NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media to discuss the 82-73 win over Virginia Tech.
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The top three point shooting offense against the top three point defense, what do you think you guys were able to do well to get going from beyond the arc?
Well, they limited our attempts. We usually attempt 30, 35. We attempted a little over 20 today. But our best three point offense was in transition. Got us going in transition, so that was really our best three point offense. But Paul's a weapon. Paul missed that first one and he hit his next four, I believe. Missed the last two. So we got relatively quality looks for how they were playing and made a great back cut on the first play for a layup on the top block. So he's learned how to play through that and settle in and make sure that the game comes to him.
You guys got rebounded by five, 35 to 30. They had 12 offensive rebounds, you had five. What were they doing that made it hard to get offensive, on the defensive side of the glass and on the offensive side of the glass?
I mean, Lawal's a world class athlete. We have been a very good offensive rebounding team all year, so we don't ever get any offensive rebounds. So that's not really that different for us. But they missed a lot of close in shots and they were able to dig some of those out because Lawall's just a phenomenal athlete. And certainly Hansberry's extremely, extremely physical, so those guys did a good job in the restricted arc against us.
Will, in your time coaching him, how has Copeland's leadership skills grown? Do you think that's a natural thing for him or is it something he's worked on?
Well, he's a natural leader. You've just got to make sure he's channeled the right way. So he's certainly a natural leader. People are drawn to him because he's, he's got it. I've said this before, the best thing he does is he gives other people confidence.
All that talking and all that stuff, he gives the rest of your team a lot of confidence, a lot of juice. And so he gets other guys confident. But, I think it's more about harnessing it and moving it in the right direction, which is what he's been better at this past year.
What did you like about your defense on Hammond today? I believe you held him without a basket.
Yeah, I thought the pressure bothered him. Tre did a great job. Tre's been phenomenal for us defensively the last couple of games. We wanted to make 17 initiate the offense because Hammond kind of initiates and usually initiates a lot of the offense.
So we were face guarding him in the full court, trying to make it difficult for him to get the ball. And Tre did that excellent. Tre played great, like 36, 37 minutes and held Hammond up and down the court. So I think by the time he got the ball, he was a little bit tired, a little bit fatigued. Took some tough kind of mid-range shots, fadeaway shots, settled for some threes.
And so he's a tremendous player. He makes over 50 percent of his off the bounce tough shots. And so we were able to limit him today. And I thought, trying to throw their offensive rhythm off a little bit was helpful with that.
The fact that they were, I think they held Williams to just one basket and yet you still executed the offense very well. What did that do to you? Yeah, I mean, we just couldn't get Darrion going.
He missed some threes early in the game. He missed some open threes. And then we went back to him in the porch and tried to get him in some long post situations. And just, just struggled today. They did a great job. I mean, Lawal's a great athlete. You put athleticism on him, it's sometimes a little bit tougher. But we know he'll bounce back. And Virginia Tech had a great game plan. They're very, very well coached. And, they were going to do what they needed to do to take Darrion out of the game.
Coach, you talk about game plans. In the second half, it feels like they were able to counteract your runs more. What were they doing differently in the second half compared to the first half?
I mean, I think he did a great job using his timeouts. He did that in the first half and the second half. And we just, we could never get a critical stop when we needed to. When it got down to three, we got the barrage of stops there. We hit the three and then we got going there. But, I mean, look, they're a good team. They've been on a week off. They were rested.
This was a big game for them. It was a big game for us. And they played with desperation. They played how you would want to play in the situation that they're in. And our guys answered those runs and answered those, changes in momentum very well. I thought we did a good job staying connected, staying together. I thought, we had a couple little things there where we weren't quite as connected as we need to be. But, for the most part, we did a good job staying connected. And, that allowed us to counteract those.
But, look, they're a very good team. They're going to make the NC tournament. They're a very good team. They're going to find a way to make the NC tournament. They've got two good players. Johnson, I assume, will be back here soon. He gives them another three-point shooter, cutter, offensive rebounder.
Thank God they didn't have him. Who knows how many offensive rebounders they've got. But, they're a really good team. And, they had a lot on the line today, and they played that way. And our guys were good enough to respond and answer.
