NC State head coach Will Wade met with Wolfpack Sports Network to discuss his 5-game ACC win streak, previewing the Virginia Tech game, and more!
Coach, congratulations. You're on a five-game win streak. First five-game ACC win streak in half a decade. Round of applause for that. Congratulations. Since we last spoke, you had wins on the road in Winston-Salem and Dallas. You're now 17-6, 8-2 in the league, tied for third place in the ACC, Clemson, Duke.
You've beaten one of those already. You've got the Blue Devils coming up later this year. You're tied with Virginia, so play the Cavaliers as well. Coach, congratulations on the win at Wake Forest and at Dallas. Let's recap a little bit. What went well for you in Winston-Salem and then that carry over to Dallas?
Well, we shot it well at Wake. It was a good game. It was almost neutral. We had so many folks. That was great. We had a lot of folks that came out with the snow. The snow coming back was brutal.
We shot the ball well. We moved the ball well against Wake. Our defense was pretty poor. But our offense made up for it. Got off to a big lead and had them playing from behind most of the night. That was good. It's never easy to win on the road. To get a good road win like that at Wake was a good start to the week.
Can I push back a little bit?
Sure.
Your defense was poor. 78 points. You won 96-78.
Yeah, our defense was poor. We gave up 78 points. We gave up 19 middle drives. We should have single-digit middle drives again. We gave up 19 middle drives. They're driving it and kicking it out for open shooters. That's how Juke Harris got a bunch of his shots. Our defense at the line of scrimmage was very, very poor.
Juke Harris had a good game. He had 31 points. He's hard to stop. Good player for the Demon Deacons.
Not as good as we made him look, but yeah, he's a good player.
You finished 54% from beyond the arc as a team.
You should win by 18 when you shoot over 50% from three on volume. If you can't do that, you're really poor.
16-28 from three. You're pacing right now.
Paul likes playing wake. He's played well against them both times. I joked with him. I told him I was going to put wake on other people's jerseys.
That's his ACC high, 28 points. He was 6-8 from three. He's fantastic.Has he gotten better and better and better through the years? Has he gotten more accustomed to being, I don't want to say the lead man, but maybe an A-lead man in your chorus of offensive weapons?
Certainly an adjustment for him. Virginia Tech's going to top block him, which a lot of teams haven't done. They're going to do, which will be an adjustment that he'll have to. You draw more attention. The better you shoot it, the more you shoot it. The better you shoot it on volume, you're going to draw more attention.
It's been an adjustment for him, but he's one of those guys, once he sees it once or twice, he goes through it a little bit, and he can adjust and he can make things happen. I've been very pleased with his progress.
Actually, me and him sat in the office today for about 20 minutes and just talked about a whole variety of things.Not to do a basketball, but he's just a really good person. He's very thoughtful and very, very sharp. He's just a good, good person. He understands and he's loving being in the moment here. He's enjoying all this. It was pretty cool to talk to him about some of his perspective on some things.
Teams are certainly game planning for him. It's going to be tougher and tougher, so we've got to do a better and better job of getting him free and getting him shots.
League leader in three-point percentage, Paul McNeil Jr., 42.9%, almost 43% from three. He has 170 attempts, and he's made 42.9%. Of the many times he has touched the ball this year, he has six total turnovers on the year.
It's because he doesn't dribble.
Hey, you know what? It's what I tell him all the time. Shoot it before you turn it over. Fire that thing up in the basket. If you shoot it, we've got a chance for it to go in. We've got a chance to get fouled, and we've got a chance to get an offensive rebound.
If you turn it over, we've got none of those chances. So fire it before you turn it over. That's pretty simplistic. You can work good offense if you do that.
Have you ever had four starters north of 40% from three? Is this the best shooting team you've ever coached as a group?
Pretty close, yeah. We shot it well. Best of the high major teams we've had. We've had some mid-major teams that shot it well. But at that level, you have to shoot it.
We had a kid last year who shot 50% on about the same amount of shots as Paul would get in that game. But, yeah, we've had some really, really good shooters. But that hadn't been at the high major level. It's a lot more difficult.
Darrion's already surpassed his three-point makes from last year. He's already set a career high. We've still got, what, ACC? Eight games left.
An undetermined amount of games after that.
Yeah, well, eight, and then the conference tournament, hopefully, if we qualify.
