NC State head coach Will Wade met with Wolfpack Sports Network for the penultimate weekly radio show of the season, where he previewed the Notre Dame game, recruiting, and much more!
It's great to be here. We are downtown Raleigh here at The Pitt Authentic Barbecue, talking ball with Coach Will Wade. Great to see everybody here in attendance. It's our second-to-last show of the year, which is crazy. Amazingly, we're here at this point, Coach. This is our ninth of ten shows.
Disappointing. We've only got one more left.
I know. It's been a blast. It's been really, really fun. We've got this show this Thursday, next show next Thursday. I guess we can let the cat out of the bag on next week's setup. There has been some limited seating just in an effort to celebrate the restaurant here.
We're going to be right out there. It's going to be a lot of fun. There's going to be food. We're going to be outside. I don't know why we wouldn't be outside for the last show of the year, just as a celebration of ball and life and the Pack.
I like it.
Yeah, let's do it.
Hopefully, the weather is like it is today. I mean, the temperature.
The temperature. I think it actually just stopped precipitating outside. So that would work. Although ideally, it's not—it's been raining all day. So hopefully that doesn't continue. Coach, we're going to talk about Virginia a little bit. I know you've been chomping at the bit to talk more Cavaliers here at the Coach's Show.
Oh, yeah.
90-61 final. Loss to Virginia. Time off—can there be too much? Is that not helpful? Is that irrelevant?
That's an excuse. It's an excuse. We don't like excuses. No, no. That's an excuse. It's not a thing. No, we don't like that. Look, we didn't play very well. I mean, they're big. They blocked multiple three-point shots. So, they're better than us. That's all there is to it. They've beaten the brakes off of us twice. I mean, they're better than us. At some point, you've got to live in reality. And they just are.
And they beat you in the wash of the game. They do a great job. They're very well coached. They've got very good players. And they beat you in the wash of the game. Most teams beat you in special situations, that sort of thing. They beat you just in the wash, and they take advantage of all your mistakes.
And we went through all those today in film. And give them credit. They're a really good team. They took advantage of our mistakes. And we didn't help. And we had it down to two with five minutes to go in the first half. And give up a baseline three to six when we don't help over.
We help too late. There's just a lot of little plays like that that most teams can't make you pay for, that they make you pay for. And that stuff adds up. That's why you get your doors blown off.
How do I interpret 16 offensive rebounds in that ballgame for the Pack? That's more than one would have expected.
When you interpret that, we missed a lot of shots. When you miss a lot of shots, you've got more opportunities to rebound. So it's not about how many you get. It's about the percentage of what you get.
So when you miss a bunch of shots, there's just more balls to grab.
Minus-4 in rebounds isn't all that bad.
We did a good job. We actually did. I mean, that was one of the bright spots. We held our own rebounding a little bit better. Our guards in the first half, particularly, really rebounded.
Terrance Arceneaux came and got some big-time rebounds. Tre helped us with some big-time rebounds. So our guards rebounded down in the first half, and then we couldn't sustain it.
Quadir had an early turnover. He didn't play a ton of minutes relative to how many he's played in some other ballgames.
Did you see his second foul?
I mean, I'm sure I did.
The one where they called him for the block. Did you see that?
Did I see it called, or what are you asking me right now?
Have you seen a replay of it?
I have not seen a replay.
Oh, my God. You should watch the replay.
What am I looking for in this replay?
I don't know if I can say that, but you should watch the replay.
Just because it's an interesting play?
Interesting play. Interesting play.
The second, Quadir's second foul.
The first foul he fouled in transition in front of our bench. The second foul, they called him for a block or a flop. It's the best charge we've taken all year.
Yeah, but they changed the rule on charges.
There's no question. Rule change or anything, no question on this one. That's the sort of thing that throws us off kilter. It's a little thing in the game, and you talk to the ref. I don't ever talk to the referee guy because he's a fool's errand. But they'll just tell you, "Oh, it's no big deal. We just missed one play. We missed it."
