NC State head coach Will Wade met with Wolfpack Sports Network to discuss the road win at No. 18 Clemson, the upcoming schedule, and more!
Coach, congratulations. You're off the biggest win of the year, a quad one win on the road. You beat ranked Clemson, ranked 18th in America, 80 to 76 in overtime in Clemson. How good was that win for this squad and for you here in your first year here with the Pack?
Well, it's good. It's not very good. It's end of January. We're talking about a big win. We should have had a few before now. But, better late than never, I guess. But it was timely. We needed it. We had not played well the previous outing against Georgia Tech. But, we played with more edge, played a little bit tougher, and were much better in the game. And it was a much-needed win. The old quad three loss, quad one win week. That doesn't happen very often.
All right. Well, let's talk about that. How much do you think your loss to Georgia Tech propelled a sense of urgency and intensity for your guys in Clemson?
I think it certainly did because,we played quite a bit different against Clemson. But, that's been our problem is we're just... We're very inconsistent. We don't do anything very consistent. And so, I've told our guys this today, but, like, everyone discovers an extra gear in a crisis. But the real skill is, like, being able to access one without a crisis.
Like everybody can find an extra gear in a crisis. If you can't do that, you're just, like, dead, right? But, like, being able to access, that extra gear when there's not a crisis, like, that's, like, what a consistent team...That's what a real team does. And we just haven't been able to do that all year.
Now, we've responded every time pretty much we've needed to respond. That loss to Seton Hall was awful. We played better against Boise and won. And, so, I mean, we've responded. But we should be in that extra gear at all times. And that's where I'm at a very different point than some people in our program.
And so, we're trying to get closer. And so Saturday's a big game for us. I mean, if you look at the conference standings right now, you take out Duke, who hasn't lost a game. But there's 10 teams that have one, two, or three losses. And we're in the middle with two with Miami. And there's, so there's 10 teams that are pretty stacked together.
So if you want to start separating yourself and if you want to start moving in the standings, like, now is the time. And this is a huge game for us at Pitt on Saturday. And we've got to start separating ourselves and moving in the right direction. You can separate yourself up or down. And we've got to start moving up. And we haven't done that consistently yet. And so, hopefully, we'll have that extra gear still and not be in crisis mode.
Tied for fourth right now in the ACC, you are with Miami. There are two 4-2 teams in the league, the Hurricanes and the Pack. Duke 6-0, Clemson 6-1, Virginia's 5-1. And then it's Miami and NC State. You've got the Hokies as the only 4-3 team. They haven't had their bye yet. Yeah, right. They have not had their bye week yet with no midweek game. Virginia Tech has not. North Carolina, Stanford, SMU, Louisville, Syracuse are all 3-3 in the league right now.
How do you balance coaching aggressiveness and assertiveness and proactivity and yet have your guys be careful not to turn it over? You only had seven turnovers in the entire game, which is elite. That's as good as it gets, especially considering there was overtime in the game against Clemson.
Well, as poorly as we offensive rebound, we better not turn it over because we're not going to shoot enough balls if we turn it over too much. We're so bad offensive rebounding that we cannot turn the ball over. And so, that's a point of emphasis for us.
We spend a lot of time in practice on that. We run when we turn it over in practice after a little bit. We pop those balloons. The point guard turns it over. It's worth two balloons because the point guard should never turn it over.
And, in theory, the other guys who are not the point guard shouldn't have the ball enough not to turn it over, but somehow it always ends up with those guys. So, we, it's a point of emphasis for us and we've been able to carry it over. I am proud of Q.
Of course, as soon as I say this, I'll probably cough that thing up 10 times at Pittsburgh. But he's been much better, much, much better, with his turnovers. And at six assists, one turnover at Clemson. He's got almost a two and a half to one. Craig Hammel in the house. That's a celebrity sighting here.
Craig is Sports Information Director. Craig Hammel in the house here at Pitt Authentic Barbecue. Great to have him here. Feels better. Feels complete.
His daughter, Olivia.
Daughter Olivia here. It's great to be here with family. Love it. It's good to see Craig.
Yeah, sorry I got off topic.
But I get it. I get starstruck. Comes to mind. I understand. I understand. Yeah.
We're talking about Q's turnovers. I feel bad about Craig because Craig sits at the scorer's table. I'm worried he's going to wear a football helmet when Q throws it sometimes. He's going to get hit over there with the ball. But, Q, I am proud of him. He's done a lot better job.
Just, being sharp with the ball. And, sometimes you got to remind him, we're in the red jerseys, Q. Go to the team in red. Go to the team in red. We're wearing red.