Right, right, if that works out. I feel optimistic about that.
Good.
I don't know if you do. I do, yeah.
But we've got, so he's certainly shooting it well. Copeland's making his. We've got some guys, and Able's a really good shooter. He's going to hit stride here. He shot it really well today in practice. He's going to hit stride here, make shots, and Arceneaux. So, yeah, we've got a good shooting group.
Our player development guys do a great job. Coach Hamilton, Coach Anderson, they do a phenomenal job. Coach Howard's been working with Terrance quite a bit, and so they do a really, really good job with our guys, and they deserve a lot of the credit, and our guys deserve the credit for putting in the work.
Four of your typical starting five are 41%, better from three. Tre Holloman, 41%. Quadir Copeland's at 47%, 21 of 44 on the year. That's the highest jump in the country for a three-point shooter from last year to this. Just to remind you.
He was pretty low before. It was low, yeah, it was low. In order to have the highest jump in the country, you've got to be really, really low at one point.
That's true.
So let's be clear about that.
That's true.
I think he shot 17% last year from three. Not great.
Not great.
So you've got to be somewhere like that to be able to jump it.
Well, 47's great.
47's great.
47's great. And then Paul and Darrion are actually tied at 42.9. So Paul McNeil, Jr. leads the ACC in three-point percentage. Darrion's actually tied with him. He's just under what would qualify him in terms of numbers of attempts. He's got 126 attempts.
He'll probably get his attempts up, I would assume.
He's been lately. He's been shooting.
He's had three straight games over five or more threes, mate. Did you know that?
Lights out. I did. I'm not trying to say like I'm a know-it-all or anything. I happen to know that. Chucky knew. Chucky's been talking my ear off about it. He's going, this guy lights out. Lights out. He's been incredible.
One of the things Chucky admires a lot during the games with Darrion, not only is all the court vision, passing ability, but he's always ready and quick with the release. Like he's a ready shooter. Some guys aren't always as quick.
You ain't got to tell him. You don't have to tell him. You'd rather tell him, whoa, then go. You'd rather have him wound up and ready to go than have to wind him up. So that's good.
All right, so take me back. Let's go to Dallas, Texas, 84-83. That was the most recent game. I wanted to touch on Wake a little bit because we've had two games since our last show. 84-83 in Dallas. Have you ever seen a game better than Quadier Copeland, seven points, ten rebounds, 16 assists, and zero turnovers that way?
I mean, yeah. Look, I don't know if I've ever seen a game with 16 assists and zero turnovers. But, I think that when he plays that well or he plays like that, we should not win by one. We should be better. I mean, we won by one, and everybody I know is excited, and you're excited, and everybody's fired up. But what if Copeland doesn't bank in the three?Nobody talks about that. Copeland doesn't bank in the three, we lose by two.
How about the end of the first half? At the immediate timeout, we gave up five points at the end of the first half. That's five points. We were 12 of 20 from the free throw line, gave up eight points there, but probably four if we hit our normal percentage.
How about in a six-minute game where we work every day on a six-minute game? We just played a six-minute game before I ran over here for this. We lost 19 to eight in a six-minute game, minus 11. How about Able's layup that had no chance to go on in, the 24 goaltending? We lose by one.
So everybody gets caught up in all this stuff, and we win in and all this stuff. How about that? We lost 25 points in that game that we controlled. We were terrible. And so if Copeland has 16 assists and no turnovers, and we make 16 threes, we should win by a hell of a lot more than one point.
And we've got to get our guys and we've got to get people around here to understand there's a standard you have to play to, and that's not getting it done. And if we keep walking a high wire and we keep doing stuff like that and we can't finish off the first half and we lose six-minute games by 11 points, 19 to eight, we're going to get beat Saturday by Virginia Tech if that happens.
And so all this pollyanna and everybody throwing their shoulders out, patting each other on the back and all that stuff, it's not reality. And I live in reality.A lot of people don't like to live in reality. I live in reality. And reality is if 24 don't goaltend that shot, we lose. If Copeland doesn't bank that three in, we lose. If we execute as poorly as we do at the end of the first half, we're going to lose a lot of games.
If we get beat and we beat Syracuse by 11 in the six-minute game in that game, and one of our team goals is to be the best plus minus in a six-minute game in the country, well, we lost 19 to eight in a six-minute game. If we do that, we lose a six-minute game by 11 points, we're losing with every other team left on our schedule.