Well, it changes the whole course of the game. We don't have our point guard out there. Like it changes the whole—and I'm not complaining about that, but that's not the reason we lost. We lost with him out there, too. But it changes just the whole dynamic of the game, and that's what people don't understand.
I mean, yeah, Q didn't play because he picked up two quick fouls, and he picked up two more fouls in the second half. He had four fouls. So just—but as I said, that wasn't going to change the outcome of that game. Maybe we lose by 18 instead of 30. I mean, that wasn't changing anything.
Matt Able, Terrance Arceneaux, and Copeland combined for three makes, which is not great. But Copeland is not being in and not playing as many minutes because he had four fouls—he did have five assists in 22 minutes, but he has four fouls.
Will Wade Well, the thing is, he gets us open shots. He can put the defense in rotation. When we don't have him in, it's a lot harder for us to get open shots. And we can't get the defense in rotation. We can't get clean looks. And so that's the bigger issue, not having him in, is that our shot quality goes drastically down.
Okay. Take me through what one does ideally, like best-case scenario, against elite shot blockers, like maybe the nation's best shot blockers. Grunloh had eight. Onyenso had four. Twelve blocks in the ballgame—that's a very big number. They're a lot earlier in the game as well, so maybe that affects the way you attack the paint to some degree. You mentioned a couple of them were on three-point shots. What's the best way?
We had two threes blocked. I told our team today, under 3% of threes get blocked. You know how bad a shot it has to be to get your three blocked? It has to be a terrible shot. Like, statistically speaking, it's like 2.6% of threes get blocked. We had two blocked in the first half.
Yeah.
You know how terrible your shot selection has to be to have two shots blocked, two threes blocked? I told our team—because I've been a head coach like 12 years now—I'm not sure I've ever had two threes blocked in a game, much less in a half.
Yeah, it was hard.
Did you know that?
I didn't know the data behind it. I did not.
Pretty bad.
Yeah, it's not great. So of those 12 blocks, two of them were on the perimeter. A bunch of them were injured.
It's a tough matchup for Ven. It's a tough matchup. He had a couple blocked, but I mean, that's—we didn't go into the game saying we're going to sling the ball in the post to Ven and let him go shoot jump hooks. Like, that's not very smart. So we kind of panicked and threw the ball in there a couple of times. Musa had one blocked.
I mean, so we just—you've got to drive it, shot-fake them, get them in the air, try to draw some fouls. You've got to collapse the defense. But, look, they pose a lot of problems for us just in terms of how they play and what they do and their personnel. I mean, a lot of it's personnel-based. And they just—they pose a lot of problems for us, and they've exploited us twice in ways that a lot of other teams can't.
There's a little bit of a fracas in the middle, a ruckus in the middle there. Scottie got ejected.
Yeah, how does Darrion get pushed? And that starts the whole thing, and Darrion gets a technical.
Yeah, I noticed that on the replay. Darrion got shoved.
Yeah, and then he gets a technical.
I did notice that, yeah.
How's that?
Now, Scottie earned it. That was a no-doubter. Scottie’s a big fella. That was a very visible—there was no doubt on that one.
Yeah, but that was my thing is they pushed Darrion to start the whole thing.
They did. I noticed that.
They were so worried about me, giving me a technical when I was calling a timeout. They thought I was running out of the court. I was running out to call a timeout, and he's over there so busy trying to give me a technical that he doesn't even understand what the hell's going on.
Yeah, I felt that.
He doesn't even understand what's going on because he's too busy trying to give me a freaking technical.
Yeah, it took a little while to figure out what was going on there. I mean, for them to figure out what was going on there. And then we came back, and that was how it wound up being free throws for Virginia, and Scottie got ejected.
Because Darrion got a technical. We had two technicals—one on Darrion, one on Scottie—which is just unbelievable to me. Unbelievable to me. He got pushed. That's what started the whole thing, so how can he get a technical?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't have an answer for you. I don't.
Nobody does.