I want to piggyback this.
Actually, we're wearing black on Saturday. Did you know that? I didn't know. I do. No, I didn't know that. I think Pitt's wearing some sort of alternative uniform. So we're wearing black. Was I supposed to announce that, Craig, or not?
We're wearing black uniforms Saturday. Did you know that? He didn't know. I don't think he did. I don't know. Maybe I wasn't supposed to say that. Maybe it was top secret. But I think Pitt is wearing some alternative uniform. So we have to wear the black. So we can't wear the red on the road or something. I don't know. All right. Interesting.
I just saw them today. I didn't know what they even look like.
The Pitt uniforms or the black uniforms?
The black uniforms.
Yeah, I haven't seen them yet.
They've got Tuffy on them.
That's kind of cool. I look forward to that. That'll be fun. I want to, I want to.
I kind of like wearing black.
It's a little, that's a little edgy thing.
Well, we're 3 and 0 in the red. So I'm not really, I'm not superstitious, but I am routine oriented. I’m not thrilled about not being in those reds, those reds have been good to us.
You've been great away. You've been great at Boston College. You're great at Clemson.
Well, I weren't great at Auburn.
You were not great at Auburn. No. You were OK for a stretch at times at Auburn.
We were terrible at Auburn.
You said it. I didn't. I wasn't going to go there.
But yeah, we'll be in black. I don't know what Pitt's wearing. What would they be wearing? Gray, maybe? Yellow?
I was going to say like a gold, like a yellow or a gold, maybe. Their home, I mean, their road blues, that's what they've been in. So that's not an alternate for them. So I'm not really sure what would necessitate black for us.
Probably gray, because we couldn't wear white or red. Couldn't wear red. I don't know. Or gray. Well, fine. We'll solve the mystery. We'll solve the mystery at noon on Saturday.
You can let all your listeners know at noon on Saturday. I look forward to it. Well, you can probably find it in your hour pregame show.
Well, I don't know if we have enough time. We're jammed up, coach.
They'll be out there warming up. So you and Chucky can do a uniform check. We should do it. And inform your listeners of the uniform.
I'll do that if Mad Dog allows us to wedge it in in time. We have a very regimented schedule here. And he keeps us on it. So we stay locked in.
Mad Dog keeps us all on schedule.
There's no doubt about that. That is absolutely true. I do want to harp on the point here, though.
OK, sorry. We got it all for turnovers, right?
No, that's good. We're turnovers, right? Quadir Copeland played 41 minutes at Clemson. Darrion Williams played 38 minutes at Clemson. Paul McNeil played 37. And Tre Holloman played 27. OK? Copeland, Williams, McNeil, and Holloman combined for one turnover on the road at Clemson.
Four of your five starters then didn't have any.So you had one turnover from your starting five the entire ball game, 45 minutes of action. That's incredible. It's really, really, really good.
It's very good.
Yeah, it's good. That's it, huh?
It's good. It's really good. That's what we're paying them to do. We don't pay them to turn the ball over. That's true. I mean, shoot. That's true. Do you think like the Amazon delivery guy for delivering your package? No, you expect the guy to deliver the package.
That's fair. That's fair.
I expect him to throw the ball to the open guy and throw it to the person playing for NC State. Deliver the package. That's not hard. Deliver the package. It's simple. I mean, I don't think you thank the mailman for bringing your mail every day.
I would do that, though. But it is an expectation. It's like an expectation. I'm a friendly guy.
Yeah. The ball's the program. When you've got the ball, the program's in your hands. Make a good decision with it.
On the Charles Bediako Situation at Alabama...
Until there's collective bargaining, all this stuff is going to happen. So until there's that, this is what it is. And, I mean, everybody's trying to get the best players they can get. Here's the thing. People are much more, people have a much better understanding of the system in the United States. All right?
So they have a much better understanding of the system, G League, NBA. There are 30 kids playing college basketball that came from overseas that have played way more pro basketball and at a way higher level than Charles Bidiako has. Right.
People just don't understand how it works overseas in the EuroLeague and EuroCup and ACB and all that stuff over there. They don't understand how it works. Everybody's outraged because it's something that they know.
There's teams that were doing this way before. There's been teams doing this 10 years bringing pros over. And so now everybody's outraged because they understand a little bit about the G League and the NBA. But I mean, shoot, Nnaji played in NBA games. Or, played, was on an NBA team.
Was on a roster.
Yeah, on a roster. For a few games, yeah. Bediako hadn't. I don't think he's been on that. He didn't get in the league, yeah. Look, I mean, look, it was a smart move by Alabama. It was a really smart move. I mean, look, they've got a great team. If you've watched them play, they're, look, they're a little bit, their one weakness is defensive rebounding and shot blocking. And they just fixed that.