So that's not good enough. So we have a great game like that, somebody plays like that, we shouldn't be holding on and hoping for some miraculous defensive stop. And Tre was tremendous at the end of the game. It's not the way this works.
And so I like to live in reality. I know everybody's excited and all that sort of stuff, but reality is if we don't get that stuff fixed and we don't get that stuff fixed quick, because we've got two games in three days, we're in trouble. I'm sorry to take the air out of everyone, but that's just the fact. That's just the facts.
Everybody's all intoxicated on the winning and all that stuff. The winning's going to come to an end like that if we can't get that stuff fixed. I'm so mad about the six-minute game. We watched every dribble, every bounce of the ball today with my commentary on that six-minute game. I was furious. We were up 12. We were up 12 at the six-minute mark. We were up 12 at the six-minute mark. We should have won that thing by double digits. It kills your metrics. It kills all sorts of stuff. But I'm the only one who cares about that sort of stuff.
Everybody else is, oh, we won. I'll celebrate. To hell with that. We need to play to a certain standard, and when you have great performances like that, when you've got 16 assists, no turnovers, and you shoot and you make 16 threes, you should win going away. Going away, period. And we're lucky, and whatever, we'll take it. I guess the good part of it is we found a way to win, and we can all be excited about that.
Beats losing, but we're going to lose some games if we don't get that stuff corrected. We're going to lose Saturday if we don't get that stuff corrected, and quick.
Virginia Tech by the way noon tip that was changed noon tip 11am airtime for For those concerned for yours truly and company, but we've got a noon tip. It was 1:30pm it's been bumped up to a to a noon tip. And we've got tickets, we have to a ticket situation going on here in Lenovo on Saturday. I've got let's see less than 500 tickets remaining for the ballgame.
Heard 400 last count.
So it's less than 400 close almost a sellout. So yeah, we're almost sold out there. So almost 400 tickets.
We’ve got a great alumni weekend. Got a lot of our former players coming back. They’re coming to practice tomorrow, spend some time with our guys, and then they’ve got a brunch, I believe—before the game. Or I guess brunch is the right term, probably breakfast—take breakfast before the game. Yeah, we have a lot of our— I see the Chris Corciani, Chris Corciani will be here tomorrow. So he’s coming back. But yeah, we have a lot of the former players coming, it should be a good weekend.
I love that, and they’re there often with regularity, which is really fun. The support’s great, but but alumni weekend tomorrow. See it Saturday against Virginia Tech. We’ll talk Hokies here a little bit. We talked a little bit about the win at SMU. You did get 25 points from Darrion Williams in the game. I mean, there were some good things that did happen in the one-point win at SMU.
So all the good things you want to talk about it shouldn't have been a one point win.
So you're not talking about our transition defense?
We could, we could, we probably should. We could and should talk transition defense. That was actually one of Chuckie’s keys. He said, he said, transition defense. He generally, usually, there are two keys. Sometimes three. There were two keys. Transition defense was one.
What was the second one was one?
I think that for alpha off the top of my head be totally honest I don't remember off the top. You know what? I've got written down here but yeah, I think he He was talking about SMU's ability to because
They're their guards are really good--
And they don’t shoot a ton of threes. But they score a lot of points, and they do it on getting on the run. They, I think, 12 a game on average, a little north of 12 a game on average, 12.2. And so you want to slow that down if you can. And, easier said than done. They’re talented. They’ve got three big returners and last year’s C-USA Player of the Year, and he had a good game. Pierre had a good game.
Yeah, he’s a good player. It’s got a good step-back, good, good ISO players. Just guards, or one-on-one defense outside of Tre was, was tough. We played a different ball screen coverage, and we didn’t, we weren’t very good in that. So we had to get back to working on that today. So hopefully we’ll be better than that.
Okay, bring up something you--
Moving forward.
You did do well. Seven turnovers. Seven turnovers was good. Seven.
Thank God.
Right, that’s been a saving grace. That’s been consistent. You’re 13th nationally in turnover margin. You lead the ACC by a lot, by the way. You’re plus four on average. Second is sub three. Virginia Tech’s up there. Virginia Tech’s pretty darn good. But look, you’ve got seven turnovers in the game total in a high-tempo, high-paced game, where you had four pretty quick, and I was confident you weren’t happy about that.