It's a little rhetorical, but I don't. No one in here does. Everyone here's mouths are agape. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
What made their interior resistance—what made their perimeter defense effective? Pack was 9 of 33 beyond the arc.
Well, yeah, and they can stay home. They play two-on-two on the ball screens. You can't put them in rotation. You want to get two on the ball, one in help. So you've got three covering a ball screen, then you've got three on two when you pass it out. They can play the ball screen two-on-two and stay covered on the perimeter. So it just makes it really tough.
Yeah, it's hard. They have a good three-point percentage defense.
They play well. You've got a good defense everywhere.
Yeah, yeah. Blocked a lot of shots. It was a hard game. Then the second half was really productive. The ball game was like a 10-point game with about nine minutes left. 10, 12-point game with about nine minutes left.
12 points. Nine minutes and 30-some-odd seconds.
Yeah. And that was the inflection point of the ball game. It didn't go the way Chuckie and I wanted it to. Mad Dog either. That didn't go the way we wanted it to.
Or me.
Three games left now in the regular season. It's a Notre Dame quick turnaround, rapid-fire here: Notre Dame Saturday, Duke Monday, and then the regular season finale is against Stanford in the Lenovo Center before the ACC tournament.
As we're getting set for the Fighting Irish here, Coach, Notre Dame has had a—quote-unquote from their head coach—"season from hell." That is what he said after the last ballgame against the Duke Blue Devils, where they lost by almost 50 points. They've had a lot of injuries at Notre Dame.
They had another lead man out last game, and they've missed him for the last few games. His status is TBD. Markus Burton, who's a preseason All-ACC first-team possibility, averaged 18 points a game last year.
He's been out for the year, and I don't believe that there's a possibility he comes back at this late stage here for the ACC tournament. So they've been in the infirmary ward. For those Fighting Irish players who are available, Micah Shrewsberry's son is one of the lead three-point shooters in the ACC. Cole Certa.
He's second to Paul.
To Paul by percentage. Yeah, he can really flick it. He's a really good shooter, 40% three-point shooter. Braeden Shrewsberry has taken nearly 200 on the year. He has 78 makes. What pops on film? Is it that? Is it Cole Certa?
Certa's been averaging 20 points a game in February in the league. He's had two 30-point games. He's been averaging 11 three-point attempts a game. He's had six games where he made six-plus threes.
11 three attempts by himself?
By himself.
Wow, that's a huge number.
First off, Coach Shrewsberry is an unbelievable coach. I coached against him when he was at Penn State. He's a phenomenal coach. He's as good an X's and O's basketball coach as there is in our conference and in the country. One of my good friends is on his staff. I worked with him, and we were actually roommates for a little while.
Who's that?
Kyle Getter. We worked together at VCU for a long time. He's one of his assistants. One of the best human beings you'll ever meet, KG. But they've been decimated by some injuries, and they still play extremely, extremely hard.
Their big kid, 33, plays as hard as any player in the country. Towt, I think he may play football next year, from what I've heard. He is physical, and he leads the ACC in offensive rebounding averages—three and a half offensive rebounds a game.
He's a transfer, but a really, really good player. And they play extremely hard. It's not like they had mailed it in. The game got away from them against Duke, but with 58 seconds left, they're still diving on the floor for loose balls. It's going to be an incredibly challenging, incredibly difficult game for us.
Towt was a great player at Northern Arizona, and he's done a really good job for those guys. This is going to be tough sledding on Saturday.
6'8", 250, Carson Towt, All-Big Sky basketball player, could play football? Is that right? 6'8", 250, that would be a heck of a frame on the football field. Formerly a long-time Flagstaff resident, All-Big Sky player for NAU. That's where Ben Howland got his run, got his start before he went to Pittsburgh.
How many people know that?
Glad you asked. Ross Land and Dan McClintock were on that squad. Land was the shooter, McClintock a 7-footer. Remember it well. Ben Howland, Northern Arizona. That was their one big pop two hours north of Phoenix.