Yeah, he's a really good player. I mean, he's really good for what they need. I mean, they just went from a team that was probably a second weekend team to a team that can compete for the Final Four. And so, I mean, I don't know why anybody wouldn't do it as long as it's legal. And it's legal. And so everybody can cry and moan and, whatever else.
But it's, that's, that's until, and so all this stuff about them talking about congressional help and all this stuff, that's their problem. They've been trying to get congressional help for years, but what they don't tell you is they want congressional help with all this stuff.
They could get congressional help to impose their eligibility rules, but it would stop there. They want congressional help for an antitrust exemption, for all this other stuff that they want to pile on it. Bipartisan would agree.
Most people would agree on the eligibility rules. So they should be able to enforce some level of eligibility rules. But that's not what, so they hide behind all this stuff about congressional help and congressional this and all this stuff. They could get a narrow thing passed very quickly.
Not very quickly. Nothing's quick up there. But they could get something, a narrow bill passed, or they could do eligibility rules. The problem is they don't want to just do eligibility rules. They want antitrust exemption.
They want to be able to limit compensation. They want to be able to do all this other stuff with it. So while they're outraged on this, there's, they use this to try to rope in all this other stuff that they want to get under control.
They could get this under control. But if they don't want to, if they want to keep trying, they've been trying for Congress for like six years and Congress has very little interest in this, right? And so if they don't want to do that, they better start collective bargaining with the football and basketball players.
So that there can be some level of oversight on this deal. And until then, I mean, this is what it's going to be. I give Alabama a ton of credit. I mean, you got to do what, it's your job to do the best thing you can for your university to, and I'd feel that way if we played them Saturday. That's just the way it is. And, Nate's done a great job and Preston and those guys, and they've upgraded their roster and upgraded their team.
And it makes sense. I mean, the guy knows the system. He knows it was not like they're bringing somebody in who's foreign and foreign to what they're doing. And I think it's going to be a seamless transition and it raises their ceiling dramatically as a team.
And I've always felt this, I mean, to hell with what everybody else thinks your job is to represent your school and your fan base. And so as long as they're happy, forget what the rest of them think. So that's what they've, that's what they've done. And, shoot, I wish we had one laying around somewhere, but that's, that's all, it's all part of it.
Do you think that, do you wish, or do you think that there was more structure and a clear outline of, frankly, a system and the rules and relative to something like this? Like it feels like a surprise. People didn't know Bediako was going to be able to play 12 weeks ago. It feels like maybe they did. Maybe they did. It wasn't talked about at least. Is there a desire or a thirst for more concrete structure and guidance in some way?
I mean, I guess some people would want that, but I mean, until, until they decide what they actually want that on, that they try to, they're trying to fix everything. You can't fix everything to try to fix everything. Just fix the one thing that's the most important.
Or if you want to fix everything, collect a bargain. You can put it all in, all in an agreement with everybody, but they don't want to do that. And so when they don't want to do that, then this is what you end up with.
If you were czar of college hoops, would you change anything else? If you, if you, if you were the leader, if you were the president of college basketball, not the NCAA, but just college, men's college basketball, is there anything, is there anything that you would? Yeah, we play four quarters instead of two halves.
Well, that's about that. That may be common. The last human beings on the planet earth to play two halves. I mean, I would get, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of stuff I would change, but I mean, that's, that's, you don't need to hear about all that.
I mean, maybe I do. I don't know. Maybe we might actually.
That's not, that's not of any, it's not of any importance. Nobody cares about that. But I mean, look, this, this is, this is simple. Like them crying that we need all this other stuff. They could go get this. They can find support for this. The problem is they want to add a bunch of other stuff onto this. And that's why they can't get any support. And that’s why this happens.
What was the mindset you and the team had going into practice after the loss to Georgia Tech and then going into Clemson?
I mean, we do the same thing. We've had these Saturday, Tuesday turns quite a bit. And so we've tried to stick with the same routine. Try to ground yourself in your routine, win or lose. Unfortunately, we've been losing on Saturday a little bit too much. So we had some experience coming off the Virginia loss and going to Boston College.
It was a little bit the same situation. So we do the same routine and just try to stick to that. But I mean, I certainly think our guys were, had a little bit more of an edge to them during the game and a little bit more of an edge to them in the lead up to that. So that was good. We've got to continue that.