Yeah, I wasn’t.
I’m certain of that. And that’s above your rate, but that isn’t gonna get it done.
It was like, if we do them in bunches, that’s the problem. We have them like back-to-back possessions, or three out of four possessions, or they come in, they come in bunches. We watched those today, too actually.
What do the guys say when you do that?
Well, they think I’m crazy. They look at me like I’m nuts when I’m up there going ballistic about that sort of stuff. They think I’m from a different planet. But it’s like I tell him. I say, I live in reality. You guys live in la la land, on Twitter and all this other stuff. I live in the real world.
I—they’re used to it by now.
I asked Q after the game. We had—we talked for a couple minutes on the record. I said, I said, you—you had 7, 10, 16, 0. How do you feel out there, all, all that. And he said, well, the best part about this is the zero, because I don’t have to hear about it from coach and film tomorrow. That’s my favorite. The 16 assists is great, but it’s the zero turnovers that I don’t have to sit through.
We watch film one-on-one every game, me and him.
How did—well, how did it go after this one at Dallas? Must have gone pretty well.
It was solid, but he had a bunch of defensive mistakes that we went through.
Did he?
Yeah.
How about Darrion’s 25 points? How do you feel about how he's played?
He's good. He shot it. Well, you got going shot it Well, he's turning the ball over too much. He's a lot of our turnovers every game.
He slipped on one of them in fairness, like half-court. I think his shoe came out from under him.
Yeah, he slipped but it’s still a turnover.
It is a turnover. No, there's no doubt. It is what it is.
They don't they don't don't like put an asterix next to it saying “He slipped”. They don't get you don't get that.
They don’t get that notification in the box score.
But no look he made shots, and like I said, he's shooting it as well as he's ever shot. He's already made more threes, and he made he's made in his career. So we can't, I hought he made some big plays down the stretch for us. Thought he did some thought he did some good things. So I was very very pleased with him.
You are undefeated when you win the rebound battle.
We didn't win the rebound battle.
You did against Wake, you didn't against SMU.
We only got one of our game goals against SMU.
Is that right?
So I'm pretty hot.
So did they run after after this?
What do you think?
I think you ran him, and I do I think you ran him for all four of those because you've got the five game goal. What was the fifth? What was the wildcard game goal against SMU?
Win points in transition by eight plus which we did not.
No, that didn't happen.
No. No, so they ran for that one.
All right, so they were so they beat SMU by one. They run after that for the for the they got one of the five game goals. Why are you undefeated when you win the rebound battle?
I mean because the other team misses a bunch of shots, you get them. I mean, that's I mean the simplistic versions that I mean, you know when the other I mean go or get a bunch of rebounds.
Either you're getting your own misses, yeah, which means you're probably putting it back in for layups or you're drawing fouls, or the other teams missing a bunch of shots, so you're not giving them a bunch of second shots.
So the first parts forcing them to to shoot the you know to miss the shots, and then the second parts corralling the ball. So we're gonna have a big physicality check this weekend with Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech plays like a Big Ten team.
They're one of the most focused, and I've played against Mike Young's team since he was at Wofford when I was at Chattanooga. I mean they are they are physical, and so we have to ramp up our physicality from what we're from what we're used to.
Amani Hansberry's their leading scorer.
He's a stud.
15 and 8. Yeah, he's he's a second leading rebounder, but it's by a hair. He's basically their leading scorer leading rebounder. They've got two guys at eight boards a game.
Listen, you're undefeated on the road. You're 6 and 0 on the road in the ACC. I was joking with folks, I said I could come on the air here and say hey quadir Copeland had 16 assists. No turnovers. You're 6 and 0 on the road in the ACC. So what went terribly? What was horrible.
You got the list.
I do I did get the list.
So he wants to go back to Dallas, your 84-83 win over the Mustangs. Are you shocked that you let Quadir Copeland, exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point, question mark, talk you into challenging an out-of-bounds call?
It's a great question, actually. We went over that today, too. I thought it was he swore it was off the other guy, which, of course, he was wrong, typically. But I thought at that point in the game, we had our challenge, we had a timeout. What did we really have to lose? I mean, if we get the ball there, we have the ball up three, they foul us, and pretty much the game's over.