Yep, I've been there.
Have you? I've never been to Flagstaff. We've talked more between the last show and this week. By the way, it's really fun to talk to the assistants last week.
How was that?
It was awesome. They were great. All three of them were great. We talked more about Nebraska.
Probably rather talk to them than me.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. It's all love here for all. We missed you. We loved having them, but two things can be true.
I was a little busy.
Two things can be true. Yeah, you were on the road. We did miss you. I hope everything was great.
It went really well. Real good.
I'm very glad to hear that.
Real good.
That's a good trip. That's fantastic. I love that. And maybe we'll talk more about that in about 12 months, maybe eight months.
Yeah, we're not going to talk about that now.
No, no, no. We'll do that. But Will here comes to every sense—very frustrated. That's great. We do have fan questions coming your way. We're talking Notre Dame. We got sidetracked on Notre Dame.
Come on, man. Stay focused.
I know. I'm trying to lock in here. So Jalen Haralson is actually the biggest recruit in the history of Notre Dame basketball ever. He's a five-star consensus recruit. He's a big-time player. He's been hurt since he hurt his ankle against SMU. In the last game he played, he scored 23 points.
That was 16 days ago against the Mustangs. Notre Dame has had ups and downs. He can really go. He's 6'7", about 200 pounds. He plays point. Point guard. 6'7" point guard. Would he have been that with Burton on the team? Would he have moved Burton over?
I don't know. They probably would have played together. If you have two talented guys like that, you play them together and figure it out. You can't worry too much about "this guy's this position, that guy's that position." There are two positions: on the court or on the bench. You put those guys on the court and let them go fight it out and figure it out.
That part's been disappointing for their staff. They have probably one of the best backcourts in the league and the country. Unfortunately, Burton missed a ton of time, and so has Haralson here. So we'll see. We're going to prepare as if he's going to be ready to play. I think he was close to playing against Duke from what they were saying.
Give them another half a week, and we certainly expect him to play. They're fighting to get into the ACC tournament. They have a lot they're playing for and a lot they're trying to accomplish. They're going to be ready to go, and it's going to be a difficult test.
50% shooter is Haralson. 6'7", 220, point guard. Is he Quadir Copeland's frame? Is he that big of a point guard and ball handler?
Yes. Yeah. He's a real slithery, can just weave his way through things, and does a really, really good job. He has elite feel, really good touch around the rim. He's a great finisher around the rim. There's a reason all that stuff you said at the beginning about how highly touted he was and how good he was.
Those recruiting service guys aren't great at everything, but your daughter or son could pick out those top 10 or 15. That's called recruiting. That's not evaluating. You've got to evaluate when you get outside the top 15 or so. Those top 15, they don't miss on them.
Let me follow up on that with a real question. After the top 15 guys, it gets a little muddy?
After the top 10 or 12, yeah. In the top 10 or 12, anybody can—some of those guys bust, but a bust for them is a little different. After that, it's all about fit and style. The talent's just so good you can tell.
You don't have to watch them play; you can watch them run a couple of times, watch them move. Those guys just move differently. It just pops. You can just watch them move and say, "Ooh, I like that."
And he's one of these guys. Jalen Haralson.
He's at La Lumiere, a really good program up there. Have you ever been to La Lumiere?
I've never been there. I know of it, but I've never been there.
It's in the middle of nowhere.
Is that right?
Yeah. Have you ever heard "10 miles past the end of the earth"? Turn left and go another 20 miles, and you'll get to La Lumiere.
Where is it? In what state?
It's in Northern Indiana. So he didn't go far. The first time I went there, it was late at night, and you're driving down this road thinking, "Man, if I drive off this road, nobody's going to find me for three days." It's way out there, but their former head coach, Shane Heirman, is the head coach at Incarnate Word in the Southland.
They've had a great tradition and really good players. It's a high-end academic boarding school. It's a great program, and he's just continued his ascension at Notre Dame.
