Following NC State's 70-57 win over Wake Forest, Wolfpack head coach Will Wade gave an impassioned defense of forward Darrion Williams in his postgame press conference.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Wade’s statement. Video from the full press conference is now available.
What’s your concern level where Darrion is concerned?
Absolutley zero. I'm tired of hearing about freaking Darrion. He's fucking playing well, alright? It's a terrible question. It's a terrible question. Let me be frank with you, he affects winning. Everybody's out here bitching about him and all this stuff. He affects winning. He was plus-13 against Ole Miss and didn't hit a shot, and everybody's acting like the world's caving in. The guy's a damn good player. He didn't shoot it well today. What did he have? Who had zero turnovers for us today? Darrion Williams! Six rebounds, four assists and zero turnovers. Everybody needs to shut the hell up about him. He's a damn good player, and the shot's going to fall. I'm tired of answering questions about him. He's really good. We're thankful to have him.
The emotion that you had, where does that come from?
I'm tired of people picking on the kid, man. I got it: he makes a lot of money for us, but there's about 10 other schools that would pay as much or more than we paid for the kid. The kid's not perfect. I understand that. The kid's not perfect, but he's a damn good player and we are lucky to have him at NC State. He picked us over a lot of schools with a lot better situations than we had at the time he picked us. Let's be frickin’ appreciative. Let's support the kid. Let's help the kid. He affects us winning games. Even when he doesn't make shots, he helps us win. Teams are game-planning for him. Yeah, it's an adjustment. Teams didn't game plan for him as much [in the past], but he does a lot of winning stuff, and he's taking a lot of unfair heat right now. He does a lot of winning stuff.
At the end of the day, it's our job to win for NC State. He helps NC State win. Period. End of discussion, and all this other stuff is a bunch of noise that people don't know what they're talking about. I'm tired of this. I had to answer questions after Ole Miss. I got it. He didn't make a shot against Ole Miss. That's the only game of his entire career he hadn't made a shot. Let me be clear about this: his shoulder injury was really bad. Most kids making the money he is would have shut it down for five games. He laid it on the line for NC State for five games with a shitty shoulder. It gave us a chance to win some of these games, and people are just piling on his ass. It's not right. He's a damn good player. He's going to help us win a lot of games in the ACC, so I'm tired of it.