So I thought it was worth it. I didn't particularly feel confident in the challenge, but I felt it was worth it. Patrick [Stacy] said don't challenge. I know Patrick does all our challenges, and he was like, don't challenge. But I thought at that point, what did we have to lose? There's not much time left, and I thought if somehow we won it, then that was basically going to win the game for us.So I thought the risk was worth it, but I didn't think our chances were very good.
You had two timeouts left. So in essence, you basically took one of those two timeouts, but with it you got a challenge.
Because once I got that, I got to set our defense and do everything we need to do. So I thought the positives outweighed the negatives.
How quickly did you realize that you weren't going to win that challenge? Was that like immediate?
I knew pretty quick. Pretty quick. Patrick looked at me and said, no dice.
Finally, what player on the team are you most likely to trust for a challenge? Like if a player comes over and challenges. Not even close. That's what he thought it would be.
They call him “Ven-Allen Wade” because I love him so much.
Is that right?
That's what the team calls him. They call him “Ven-Allen Wade”.
That's beautiful. He's super smart. He's super smart.
That kid, look, he didn't shoot it well from the free throw line. I look out my office window Wednesday. Wednesday's our off day. We got back at, what, 4:30 in the morning? Pulled in your house about 4:30? And Ven's in there shooting free throws. I mean, I should have known the music was a lot better than typical when I hear the music. And so, it wasn’t NBA Youngboy.
What was it? What Vin listens to?
Yeah, it was Ven's music, not all this other stuff. I mean, you hear it when you come to practice.
I thought you picked the soundtrack. I thought that was you.
Yeah, I bet you did.
Yeah, we'll wait on the ones and twos.
But, I mean, Ven was in there. He's everything you want. He's the unsung hero of our team. I mean, he's an absolute warrior. Does everything we ask him to do. He's unbelievably prepared.
Just a great, great person and role model. He's phenomenal. But I would 110% trust Ven. Yeah, he's great. If you asked everybody on our team that same question, they'd say Ven.
They'd say Ven. Ven's the guy.
They'd say Ven.
I'll be excited if Ven sprints over with a challenge for you.
If Ven sprints over with a challenge, we're going to win that one. Lock it in. Lock it in. We're going to win that one.
That's fun. How has that worked? This is the first year of the challenge. How do you feel like that's gone? That's not a fan question.
I like it. I like it. I wish they would do a way. You shouldn't have to take the use it or lose it timeout in the first half if you're going to lose a timeout. You should have an extra timeout. You should be able to carry over the four timeouts into the second half. You shouldn't have to.
If they're going to charge you a timeout, you should get your full allotment of timeouts. Yeah, that makes sense. Not the fourth. That would be one thing I would change. But there's certain rules that need to be changed. There's little things like you didn't even notice this probably. Maybe you did because you're pretty locked in. But at the end of the first half, they can't go look at the clock.
We should have had at the end of the first half, we should have had like 2.4 seconds. We had 1.1 because the clock was messed up. Well, that's reviewable in the last two minutes of the game. That's not reviewable at the end of the half.
Yeah, you had 94 feet to go with one second.
Correct. And we had to play. We had to run a second.But we had another play. We could have actually gotten a good shot if we had 2.4. Instead, we ended up with Tre on a half-court heave. Almost made that happen. Yeah, that's not reviewable. Like they can't go fix the clock in the first half. So there's some little things like that that we could do a little bit better, I think, with the rules.
Why can't they review it?
Just the way the rules are written.
Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Ethan asks, Ethan's here in attendance, and we appreciate all your participation. Ethan asks, what was going through your mind last possession SMU game?
Well, I wish we'd made the free throws. We're three of six in the six-minute game from the free throw line, which is one of the keys. So if we'd have made all six of them, it would have been a two-possession game.
But we knew Miller. I mean, Miller's taken all their big shots. We knew he was going to keep the ball.And we wanted to do, we changed our coverage a little bit to make sure Tre stayed on him. They couldn't get the switch. They tried to get the switch with Ven, which they had driven Ven two possessions earlier from the left wing.
And so we tried to make sure that we kept the matchup how we needed to and ended up working out. But like I said, we shouldn't be in that situation. When you play like we did, you have a 12-point lead with six minutes left, you shouldn't be coming down to a defensive stop to win the game.
