NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media to discuss the 76-61 loss to No. 21 Virginia.
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Coach, what did you attribute the slow start to? And were you surprised that your group didn't have more juice?
I was surprised. I thought we practiced well. We had a good routine this morning. But we just let our frustrations on offense carry over to the defense. They didn't blister the nets to start, really. They were two of seven from three to start, or two of seven from the field to start.
But we just let our frustrations offensively hurt us defensively. Give Virginia credit. They bounced back after a tough game on Wednesday, which you have to do in conference play. And we didn't have the consistency that we needed to start the game. And we really didn't have it against Wake Forest, either. Wake Forest wasn't able to take advantage of those situations like Virginia was today.
And so that was hard when you're playing behind. Give them credit, they had a lot of poise when we made our run and put it to eight. I think they scored five straight baskets after that. They had a lot of poise and were able to answer our runs. We just are still learning to have proper poise and everything in those situations.
Coach, this is another career outing from the player on the other team. Do you think this is a close out thing, or is it a switching one through five thing? What do you attribute to that?
Well, the first half, we weren't switching one through five. We were keeping our bigs on their bigs to try to rebound it. So they were putting us in rotation. And that's how Lewis was able to get loose in rotation. He was the guy in the corner where they were throwing the hammer passes. The second half, we did switch, knowing that we were going to give up some rebounds. I thought a critical play was the free throw offensive rebound we gave up.
But we were still kind of hanging in there, hanging in there, hanging in there. And we had a close where we could make a run. We'd had the ball down 11. And instead, it was a 13-point game, I believe, at that point.
But the second half, we did switch, which put us in some tougher situations where we had our big guys guarding Hall, driving it, passing it, kicking it out to their guys. So yeah, just another guy who rose up and made some shots. And we've got to get a handle on that, for sure.
About consistency, I know you said you're going to demand it. What does that look like behind the scenes?
I mean, we demand consistency daily. We just haven't put it together in our high-level games, which, at the end of the day, we're judged on our high-level games. We haven't done that like we need to. That's just a fact. And so we've got to keep working at it. And eventually, the dam will break at some point. Keep working, keep working. But we’re not there yet.
Coach, were you satisfied with the quality of three-point looks that you guys got today? It seemed like oftentimes you guys weren't getting paint touches to get those three-point opportunities.
Yeah, biggest issue was we were trying to score off the first side against a team like Virginia. They've got the big in drop down at the restricted arc. You have to drive the first one, kick it out, and then drive the second one. And sometimes the lane opens up, and you can lay it in, or you can kick it out for more open looks. I have to go back and look at the threes. I would say, to my naked eye during the game, the looks were not great. That's just my naked eye. I don't like to make too many judgments until I see it all.
But I think that we were trying to do too much too early and too much. They did to us what we like to do to other teams. They pressed us. We were getting into offense late in the clock. We were a little discombobulated. And to their credit, they attacked our press very well. We had to adjust the press at halftime. We did a better job in the second half with their screening and some of that. But they did a really good job against our press, and their press really slowed us down substantially.
Did you have an update on Tre Holloman?
Yeah, the x-ray at halftime was negative, so that was a positive. But it's something with his ankle, foot. It seems like it'll be okay. But it seems like it, I'm not going to say it'll be okay. I'm not saying he'll play Tuesday. I don't know. But I don't think it's anything that's going to be too long-term. From what I know now, I don't think so. Don't take that as about the athletic trainer.
Is there anything to team building when you have six of the next eight games on the road?
Well, we'll see. I didn't know we had six of eight. I knew we had four out of five. I mean, look, we've got to do better work on the road. We've got to do, we've got to, just got to play better. That's all there is to it. We're not playing up to our capabilities, and that's my fault as the coach. We've got better players than how we’re playing.
And we haven’t been able to put it together, and on the road sometimes is a tricky place. Sometimes you can, to your point, you can really come together and be a great road team. Virginia's been very good on the road. They won here. They won in Texas. I think they've been good. We've only been to Auburn, so we'll get a sense of over the next couple of weeks of how we are away from home.
We're going to try this in the most productive way possible. You were obviously answering my question the other day, but part of you was talking to Darrion. So were you surprised today that that type of emotion didn't elicit more of an all around type of contribution from Darrion today?
Yeah, I mean, look, your question was a fair question. It was a very fair question last time. I didn't mean, that was not directed at you.
I understand that.
So I think that a lot of guys struggled on our team today. I don't want to pin it on any one person. And if you pin it on one person, that's on me. I didn't have us prepared. I didn't have us playing how we're capable of playing. But there's so many little nuances in the game. We had a play drawn up for the first play that was supposed to give him a pretty, it was going to be an open look. We kind of, Virginia Tech had run something similar, gotten Hansberry, open look. And we were never able to execute it, because we were just going a million miles an hour against the press, and we never got to it.
And so the point is, if I could get us to execute that better, and he makes his first three on the left wing, and he's wide open, I mean, who knows how the day goes, right? Maybe it's a totally different day, a totally different game.
So I can't, I can only focus on us executing what we're supposed to do better, and having better poise, and not getting so sped up. Not all of us, not getting so sped up, not all of us. So we give ourselves the opportunity to play within the game plan, and the framework of what we're trying to do. We just don't do that right now.
We've got to get him more than eight looks a game. He's got to have the ball more than that. Getting eight shots, he's got to, he's got to, he's got to get, he's got to get more than that a game. That's, that's on us as coaches, to put him in better positions. And we've got to put a lot of our guys, in better positions.
Paul's three-point looks, he made a couple today, but none of them were very clean. So, we've got to do a better job of putting the guys in a better spot.
