – we have a lot more opportunities within the league. As you saw last year, we've already got one quad one win. We've got to pick up two or three more and you got to coast it on in a little bit. You can walk the dog a little bit from that point on and you don't lose anybody too bad. I think that – look, are we where we want to be? No.
But are we in just awful shape? I don't look at this as like, oh, we have to win this or we have to do that. But certainly an important game. Anytime you get a quad one opponent at home, it's an opportunity that you want to try to take advantage of.
Where are you looking for this team to take a step forward?
I'd like to see our defense continue to get better. I thought we played with more edge and more purpose against Liberty, but guarding Liberty is a lot more different than guarding Kansas. I'd like to see some of those – look, the results aren't going to be the same. But I'd like to see the results from a numeric standpoint.
But I'd like to see the same sort of effort, the same sort of flying around that we saw, but with a little bit more discipline than what we’re doing. We're consistently pretty good in that game. If we're going to win tomorrow, we're going to need to be consistently great.
When you're scouting a team, sir, and say you project this kid to do 25% and he has an outlier game, 7 of 9, he's 8 of 9, how do you work that? Do you stay with the numbers or do you make the adjustments? How do you find that balance?
That's a good question going into tomorrow. Look, you start with the numbers and then if things get a little wonky in the game, you have to adjust. But, usually everything reverts back to the mean.
The question is when do you adjust in the game to allow that to revert back to the mean. Are you going to let him keep doing what you're doing? The guy's shooting 25% but he makes his first two. Do you let him go fire? The odds would say you let him fire six more, he's not going to make any of them. Or do you panic and get out of it at that point. But three or four, and he’s supposed to be three of twelve, it's probably time to try something else. But you can't just, you're playing the percentages but they can't make it.
They've shown some ability. They've shown some ability to make it. But when you adjust, it's really more feel and have an understanding of the team and also how much of that can you absorb. How much buffer do you have that you can absorb, that sort of a performance. We'll see.
