NC State head coach Will Wade met with Wolfpack Sports Network to discuss the 80-76 overtime win at No. 18 Clemson.
Coach, congratulations, you get an overtime win on the road at Clemson. The Tigers had been 10 and 0 in this building this year, they hadn't lost here. This year, you went at 80 to 76 here on the road.What led to victory here tonight?
Look, I thought our guys played with great poise, executed under pressure. It's funny, last night I showed the video from the Rams, from the crazy play at the end with the Bears, and that's how the Rams stayed poised. We showed a two and a half minute video and just a lot of different things. And this game kind of played out exactly like the Bears and the Rams from Sunday nights. We actually spent a lot of time talking about that the last couple days.
So just very proud of our guys, we've responded the right way. But we shouldn't be in these situations, we gotta be more consistent, we gotta get some consistency to us. And that starts with preparing and playing well Saturday at Pittsburgh. So we've just been so up and down and it's been very, very frustrating. So hopefully this will be something that the springboard is forward.
Clemson's one of the top defensive teams in the ACC. They allow the fewest points per game on average. You only turned it over seven times total tonight, including overtime.How impressed were you? How happy were you with the way you valued the ball tonight on the road?
It was huge. I mean, that made up for the rebounding differential. They got three more offensive rebounds than we did. Did a great job at the free throw line, our six minute game. We were really good at the free throw line. We weren't against Georgia Tech. We left a lot of points on the line at Georgia Tech. But our six minute game tonight, we were really, really, really good.
So very proud of our guys for stepping out and Ven, two free throws were huge. Darrion hitting those two free throws when he got fouled down too was really good. So I thought our guys played and executed with some poise and some precision under pressure, which we haven't done most of the year.
Clemson's one of the bigger teams in the ACC. It seems like they keep wheeling off six, eight, six, ten guys off the bench. You're even, dead even with them, points in the paint. And Ven scored 22 points and had six boards on nine of 12 shooting. How good was he tonight?
Yeah, Ven was a grown man that layup he missed with his left hand.
Rolled off the rope.
But he was awesome tonight. And look, our original intent was we knew they were gonna try to pound us inside. And we changed our ball screen coverage coming into the game. We changed to try to negate them pounding it inside.
And then we realized, all right, we can just front them and they're not gonna throw it in. And so we were able to change our coverage, do something we're a little bit more familiar with. They did a good job countering in the second half. They just drove us. But we made enough stops and did enough things when we needed to.
Darrion had 17 points, six assists, three assists, 38 minutes played. No turnovers committed for Darrion Williams. He even had a pop pass. He tapped the ball on the right wing on a pass to Tre. It didn't go in, but how impressive was he tonight moving the ball around?
Darrion was great, very pleased with him. We gotta clean up some of the shot diet, but he was really good. I thought Matt Able played really good minutes for us. He was steady, six points, six rebounds, got a couple offensive rebounds.
He was very, very steady for us, didn't force stuff. And Arsenault did some good things for us defensively as well.But just a total team win, and I'm very proud of our guys. We gotta turn the page and be ready to go on Saturday.
All right, Coach, congratulations. The win in the building that you knew quite well 18 years ago. They changed the court, they changed the orientation of the building. You come back here and you get a W. Congratulations, and a really tough place to get a win.
Yeah, just happy for NC State, man. This is a big win for us. We needed this, quad one win, road win. We needed this bad, and our guys responded. But the lesson from this is we can't keep putting ourselves in situations where we need to respond. Let's use this to shoot up and be ready to roll.