Micah Shrewsberry, who's in his third year now as the head coach at Notre Dame—you said you know him pretty well. He started at an NAIA school in South Bend, Indiana University South Bend, for his first head coaching job. But he's buddies with Brad Stevens.
He was his assistant for a long time.
Yeah, they're really tight. He was with the Celtics, and he was an assistant in college and pro. I think his son was a walk-on at Notre Dame, if I'm not mistaken.
Now he's in his third year, and they've had this "infirmary ward" of a season. It's been really difficult for him, but they had high hopes with Burton, this recruit, and his son's really good. He's a shooter. Cole Certa can really shoot it.
So it's been an odd year in South Bend, and TBD as to who will be available. As we alluded to before, right now they're fighting for ACC tournament eligibility. They're 3-12 in the league. That's a three-way tie ahead of Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech's 2-13; Boston College, Pitt, and Notre Dame are 3-12.
How many make it, and how many don't make it?
I guess the bottom three don't make it. So Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Boston College.
Freakin’ Georgia Tech had won since they beat us, and Georgia Tech lost nine. Good God Almighty. Looking at that on your screen here.
Yeah, that's true. I didn't bring—you brought it up. I'm more prone to bring up Tallahassee. We could talk about how--
They've been playing well.
That win looks better and better. I'm glad you brought it up, Coach. That's great.
Where's Luke Loucks? Let him know you're a big fan. Big fan of that game.
Yeah. You could tell him also that Mad Dog and I were listening to the ballgame against Miami, thinking, "Hey, they might pull this thing off." That was a really close game.
You listened on the way back?
Oh yeah.
You've got these smartphones now, you can put them on as you're driving.
No, I'm a radio guy.
I know you are. You gotta listen to it.
It's beautiful. We're blessed.
Do you critique the other play-by-play guys when you're listening?
Well, yeah.
I mean, we do like coaches and stuff. Is that what you do? Are you like, "Oh man, he kind of botched that call right there; he's a little bit behind on the play"? How do you listen? Are you listening with a critical ear?
You really flipped the tables on this show here.
I'm actually curious.
Yes, very much.
Do you try to learn stuff? If they say something that you like, you can't really use that because that's their signature, right?
I would never steal a catchphrase from a guy, and I don't have a catchphrase. I think that makes it about me. I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about the Pack. If I'm answering you-
Say there's "Red in the End Zone" or something.
I know where you got that from, from Clemson.
No, I don't think they said there was an "Orange in the End Zone." I was actually thinking Tennessee.
But anyway, what do you say when the Pack scores a touchdown?
It just depends on the situation.
"Touchdown!" CJ Bailey runs it in from eight yards.
Or what's the situation to decide the game?
Just "Touchdown Pack!"
Could be that for sure. Could be that. And it depends.
"Give him six!"
I've said that before. I think John Ward said that. John Ward is a little before me. I know who he is, but he's not a contemporary of mine. For those listening, he did Tennessee for a really long time. But yes, I listen. I know a lot—we all know each other. So there's that too, but there's a Rolodex of guys I listen to, and they make me better.
Which side of the broadcast were you listening to for Florida State/Miami?
They aired Florida State. The ballgame was at Florida State, so they aired the home feed on that one. Sometimes they are both on satellite because they're ranked, and they want both feeds. But we were listening to Jeff Culhane. He did a great job.
Did you learn anything? What'd you learn?
Jeff is a really infectiously warm person. This is the honest-to-goodness truth. Jeff's one of everybody's favorite people. You would love Jeff Culhane. I hope to be as infectious and warm as Jeff is on the air. His enthusiasm and his description are really accurate, but he's a great dude.
He's the kind of guy you want to hang out with. You can't really snowball people out of who you are. This is way more than I expected to talk about any of this, but that's good.
I have updated the transcript to change Tre Holloman to Tre Holloman and ensured the formatting remains consistent.
We've got fan questions rolling in. I want to ask you a question that's kind of off the beaten path, and then we'll get to some fan questions here. I've been doing a little dive.
