NC State head coach Wes Moore met with Inside Pack Sports after the Wolfpack's 75-65 loss to Clemson on the road.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview!
Initial thoughts?
Yeah, I just thought Clemson was hungry. I thought they were tough, played hard. Like I said, showed some toughness and the fourth quarter we gave up 23 points.
You just can't do that. And then we struggled, obviously, to score ourselves. So that made for a bad combination, get outscored 23 to eight.
But the 23 really bothers me because again, that's something you can control a little bit. But we're going to get everybody's A game.
We've had some success the past few years. And of course, we came in here 4-0 in the conference. So you're going to get people's A game, and they did a great job. So chip your hat to them, and we got to figure our stuff out.
Khamil went out there in the fourth quarter, and that might have affected us a little bit. And then obviously, we miss Zam, Zam's been playing extremely well.
But again, it's going to happen to everybody. You're going to have players in and out with illness, injury, things like that. And you got to be able to overcome it.
How are you all doing that with Zam? Is there a timetable yet, or do you know?
I don't know. It's just a matter of how, I think she's doing the rehab well. And things are going good with it.
But yeah, they hadn't really told me yet. I think it could be a few more days. We'll see.
It's funny you mentioned this. I was going to touch on it. I just might as well do it now. Some of these kids are going to be new to your program. But NC State's been good pretty much this whole decade. And so this is what's going to happen.
You're going to go out there, and there are going to be teams gunning for y'all. And they're not going to care about your problems. And how do you sort of relay that to the kids? And look, this is who we are. We get chased. How do you deal with that?
Yeah, like I said, I felt like they competed harder than us in the second half. And they were a little bit tougher than us. And we've also, we've had trouble getting them to buy in to, the scouting report, the film, and all that.
Taking away things that other teams want to do. And I thought tonight they attacked a couple of matchups. Good job on their part. And we didn't probably do a great job handling it.
Even pick on the ball. We didn't execute real well. So, we just got to get better. We got to try to look at the film, clean it up some, and hopefully fix it.
From the outside looking in, it looked like screens were a problem for you guys handling them. They were really good on their screenplay.
Yeah.
And so y'all were going under on some threes?
It depends on the player.
Yeah.
And some of them we weren't going under. But there was, some we tried to go under some. And, maybe that was a mistake. Who knows? But, I think mostly it was, like I said, they did a good job.
Stagger screens, down picks, and then give up an offensive rebound. They kick it out. We got to outscore 20-2 in transition.
I mean, right there is your ball game. And I would have thought that, we could run with them. So, that right there is discouraging. We knew they had great shooters.
And in transition, we were going to have to get matched up and meet them at the three-point line. But we just didn't get it done.
And then going inside, you guys scored well. But in the threes, when they weren't coming down, how do you want to handle that in the future? Some of them were open looks.
I don't know what to tell you. We were four for 19 from three. And obviously, you miss Zam some in that area. But, I don't know.
We've got some players that every day in practice and shoot arounds, they're knocking them down. And then we get in the game. We just hadn't been able to get them to go down like we need to.
So, that puts a lot of pressure. Obviously, we knew they were going to double the post some. And they did. And when they did, we kicked it out.
And you've got to be able to knock those shots down. Because, again, if they're going to double, you've got to make them pay.
So, got to figure that out.
What type of messages do you convey to them and what kind of response are you wanting to see?
We've had success. And we're 4-0. We're going to see everybody's A game. And you've got to be ready to compete, especially when you're on the road.
It's tough. And like I said, I just thought they came up with the long rebounds, with the 50-50 balls, and then as well as they shoot it. When they come up with those, get a second chance, you're in trouble.
Thank you for your time, sir.
Thank you.