And like I said, have that extra gear when it's not necessarily crisis mode like it was the other day. But as Q told me today, he said, “every day is crisis mode around you.” So, after I gave him the quote and all, I said, well, every day around here is a crisis the way you operate. But, we've got to have that same mindset and same gear.
Have you ever had a relationship with a player that you've coached like you do with Quadir Copeland?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a little different with him just because he's, he's been with me two years. He's followed me a couple of schools. I've never, never had that. But yeah, I mean, we've got a lot of good relations. I mean, we're pretty close with a lot of our guys. But, he's a little bit more outgoing than most. Let's put it that way.
My favorite thing to do on campus is walk around Reynolds and look at the statues of people that helped build our program. When it is all said and done, is NC State where you want your legacy to be held?
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not going to supplant a lot of those people he walks around and sees. I mean, look, those are, some giants of the game and giants of NC State. But this is, this is the, this is, look, this is the best job I've ever had in terms of the support for basketball and everything that we need to win.
And it's on us, it's on us to win. And so, I absolutely love it here and am hopeful that I can be in the same breath as a lot of those people after a long tenure. So, it's been, it's been awesome so far. And we got a lot of, we got a lot of work ahead of us. And like, like we talked about, we're just laying a foundation right now. And we want this thing to be built on a rock solid foundation moving forward.
But this has been, it's been incredible. And this is, this is, it's the best job I've had. And it's not often, you get, you get fired somewhere and you end up in a better spot a couple years later. It's not, that's, that's, that doesn't happen very often. So that's not lost on me. You don't get to fall up very often.
And so very, very appreciative of, very appreciative of everything here. And so it, hopefully, hopefully we can, reach, reach the heights that, that Coach Sloan and Coach Valvano and Coach Case and all those guys. So, hopefully we can, we can add a little bit to the, to the, to the legacy here.
Michael asks a follow-up. How does overreaction from NC State fans affect chemistry and confidence as a team?
I don't, I don't know much as a team. It's funny, as you know, I'm very, I'm not on social media. I'm not like, Reid does all my social medias. So I don't know if I should say this, but I will. I don't really care. Before we went to Clemson, Mark Gottfried texted me.
He's like, hey coach, and we've texted back and forth. We had the same agent for a long time. So I've known him through him for a while. And Coach Avent had the same, we all had the same guy for a while. I think at one point the agent had Doeren, Avent, and Gottfried. We're all at NC State.
But anyway, so I've known him, I've known him for a while through that. And he texted me, hey, I've dealt with the media there. And he sent me this long text. It was very nice. I'm sitting there going, man, everybody must be freaking out or something must be going crazy. Something must be going crazy.
Like I'm oblivious to good or bad. What's, what's, what's going on. But I try to tell our players, never listen to criticism from somebody you wouldn't take advice from. If you're not calling them for advice, you shouldn't listen to anything they got to say when they want to criticize you. And so that's, now that's easier said than done. It's easier for me.
You've been criticized as much as I have, you don't care. I really don't care at this point. And, the players it's probably a little bit, a little bit, a little bit harder on. But, we try to insulate ourselves from that. But look, when the way I look at it is when there's strong reactions means people care and people are invested and you want people that care and you want people that are invested.
If nobody cares and nobody's invested, then it's just like, all right, whatever. We just kind of keep moving. That's apathy. And that's the worst thing you can have. And so, look, we have high expectations here and, our fans should be disappointed. I'm disappointed. I'm mad. So, I mean, I understand that. I mean, shoot, they should have booed us off the court against Georgia Tech.
We were awful. We were awful. I mean, that was poor effort. And I think our people are, blue collar, hardworking people for the most part. I just want to see people work hard. We didn't work very hard that game. And so, I mean, I've been mad as hell, too. I was, and I can't lash out, on social media. But, I think that stuff, we're pretty, well, I say I'm pretty oblivious to it.
The players, I had to ask Reed. I was like, Reed, people, you know, like, oh, coach, you don't want to see all that. I was like, okay, that's fine. But, I just tell our players that all the time. Like, listen to the people that care. Listen to the people that are there for you, when things are, when you need something. And those are the people you should listen to. Anybody else, just block them out and keep it moving. But I think it's great. People are invested.
People want to win. People care about NC State basketball. It's important to people that NC State basketball is good. And, with that, there's extreme disappointment when we don't play to our capabilities and to our standards. And, shoot, I'd be mad, too.
Why are you better on the road?
Sometimes just getting away and being together and being in a little bit more controlled environment, being in that controlled environment, you know, just gives you a routine and grounds you in a routine. Having an us against the world mentality, there's some things you can build. There's some things you can build on that.