Not any more off the path than we just went.
We can't—no. We'll be more on the path than that. That's as far off the path as we'll probably go. The WAB metric, the "Wins Above Bubble" metric, has been around for about a decade. But it's come to our attention through the committee and the NCAA that the committee will be using this metric with more emphasis than they have in the past to figure out who will be seeded where and why.
Years ago, it started with data; it was RPI for a long time—the Ratings Percentage Index. Everybody might remember that. Remember, the Missouri Valley figured out how to game it. They had nine teams.
In fact, here's a trivia nugget for you, Coach: the highest RPI team to never make the NCAA tournament is Missouri State. They were RPI 21, and they didn't let them in the dance because they decided they couldn't have nine Missouri Valley bids that year.
This is back when Creighton was in the Missouri Valley League. It was way up, really good. But RPI morphed into NET, and now it's WAB. What do you know of that? What does that mean to you? Does it change anything?
In the most simplistic terms, it's how every team compared to you or on the bubble would do against your schedule. It's actually the metric we're one of the worst at—32 right now. We're in the mid-20s, almost. It's still well within the range of where we need to be. The Clemson win was a big win, but they've taken on some water.
So that at one point was one of the top 10 WAB wins in the country, but since they've taken on water, that's gotten a little bit watered down. It really is a good comparison tool. I think they're going to use that metric a lot to determine who gets in, and then they're going to use a lot of the other predictive metrics on seating.
Okay.
That's how they've used the sorter—to use that on who gets in.
It's really just for the bubble.
Everybody agrees on the top 20 teams. You can put 24 teams in that thing. You've got to have something that allows you to track and sort, and that's what they've come up with. It's better than what we've had, so it's pretty good.
How do you like the NET? We're a few years into the NET now.
It's fine. People are figuring that out, though, too. People can figure out
How to game it a little bit scheduling-wise. Is that what you mean?
Scheduling-wise, and then you can manipulate a little bit within the game. There are some things you can do.
Interesting.
People have figured that out.
Okay. Charlie is here in attendance. Charlie submits a question. We appreciate you. Where's Charlie? There's Charlie. Thanks for your participation. "Does the vast post-season experience of this team give you confidence heading into March?"
We are on February 26th. I knew you would love this. Charlie is laughing right now. I asked this, knowing you would love this question. I just got side-eyed for those not watching.
Define "confident."
Like the dictionary?
Look, we've got some experienced guys, but if we don't use the experience, what does it matter? I guess it's better than not having experience. But I'm not oozing belief right now. We've still got a good team. I told our guys we've still got a good team.
We're just not as good as we want to be, and not as good as maybe I suspected we would be. But that's all right. We've still got a solid team, and we've got to make the most out of what we've got. We've got a lot of opportunities still ahead of us. Hopefully, we can lean into some of that experience and be ready to roll.
Well, Charlie asks that question. There's a section called the game notes that our great Sports Information Director, Craig Hammel, puts out. He does a fantastic job. I'm sure Craig's listening tonight.
He says hey to everybody here.
He couldn't make it in attendance tonight. He says, "Will likes winners" in one of his little sections in the game notes. It's in reference to those folks who have come here from other winning, experienced programs. Tre Holloman was at Michigan State. Quadir Copeland was at McNeese State in Louisiana, a spot you're familiar with.
Coach, you've got, of course, Alyn Breed, who was there as well. And on and on—Ven-Allen Lubin, very experienced player. Darrion Williams, very experienced player.
There's a big difference between being a part of winning and being the reason that they won. There's a big difference.
Andy says: On the road in the ACC is never easy. It's a very reasonable statement. Agreed?
Yeah, we've lost two by 30 the last two times we've been out. I'd say that's a pretty accurate statement.
Andy wants to know: "Would you classify Notre Dame as a must-win or a can't-lose?"