Gary wants to know, Scottie was on the floor briefly last game. Scottie was back in the fold for you. What stood out to you about his contribution during that time when he was on the floor?
Look, Scottie does some good things for us. I mean, he got clocked. It should have been a foul on 24. He got nailed in his neck. But, we were going to get Scottie in. Anytime we play those bigger, more physical guys, we want to play Scottie.
Our original plan was to put him in before the under-16, the under-12, and the under-8 media to try to rest Ven, because you can get the rest while he's sitting, and then you get an extra two-and-a-half minutes with the TV timeout. You guys are running all your commercials on radio too.
But you get the extra rest. So we only got him in for that one minute. Our original plan was to put him in for all three of those, and the first one and the second. But sometimes the game flow dictates that. When Scottie's in there, something's going to happen. Nothing's going to be neutral.
And so, sometimes you need somebody to go in there and mix it up. And, he got in there and mixed it up with 24 and stood up to him a little bit. And so I thought Scotty did what we needed him to do in those minutes.
Scottie played 23 games last year for Wyoming. Scottie is a heck of an athlete. He's a big fella.
You watch him run that court in practice, you get out of the way.
He's a great leaper.
Oh, yeah.
And he's a big boy, but he's got great ups.
Reid from the collective wants him to go to football.
I mean, that was what Chuckie and I were talking about.
Reid wants to put that hand in the dirt.
I mean, he's like a left tackle.
I think they want him on defense. I think they think he's a defensive end.
Yeah, maybe defensive end. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a big fella. Could be great at that. Johnny wants to know. Johnny's here in attendance somewhere. Thank you, Johnny, for the question. What does a win against a great team like SMU do for the team, do for NC State?
I mean, it's a quad one win. We needed it. I think we're 11-5 now against quad one and two, three and four against quad one. So, it helps offset our quad three loss to Georgia Tech.
So, I think, look, it was a needed road win. And you've got to dig some out like that. But hopefully it continues to give our guy confidence. Our guys have a lot of confidence that we can dig ourselves out of some holes. But we don't need to – my point is we don't need to be in those situations.So my job is to make sure that we avoid being in those hazardous conditions as much as possible.
Eli here in attendance throws a question your way, Coach. We saw Paul dribble on Tuesday take some shots inside the arc like he did in high school. Can we expect to see more of this in the future or keep him on the three-point line?
Paul can put the ball down. He went in there and had a physical finish. Just couldn't finish it over big 24 or over 10, actually. But, Paul's – that's an area we're working on because teams are going to run him off the line. Teams are going to chase him.
And he gets some – he's one of our best layup shooters because they're all wide open because they're just running at him and he can drive it in there. And there's no – there's not much resistance at the rim.
So Paul's continuing to grow his game. He's got to continue to get stronger. But he's – certainly that's a part of the game that we've been working on with him. One thing we did is, we try to do a lot of individual development this time of year.
I cut off some of our practice time and we take about an extra 30 minutes for individual development because you kind of are who you are as a team.
We can tweak a few things, but really we want our guys to get a little bit better.If we can get one basket better from six guys, then that's really, really good. So we spend a lot of our time doing individual development.
That session is today with the guys. And so one of the things with Paul is working on his finishing. Matt Able as well, working on his finishing and shot faking and driving it and finishing. So, yeah, that's a big piece to it and a big piece for him to continue to grow his game.
Paul had a couple off the deck in Tallahassee against Florida State.
He loved that game. He did. It's a great game. Yeah, that game like committed to memory, don't you?
Pretty much. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think so. It's a great game. It's a great game.19-3 is in that game.
Turnaround will do Virginia Tech noon Saturday and then Louisville Monday night. And so it's a it's boom boom, you got games coming up two games.
It’s like I'm back in the Southland. It's a quick turnaround. Yeah, it's Saturday, Monday. It's up on real ESPN, not ESPN Plus. Watch it on the, you know, linear TV.
Sure. Sure. We have an interloper in our midst. We have, we have a—believe it or not—we have the all-time leading rebounder by average in history, a Blue Devil big man, here in attendance tonight in our midst, as everybody's now wondering who.
I don't know what his decision-making was like on the court. But he married well because he married a Wolfpacker.
He sure did.
He sure married well. I know, I know he had good decisions on that. I don't know what his decision-making was like on the court.