So, look, I want to be great on the road and great at home. I mean, we need to be great both spots. And it shouldn't be a place where we got to pick, we got to pick one of them to be good at. And, we just haven't, look, the Virginia game, Virginia's a really good team. Georgia Tech did some things, I told you, I was worried about them. And they did some things.
But we didn't play to our standards. We didn't play nearly as well as we needed to play. But, we'll see if we can keep it rolling on the road. But we don't need to drop any more home games, that's for sure.
What's something about coaching at NC State that outsiders don't fully appreciate yet.
Well we haven't won as much as we're gonna win yet, and I don't think they're ready for how rowdy we're gonna be when we win. I don't think they're, I don't think they appreciate how, we got good folks. We're gonna be, we're gonna be hell to deal with.
We gotta be a little quiet right now because we're not quite where we want to be, but when next year or two we're gonna be, people be like, I think people are gonna be like, where did all these people come from?
Net 29 right now, not too shabby.
Yeah, not too shabby, but we got higher expectations than that. We gotta be better than that.
Coach, how much of a say do you have? What's your input when it comes to wearing the 1983 throwback state uniforms, those, the unis that the Pack wears and Reynolds?
Reed's my special assistant. He's been with me a while. Reid handles all this stuff. I don't have much of a say. I mean, I like them. We've played well in them both times. We've worn them. I think it connects us to our past, connects to our history. I like the slobbering wolf. I actually want to wear the slobbering wolf, but they won't let me wear that on my jacket.
So, like, I mean, I don't know. There's so much. I mean, look, it's a bureaucracy, like anything. So there's so much red tape. There's so much stuff you got to go through, but I like the uniforms. Hopefully, we can bust them out maybe one more time this year. So, I'm one of those guys.
This probably doesn't surprise you. I like to ask for forgiveness, not permission. That doesn't surprise me one bit. We got a scathing email from the university after our first game.
Oh, really?
Oh, they were not happy.
Oh, goodness.
I don't think they quite knew we were wearing the state uniforms.
Oh, is that right? Interesting.
Yeah, I don't know if they do that. So, sometimes you just gotta...I'd run it by, the higher-ups in the athletic department. I don't know if it made it further than that.
Well, that was fun. All I could think is how big of a win it was. There was a lot of points scored. That was mine.
Well, that's not how those other folks think. That was my I'd rather us win by 10 and wear something proper.
Gotcha. Gotcha.
I'd rather run by 40 and wear whatever we want to wear.
Yeah, wear whatever.
What would you recommend for someone in college to do to get into the position you are in?
Well, it takes a lot of luck. I mean, look, I was very lucky.
We kind of talked about this back at Clemson. We were talking about your history. Did you guys know he called high point women's basketball?
I did. That's true.
High point women's basketball.
I did.
He knew everything about Big South women's basketball.
I knew everything about Big South women's basketball.
We were stopped at a red light and he talked about it the entire time.
More than he cared to hear.
I got a doctorate on High Point women's basketball. That's true. I mean, I think that's the biggest thing is you got to find something that makes you indispensable to the organization that you're in. I tell our staff that all the time. They're like, well, what do I need to do? Because I got a bunch of young guys that want to move up and this guy wants to be an assistant.
This guy wants to do this and this guy wants to do that. I say, look, you've got to create a narrative around yourself that you're irreplaceable where you are. If you act like you're irreplaceable where you are, somebody else is going to take you.
I thought our second half defense with Clemson was excellent. Can you speak to how important it was to play defense without fouling? And then specific referees and tendencies. We probably don't have a ton of time to get into.
Well, we do that. You were shocked that you saw us going through the jump ball one day.
Oh, coach has data on which officials throw certain jump balls.
We watch film on the jump ball.
They watch film on the jump. They watch film on the jump. They have data on the jump. It's awesome.
If you win the jump ball, increase your chance to win the game almost 4%.
That blew me away. That's a big percentage.
So we spent a lot of time. I mean, he's seen us but we do it two different times. Walk through how we're gonna set up for the jump ball and how we're gonna jump and time the officials and all sorts of stuff. Because you're stealing a possession.
But we do have data on the officials. I have an officials consultant that I use. So like sometimes we know if that guy's under the basket and he's in the lead position and he blows his whistle a little more than the other two, then we want to drive it because he's going to blow it a little bit more than some of the other guys. If he's on the, there's a guy on the perimeter that doesn't call a lot of fouls, we can crawl up into him a little bit more.
So we have some sense of, we know going in, we get the referees 10 days out, so we run the numbers on them. We have pretty good sense of where everything is and where everybody is and what's going on.