It's the same thing. Semantics. We need to win. I understand what he's getting at, but we need to win. We've lost three out of four. It can snowball pretty quickly. So this is a game that we need to find a way to dig it out. It's going to be tough. We need to find a way to make this work.
Eli asked a question; I may amend a little bit.
Oh my gosh, Eli's skipped way ahead.
Eli, where's Eli? There's Eli. We appreciate your question.
Eli, we play Notre Dame on Saturday. Do you know that, Eli?
Eli's question: "Which player have you found harder to game plan for, Cameron Boozer or Ebuka Okorie?" Ebuka Okorie is Stanford's leading scorer. Cameron Boozer is Duke's leading scorer.
And then, of course, Shrewsberry is Notre Dame's lead man right now unless Haralson plays. All matchup problems. I'll wedge this in because we won't talk to you before the Duke game.
I will, but not in this setting. So Eli's here, and I want to honor the attendance and participation. I'm not going to force you to answer this, but maybe I'll throw in—
This is no joke. I focus on one game at a time. I won't watch anything on—I mean, I've watched them play. Obviously, I watched the Michigan game. This isn't some "coach answer," and you guys know I don't give that BS.
But I won't study them until—I've got to focus on Notre Dame. I can't watch Duke before—and I watched the Duke-Notre Dame game, so I've watched that. But what are you going to learn from that? I won't watch Duke until we get on the plane after Notre Dame.
I'll watch our Notre Dame game on the bus quickly and break it down on the plane, and then when we get back, I'll start on Duke. I can't work ahead like that.
Chambers is on my staff. Once he finishes Notre Dame, he'll move on tomorrow and start clipping stuff. I can't do that. I'm strictly Notre Dame, and then I'll move on to Duke, and then after Duke, I'll move on to Stanford. I haven't seen Stanford play a ton.
I stayed up last night and watched SMU and Cal. That was a great ending.
That might have gotten an extra bid for the league.
I hope it did. Cal's done good work. Coach Madsen has done a great job. But we'll worry about that Saturday afternoon when we get done at Notre Dame.
Mark wants to know with respect to blocked shots. Where's Mark? Mark's in attendance. Mark's staying anonymous. Oh, there's Mark over there. Hey, Mark.
Mark's smart, Mark's at the bar drinking.
"With respect to blocked three-point shots, are these—"
One of them was a really bad shot, just a poor shot. It was an off-the-bounce three. The other one was really poor execution. We messed up a baseline out-of-bounds play. We didn't curl how we were supposed to when we went to the backside, which didn't force the help and gave the guy time to close out. Lack of discipline. Lack of attention to detail.
Got it. Sam wants to know—Sam asks a question. Hey, Sam. Good to see you, buddy. St. John's didn't score a field goal—did you see this final score last night? UConn beat St. John's by 32. It was a 72-40 final. It was a pretty close game right around the half.
St. John's didn't score a field goal in the final 17 minutes of the ballgame. They missed every shot for the last 17 minutes. Bad games happen. Sam's question: "How do you get the guys to turn the page? How do you get them to switch? What's the secret sauce to wiping it all out?"
First off, I appreciate the question, but I don't like comparing. Just because St. John's has problems doesn't mean NC State should have problems. I don't like comparing that somebody has it worse than us. To hell with that. We've got to get ourselves fixed. I don't want to compare that "woe is us" and these guys have it worse than we do. That doesn't do us any good. But the guys are a little more resilient than I am.
They turn the page a lot quicker. These guys can now really turn the page. But we stay grounded in our routine, win or lose. We stick to the routine, try to get two or three themes, and move forward as best we can. I think having a routine grounds you, good or bad. You've got to know yourself as a coach. I didn't talk to the team after the game. I think you know we did the radio interview pretty quickly because I was going to say some stuff where I probably would've lost some guys.
The halftime was as mad as I've been all year. That was Will Wade from ten years ago. That wasn't pretty. After the game, I didn't want to speak to them because I was going to say something that probably would have been the point of no return. So we regrouped and did some individual meetings and stuff. Our guys responded pretty well today. We'll practice tomorrow morning and head to South Bend.