Randy Denton.
We got it. We got a heck of a front line. I mean, Chucky.
Yeah, that's a front court right there.
We could, we could, we could make some things happen there.
That's some all-ACC, All-American action right there. We got it. We got a center of power for it. Everybody would want. Randy Denton is here—All-ACC, All-American, pro for six years, all-time career rebounder in Duke history, over 12 a game on average—and we're very pleased to have Randy not only here, but wearing red. Randy here and wearing red. We appreciate that. Thanks for coming.
Great to see you. It's a lot of fun. We've got a few more fan questions here, and then what we'll do is we've got this segment, and then next segment we'll try to squeeze in some Virginia Tech Hokie preview here for the game coming up Saturday. But if you come here in attendance, I do my best to get your questions on.
Micah asks: you've been impressed with Matt Able's ability, wants to talk a little more—Matt Able, Matt Able’s ability to drive to the basket and absorb contact, especially as a freshman. Can you speak on his development as a player of the season?
Yeah, Matt's been phenomenal. He's getting ready to have him. He's gonna have a couple huge games here down the stretch. I'm talking 15–20 points. He's continued to get better. He's continued to do the things that we need him to do, when he's making winning plays for us. He's doing one thing.
I mean, he had a tremendous spurt there for us in the SMU game that got us—they got us back in it. And so he's getting more and more comfortable. So I've been very, very pleased with him. He's an extremely hard worker.
So after every game, I sit down with him. I watch every minute that he played; we go through every minute. It's a tedious process the day after the game. We go through every minute he's been playing more, so it takes a lot longer now.
But, he's one of the best I've ever had. He may be the best, but he's certainly one of the three best I've ever had. He can take exactly what you tell him on film, and he can go do it and translate it to the court immediately.
Well, if you tell him one thing, he can go, and that's a skill now. It's a skill. Not a lot of people have it—they may listen and do it, then they either can't do it, or they forget. I mean, he can take exactly what you tell him to do, and he can go on the court and he can do it.
And I thought it was real growth. He got some good looks in the first half from three. He was zero for four, I believe, at halftime. And so he got—but he had—he's two for two in the second half, but he had quality looks. The qualities were there. We had a great one more to him in the left corner. He missed it. There's a couple. I thought, he does this sidestep thing. He thinks he can make it.
We kind of argue back for it, but I cut a deal with him this week that I'm gonna let him shoot his little floater if he'll do that as opposed to shoot the three. I got a better—the percentages are in my favor. He doesn't realize that, but. We negotiated. We shook on him, office. So we had a little negotiation yesterday.
So I want it. He just doesn't think I want it, but he's excited because he's gonna get to drive it in there and shoot his little floater, and I'm excited because I'm not gonna have to watch this sidestep three that he makes—he's made one all year in a game. So I'm excited about that, but he can make it; he really can make it.
He's not wrong about that. He's a great shooter. But he's really made a lot of progress. It's not easy as a freshman, and he's made a lot of progress, and I'm very, very proud of him. And like I said, that skill—being able to take that from film and get it on the court.
He's cut his defensive mistakes. When we first started watching, he was making quite a few. He's been under three defensive miscues each of the last four games, which is phenomenal. And so that allows him—that allows him to stay out there and do a good job finishing. We're working on his finishing. He's a really good left-handed finisher. And so he's got a bright future ahead of him.
13 points, 22 minutes went five of nine in total from the field.
I should have played him some at the end. He went on that big spurt and then took him out with about five minutes left, and I should have played him some. I should have put him back in there a little bit and let him go. He can—he can help us close out games now. He's at a point where he can help us close out games.
I believe that, and he's made a lot of big shots in his life. And he's gonna be—he's gonna be a really good force here down the stretch.
Do you think coming from a basketball pedigree for him attributes to him being able to translate from film to the court? His dad played.
Yeah, his dad was a great player. You know, his dad—dad was a coach, that was a high school coach in Atlanta. His dad has a high-level basketball, basketball background, and so I think that certainly gives Matt an advantage.
And that's why his IQ is what it is, and that's why, that's why he's advanced from a basketball standpoint. His father Doug's done a phenomenal, phenomenal job with him, and so, Matt's, way more advanced than your typical freshman.
