NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media to discuss the 84-83 road win over SMU.
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You've been doing this a while now, sir. How many times have you ever seen someone influence a game when only shooting the ball four times, like Copeland did today?
I mean, I don't want to be, like, hyperbole, but I can't tell if I've ever had 16 assists, no turnovers, double-double with rebounds and assists. So I'd have to think long and hard.
It's been a while, in other words.
Maybe if we had better crowds in the Southland, he'd have done it for me last year, but I guess he likes playing to the crowd on the road a little bit, so. But, I mean, he's unique. Our goal, there are four losses. Every team's had 16-plus assists against him. I told him in the locker room afterwards, I didn't mean you personally get 16 assists, but that's nice.
I wanted the team to have 16-plus assists, but pretty impressive, and even more impressive is he picked up his third foul early in the second half. We played him for a while with the three fouls, and he didn't foul the rest of the time.
I mean, we've got to build a trust there because we are a different team when he's not on the court. We know that. You know that. The other team knows that. Everybody knows that. So I thought that showed some growth for him tonight as well.
You guys shot the ball. I don't know how the stats, but it was almost 40 3s. Was that something you anticipated?
Well, we wanted to move the ball. We made 16. I think that's, like, our sixth game. Sixth or seventh game where we've made 16-plus threes. Sixth or seventh. Sixth game where we've made 16-plus threes. So, look, we get good looks. We felt like if we could move the ball, we kind of barraged them there.
I think we hit three or four straight.It's a great pass from Tre to Matt to get the... Thought that was a huge three. Matt's corner three where we went from down two to up one. That kind of broke the dam because we had been cutting it to one possession. They'd come down and score. Cut it to one possession. So they were able to kind of keep it at arm's length, but that pass by Tre was tremendous.
And, Matt got great looks in the first half. We were telling him at halftime that you're going to keep getting great looks just prior to that. I thought he did a tremendous job going on that mini run. And I was very, very pleased with him.
And on Saturday, or whatever day it was, you talked about that you didn't love the defense against Wake Forest.
Yeah, I didn't love the defense tonight either, but I loved the defense Tre at the end on Miller.
Well, how much of that do you think was maybe breakdowns on your end versus, them making good plays?
I mean, look, they're very talented. Their guards are as good as any. Those three guards, Miller and Edwards. Edwards has improved a ton. I'm very impressed with him. And Pierre. I mean, they're as good. You got three guys that, I mean, shoot like 80% of their shots off the bounce combined and shoot over 50%. Like, you have to research.
If there's another backcourt in a high-major that can do that, there's under three. I don't know of another one. I mean, those three guards are as talented as any guards. And, I think Washington's the X-factor. He made a couple threes. We lost him a couple times. He made a corner three to cut it from six to three, which was poor on our part.
I think he's kind of the X factor for them. But we did a good job. Usually when he gets going, it's because he gets going in transition. We did a good, and he makes a bunch of twos in transition. We didn't let him do that tonight, which helped us.
You guys have two games in three days coming up. That simulates NCAA in theory.
We've got to make the NCAA tournament first.
Right. Yeah. That's where I was.
Can’t do the cart before the horse.
That's where I'm going. Do you feel like this was sort of an NCAA-quality game between two good teams?
I mean, yeah, these are two teams that hopefully will make the tournament. I mean, at the end of the day, we'd both be in. It's a quad one game for us. Look, I mean, they're a great team. I mean, like I said, their guard play is really, really good. So, yeah, we've got to turn the page quickly. I mean, we're used to it. I just mentioned it.
We played in Southland last year. That's where I was. We played Saturday-Monday. So that's what we did. So we kind of have a plan on how to do that. And we've got two of these Saturday-Monday terms. And so, look, we're going to get back late tonight, early in the morning, really early in the morning. And then we'll rest tomorrow and kind of go into our routine and get ready for a really good Virginia Tech team on Saturday.
Speaking of last year and you and Q working together, you know, I know we've talked about just the start of that relationship and kind of everything that went into it. But when you look at his numbers today, you know, 16 assists and no turnovers, did you ever imagine that when you first brought him into McNeese?
Never. Never. And I mean, never in a million years. No, I mean, his growth and just, I mean, look, he still has some moments, but never in a million years could I have imagined he'd be playing this, that he'd be able to come on the road against a team that was in the top 25, a great team, and have 16 assists no turnovers.
He couldn't do that on Commerce last year, Texas A&M Commerce on the road, or East Texas A&M, whatever they're called now. He couldn't do it on them. I mean, I mean, how could I have thought he could do it in the ACC? But give him credit. He's worked hard on his game. He's worked hard on his mental prep. He's worked hard on a lot of different things. So I give him all the credit. I mean, look, I just give him the road map. He's got to navigate everything, and he's done it.
You guys have a lot of meaningful basketball to play, and you've created this with the winning streak. How are you going to handle that? Where's the growth opportunity for NC State in February?
Well, we've talked about, we want to be confident. Look, we're 6-0 on the road in the ACC. What are we, overall, 8-2 or whatever? Our best start in a while, right? So we should have confidence from that, but you have to have humility as well, and the humility comes from there's a lot of stuff we can get better at, and if we don't do a better job on our ball screen coverage than we did tonight, and we tried a different ball screen coverage tonight, and we probably didn't spend enough time on it in practice, and we got a little messed up on the fives.
If we're not humble enough to understand that we have to get that fixed, then we are going to be humbled on Saturday. So, like, yeah, we should be confident. We should take confidence from how we're playing, how we're finding ways to win, how we're winning, but you have to have a humility about you that if we don't get this stuff fixed, then it's going to be problems down the road. So, there's no rest for the weary, and, we've got a lot of basketball ahead of us, and we've got to turn the page quick and get ready for tech on Saturday.