My response to myself is, you've got to focus on the next most important thing. You can't dwell on the past. We don't have any control over that. We can't go back and get that back. We can't go back and get Miami back. All we can do is move forward and try to have two or three clear points of emphasis—why what happened at Virginia happened and what we need to do to make sure that doesn't happen again. We've got a lot of good things in front of us. We need to focus on moving forward and trying to close this out as best we can.
We’ll have a little bit more in this segment. I know you don't get ahead of things, Coach, but the beauty of that is I can. Duke is a nice ball club. They’ve got a really nice situation in Durham. They're 26-2, 14-1 in the ACC, and they just beat Notre Dame.
I may be sick on Monday.
You said you might be sick on Monday.
Yeah, I'm going to feel COVID again.
Oh, goodness. Chucky Brown is laughing pretty hard at that one. We've got Chucky in attendance as always. Yeah, Duke—
I don't even want to think about Duke.
We don't have to talk about them. Good team. Number one team.
I got a headache just thinking about it.
The Blue Devils are a good team. They play Virginia on Saturday in Durham, and then they'll come to Raleigh on Monday night. They're 14-1 in the ACC. They beat Michigan in D.C., and then they beat Notre Dame 100 to 56 last time out.
Got any good news?
It’s a big opportunity, Monday, Coach. You’ve got a big opportunity against the Blue Devils, and I’m excited for you. I think Lenovo Center is going to be rocking. The Duke game is sold out. There are fewer than 1,000 tickets available for Stanford, so that may sell out as well for the regular season finale. I can't wait. Will they let us play with six on Monday?
Mitchell asks: "Do you think officials should be required to have postgame pressers?" If you ask the officials nicely, maybe they'll let you have a sixth player on the court. Is that my call? That’s kind of what I’m getting at. That's not my call.
I'm sure they'd really like to acquiesce to what I asked for.
I’m sure they would, that’s good.
On the seeding situation for the ACC tournament...
That really bothers me, and we’ve got to get that fixed quickly. Look, the four-spot is the best we can do right now, so we’re going to fight it out to see if we can get that 4-seed.
According to Craig Hammel, I don’t think we’ve ever gotten the double-bye since it started a couple of years ago, and I don't think we’ve ever won more than 12 conference games.
We still have that on the table, so we’ll try to do that. I don’t get real excited about finishing fourth, but we’ll see if we can do it. We aren't going to do it if we don't win Saturday, so we better find a way to win in South Bend and go from there.
I don’t mean to put it all on one guy, but when you've played really well at that point guard spot—you’ve beaten SMU on the road, and Q was great against Clemson—when Q goes, this team goes in a lot of ways.
How impactful will he be? What is his matchup like against Notre Dame? Mind you, we're not totally sure if Jalen Haralson is going to play for the Fighting Irish, which could change things.
We need Q to play well. We don't have two of him; it’s not like Noah’s Ark, where we’ve got two of everything. We have one of them, and we need him. We’re not nearly as effective as a team without him out there. He creates easy shots for everybody.
I told him today that I want so much more from him, but he’s done so much for us. We’d be in rough shape without him, and I am very proud of what he’s done. I love him to death—my love is unconditional—and he’s been a major reason we’ve been able to win this year.
Ven-Allen Lubin struggles against some of that length, but he’s been awesome for us. He’s been phenomenal. Without those two on the court, we’re average as grits. I can’t say enough positive things about both of them. Ven was at Notre Dame with Coach Brey, so we definitely need those guys to play well for us Saturday.
You and Q really get after it during games. That first timeout—was it the under-16 or under-12 in the first half?
I shouldn’t have done that. Most of the time when I go at him, I give it a day or two, and I can get him back. I shouldn’t have gone at him during the game; it throws him off. That was bad coaching on my part. He sets the tone for our discipline, and I just didn't feel like he had it to start. He made a couple of mistakes, and I should have handled that better to give us a better chance.