Will, I saw a social media clip from after the SMU game where you used one of my favorite phrases, “good to great”. What do you see as a path from good to great for this team?
It's going to be more consistent. We haven't been as consistent as we need to be. But, we're getting closer than we were.But it's really about consistency, complete game. We've been very good at spurts. We've been great at spurts. But we need to be great consistently. And so we've talked about that, and I think we're making progress towards that. But we're not there yet.
What was it like to interact with the basketball alumni in the last 24 hours?
It was great. We had a bunch of them in practice yesterday, a couple at the hotel this morning. We tell our players all the time, drink from the well, but don't forget who dug it. There's a lot of people that worked really hard to make sure that this program is where it is and that it's, you know, that it's well thought of nationally. And so it was great to reconnect with those guys and spend some time with them. I had some of the pregame talk this morning. So it was just a good time. We hadn't been able to do it, I guess, the first time in five or six years we've been able to pull this off.
So it was something that was very important to us. Our staff did a great job doing that. I hope everybody felt welcome. And we're going to make this an annual tradition where we can bring it back and spend a little time and reconnect with our roots a little bit.
Coach, let's use Virginia Tech on this side. What did you like about your team's frontcourt defense on Amani Hansberry?
I thought, early in the game we were going to double it, which we did. And he kicked it out for two open threes. We left number two open in the corner for three. And then he kicked it out opposite to leave zero for the first three of the game. And so we kind of called off the double and just tried to play a one-on-one. I think they weren't necessarily prepared for that in the first half.
And then the second half they just put it down and he just started getting fouled. He's a great player. He's a physical player. But we just, we're going to live with him doing what he does without us giving up rotational threes.
And then you mentioned number two, Jaden Schutt. He hit a three with 11-20 to go to cut it to three. What did you like about how your team executed a little bit better after that down the stretch?
Yeah, it was a big three. It was out of an offensive rebound. I mean, Chute's an absolute weapon, transferred from Duke. Schutt's 50% on transition corner threes. I mean, Chute's over 40%. They do a great job getting him low. So, baseline, sideline, out of bounds, that was awful. A broken play. And so, really, the time out there was really just to regroup our guys, calm our guys down, and to get our guys back in rhythm a little bit.
Coach, you got a quick turnaround, sir. You mentioned that you had to do that at McNeese quite a bit.
A little different in the Southland, but yeah. It was a lot easier. We showed up, we had way better players than everybody else.
That won't be the case Monday.
Yeah, you're playing a really good Louisville team. And how concerned are – I won’t say concerned, but how important is it to be on point with preparation?
Oh, shoot, we get embarrassed if we're not on point. So, I mean, yeah, it's very, very important. We're actually flat out tonight. We're going to go there tonight, start our preparation tomorrow.
So, it's a great opportunity for us. It's a great opportunity for our program. First year, we're on big Monday. We have one of those time slots with Louisville. So, it's a big opportunity for us, and hopefully we'll be able to prepare the right way to meet the moment on Monday.
Six wins straight, what's been the most positive aspect of growth you've seen in the 20 straight since that loss to Georgia Tech?
Yeah, I'm still mad about that loss to Georgia Tech. I was going to bring it up, but – Yeah, I'm still pretty hot about that. But, I think we've found different ways to win. We've really – like I said, I wish we were more consistent. But I think we've found different ways to win. We've just got our way about us.We find it.
Sometimes Darrion's playing great, and we win. Sometimes he didn't play great like today, and we win. Sometimes, Q's makes mistakes. We've just found different guys. I think Tre 's really stepped up. I thought Matt Able gave us some good minutes again in the second half. So, we've just been in it fine. We've done it a lot of different ways, which, I was worried about Virginia Tech's physicality today. We haven't really played well against physical teams.
They did in the ball screens coverage against Q. They did what a lot of – they did what Virginia did. They did what Georgia Tech did. We've been working on that to try to make sure that when that happened again, we wouldn't be in that situation. Our guys did a much better job responding to that coverage today.
So, I just think we've found different ways, which is the mark of a solid team is being able to do it a lot of different ways.