Mark asks, Mark's here in attendance. With the team playing so well before heading into the gauntlet of the schedule, what psychological tools have you found useful to maintain aggression, avoid complacency, and amp up motivation?
You should probably ask his son.
His son is on our team. Oh, who's Mark? Where's Mark?
I believe that's Colt's [Langdon] dad.
Oh, OK, that's great.
It's Colt's dad.
Great to see you, Mark.
But I mean, look, you have to, the way I look at it is you have to, sometimes when things aren't going well, you've got to give them some confidence and some juice. When things are going well, you've got to bring them back down to reality.
So it's my job to kind of be the contrarian. And so I have to do the opposite of what, because we're fighting human nature. So you have to do the opposite of what human nature is. That's the job of the head coach. And so that's what we do. You've got to have that.
Right now, our team needs some fire and some toughness. And they need the “not-so-happy” Will Wade. Sometimes, before Clemson, we need to keep it a little looser. And so you've got to do the opposite of what everybody's expecting, so to speak. Thank you, Mark.
Thanks for that question. Good to see you. Here in the tent.
Colt's just had surgery. Colt's doing well.
Good, I didn't know that.
He's back and rolling, so he's doing well.
That's fantastic. I love to hear that. I do want to note, you said Chris Corchiani will be here tomorrow.
Correct.
He's also doing a little site. Saturday, sorry. Yep, thank you, Saturday. He'll also be back here the last game of the regular season. We play Stanford. And he's going to be here for a meet and greet here at Pitt Authentic Barbecue at 11 o'clock. And they wanted me to mention that we tip it after, I forget what time we tip it.
I have no idea.
Sometime in the afternoon. But it's after Corch's here from 11 to 1. So that'll be a lot of fun. We do have a question here. Super Bowl, I'm going to leave it to Drake Thomas, Garrett Bradbury, and Cory Durden. That's who we're mostly concerned with in the Super Bowl. I don't even know if you're going to watch. You'll be prepping for the Louisville Cardinal game.
Well, this shows you how messed up I am. I didn't even know the Super Bowl was Sunday. I thought the NFL season was over. Yeah, there you go. So we were getting to Louisville, and Zupko comes in my office the other day and he's like, hey, are we going to watch the Super Bowl? I said, when's the Super Bowl? When is it? He said, Sunday. I said, oh.I said, I thought that was over. Because didn't they play the games a couple weeks ago?
I mean, they've been playing for a while.
But they played, anyway, I thought the thing was over. So we're going to do something with the team for the Super Bowl.
Good. That's good.
They've got it all planned. I don't know what the heck it is.
It's a whole thing.
We'll do something in Louisville, I guess.
Hokies are 16 and 7, 5 and 5 in the ACC, net 57, defensive rating also 57, tempo right in the middle of the country, 76 points a game in ACC play. Most notably, they beat Virginia in triple overtime. They have great capability.They also have a first round draft pick. Neo Avdalas, he's a big 6'9'' guard. They're a pretty good ball club, coach.
Yeah, they're a very good team and somebody that's going to be a tough, tough, tough game for us. And so they've had a kid who's been out for most of, he's been out for all of the ACC season so far. And he's going to be back for our game.
Tyler Johnson, he's a sophomore, their second leading scorer. And so he'll be back. And so look, this is an important game. They're very, very well coached. There's not many coaches in the country I respect more than Mike Young. He was at Wofford when I was at Chattanooga.
So I've coached against him. We have a play called Terrier that I've run for years that I stole from him at Wofford. I call it “Terrier” because they're the Wofford Terriers. And there's an out of bounds action that he ran that we don't really run it that much. But any time we guard it, we call it “Charlie” because that's what he called it.
So I mean, he's just a phenomenal, phenomenal coach.We have a ton of respect for him. And look, they've got a great team. They've lost some buzzer beaters.They got beat at the buzzer at Wake Forest. They got beat at the buzzer at SMU.
They're physical. They play like a big 10 team. They've got big bodies. Tobi Lawal's one of the best athletes in the country. He has a 49.5” vertical jump. The number one vertical jump in the combine has been 48 inches. He's 49.5”.
So he blocked five shots at Louisville the other night. So I mean, look, they've come an awful week off. They're on the bubble. And so we're going to get their absolute best shot. And it's on us to make sure that we're playing well and doing what we need to do to play our best.
