NC State head coach Wes Moore met with the Wolfpack Sports Network to discuss the 106-84 win at Boston College.
Coach, 106 points is a ton. I know 84 is also way more than you want to give up. Just your thoughts on what was a really fast paced and high scoring game.
Yeah, Boston College is scoring high for ACC play is 61 points and we gave up 84 today, so not good. And part of me thinks, oh, well, maybe we're just bad luck. Maybe we're just having some bad luck, these people hitting threes on us. But at some point you got to guard and we're not getting it done. So we got to fix it.
We can't go to zone every time we can't stop somebody. So we're going to have to learn to stop people a little bit. Great offense, but like I told them, you can't count on that every night. And when you get in the postseason and it's one and done, if you have an off shooting night and you don't play D, you're going to be home early.
So, we got to fix it in a hurry. We got a tough schedule coming up. We'll have three games in what, eight days, something like that. So, we got to fix it in a hurry, but, I’m proud of the fact they came back and got the W. So I guess it's four games in eight days, maybe something like that. So tough schedule coming up.
16 assists, they dished the ball out. And I understand when you're looking down the road, coach, I understand that fans don't understand.
You're trying to be positive. 16 assists, 12 turnovers. We let Boston College have 19 assists and 10 turnovers. Okay. So again, I appreciate you being positive, but you're not the one that has to lay in bed sleepless at night. Okay. We got to do better.
You mentioned coach going to, you didn't want to have to go to zone to slow someone down. It did seem like you got some traction defensively when you went to that zone. Is that something that you might end up playing a little more this year or what do you feel like?
Well, I mean, we played it against Virginia in overtime. We're going to try to do what we got to do to try to win the game. I know it sounds crazy—they're hitting threes from everywhere and we go zone—but hey, at least it's a different look.
And, again, they—at least they didn't kill us from there until late. I should have got out of it the last three minutes because we let Grier go off there and hit, I don't know, three or four threes. I guess you only hit two. No, where's—you at five? Five, three, five threes. It seemed like three or four of them came late.
So, again, I just don't think you can rely on the zone day in, day out. Like the Louisville game, we're getting killed on the boards. Do you really want to go zone when you're getting killed on the boards, where it's tougher to match up and box out? But hey, we're trying everything at this point.
Coach, can you take us inside your thought process? You mentioned, uh, feeling unlucky at times, but at some point you said—at some point—we have to guard.
When, when you have, Wake Forest was shooting it abnormally well, on the road; obviously Virginia, eight threes in the fourth quarter. Tonight, when you have a team, BC shooting 29%—Louisville didn't shoot it well until the fourth quarter.
Okay. And then they shot it well, but tonight, Boston College at halftime: 11 for 24 from three. Okay. Almost 50% and 11 threes. So, we gotta find a way to guard better and with more urgency. We knew they had kids that could shoot the three. And I hope we learned a lesson tonight, too.
I hope we don't just think, we can just come out here and throw our NC State jersey out there on the court, people are going to roll over. We got to show up and play every night. And, it's, disappointing. We had a player out there, we said, 'Take away a right hand.' We let her go right all night long. Okay. I mean, it just doesn't make sense.
I just told them, 'You got to decide: do you want to just be getting through like we are now?' We got a tough week ahead of us. You're going to have to play a whole lot better. We've got a Carolina team that's super talented coming to town Monday night. Then we got, like I said, Florida State and Virginia Tech. So we got a tough stretch here.
You were able to withstand the 16 threes because your team shot a season-best 61%. I did want to ask you about getting the ball inside, particularly to Tilda Trygger—who had a career-high 23 points. She—she and Pierre: 23 for Tilda, 19 for Khamil.
And to do it in front of... she had friends and family here watching her as well. Just, you've talked at times this year about getting Tilda more shots, and she had 9-for-13. What did you think of...?
Well, my bench is over here saying we need to get four guards out there and they were probably right defensively. I felt like, at halftime Khamil was six for seven Tilda was six for seven. So I wanted to pound it inside. And then I thought we could guard them. I'm not going to sit here and blame our posts on those threes.
We gave up the first half. Okay. Again, we got to do a better job guard wise, switching, whatever we're doing, getting up to the shooters. So, you can look at it either way. Like I said, my coaches were probably right.
Our defense was stinking so bad. Maybe we should have gone four guards, but I just liked the idea we could get it inside and, dominate in the interior.
Well, coach is always, we, appreciate your interview and we look forward to Monday, big game play for K against North Carolina.
Well, I'm sorry I don't open up more and let you know my true feelings. Okay. Again, what you see is what you get. And, same thing with recruits when they come to practice. I think I'm pretty civilized, but I tell them, I'm going to coach you and I'm going to coach you hard. If you can't handle it, don't come here.
Okay. And same way, we got some great players, but they're not doing what we need to do. And like I said, I'll take the blame, too. I'm obviously not doing a good enough job coaching them. So we'll all get back to work, but we're running out of time. And, we've again crossed the halfway point in the conference; eight games left in the regular season, four weeks or so from now, we'll be getting ready for the conference tournament.
So, let's go, let's get this thing going and let's try to make a run. I told them from here on out: we got to fix this stuff, and in a hurry. So, but anyway, Go Pack! And, we're getting out of Boston right now.
Great. Thank you.
Bye.
