NC State head coach Will Wade met with Wolfpack Sports Network to discuss the 90-61 loss at No. 11 Virginia.
Coach, it's a 12-point game right around nine minutes to play, give or take. It got away from you late in that last, we'll call it, quarter of the game. What happened at the back end of this ball game, where it got away from you, lost 90 to 61?
Took terrible shots and turned the ball over. Just look, we're not built to beat a team like Virginia. Unfortunately, sometimes you get a report card on where you are. And it's kind of where we are. We can compete with some teams in this league, but not the upper crust of this league.
We're not there yet. And tonight, it was very, very obvious. They hit a lot of tough shots. We couldn't make hardly anything. We couldn't make open shots. We were passing up open shots. They shot 70% in the second half. So just really, really poor. And the last nine minutes of the game, they poured it on us.
Eight blocks from Grunloh, four blocks from Onyenso. They had 12 blocks combined, that's a ton. How hard was it going inside, going up against those guys? They really asserted themselves down low.
Yeah, man, eight blocks in the first ten minutes of the game. We worked on it all week. We're just driving in there, and we don't know what we're doing. So I mean, we got exactly what we deserved. We got exactly what we deserved. We got exactly what we earned. And that's the way the game of basketball works.
32 bench points for Virginia. They had a bunch off the bench. Jacari White, who you and I talked about pregame. He didn't play in the first meeting in Raleigh. He was a difference maker. He had four threes. They had 11 from Mallory. So they got a bunch of bench points from two of their guys. It's hard to keep up with scoring off the bench with the comparison of production. Able struggled to shoot. Terrance struggled to shoot tonight.
Yeah, I mean, just, I mean, look, they beat us everywhere. Their starters beat us. Their bench beat us. They just have, they're better than us. I mean, look, they've beaten the brakes off of us two different times. They're just better than us. They're flat-out better than us. And they're a tough matchup for us. And, our guys had good spirit coming into the game.
But you've got to have an edge to you. And we didn't have the edge that you need. And, we just, we don't, we don't have that. And so we're just, we, when we run into these type teams where there's a ton of resistance, it's very, very difficult for us. It's very, very challenging for us. And, this is a result. We get our doors blown off. And if we don't get some stuff corrected, there's going to be some more nights like this.
Do you feel like Paul played well with 22 points? He had six rebounds as well.
I mean, no, he took, I mean, he took 12 threes. He's three of 12 from three. No, I don't think he, I don't think anybody played well. I think we had one player that played, that played well. So no, I mean, look, you can be like that. We didn't play well. We didn't coach well. We didn't do anything very well, but no.
