NC State head coach Will Wade met with the media to discuss the 96-90 overtime loss on the road at Notre Dame.
Defensively, it was not a good game. What do you tell the team after another loss like this?
We haven't been having a good defense all week. We gave up 186 points in two games. We gotta be better with the details and execution obviously. And have a better plan with what we’re doing, because we’re not getting the job done. And that’s on my shoulders.
Our defense has been atrocious. This week it's been really poor, and most of the season. So, it’s on me as a coach to find a scheme to do a better job of helping our guys. But give Notre Dame credit when they’ve got great players; they picked on mismatches all night. They did a great job with that. Coach Shrewsberry is a phenomenal coach. They did a good job at getting Haralson downhill. We lost Certa early in the game. So they just did a better job picking the mismatches.
You started 6-0 on the road in ACC play. The competition level has certainly changed. It feels like y'all have not been competitive in some of these recent ones. Is there anything that you can tell the team to get on track?
We don't play on the road anymore. We were competitive today. It was a great back-and-forth game. They made more plays down the stretch. We were supposed to get the job done on the road. We gotta be better.
On what made it tough to defend Jalen Haralson in the second half...
They did a good job of backing him down in the post. He doesn’t shoot any fade-aways. He’s a tremendous player. You watch the last three weeks. I think they haven't had him for about three weeks. He can put the defense in rotation. Their other guards are good players. Those other guards can’t put the defense in rotation as he can.
Having him do that is a totally different dynamic from what they do and how they do it. He was phenomenal. He's got smaller guys; it's backing down. When they have bigger guys, they go to the perimeter.
On what was tough about Notre Dame’s zone defense...
We just missed some shots. We missed a lot of shots. We got some good looks against it. We missed some open shots. We were trying to get it to the middle and drive it a little bit. That made it tough for us, so it was a great changeup by them.
Ya’ll started pretty well at three. Then it closed out at 3 of 22. How much of that was their defense? How much of that was missing open shots?
I think we got some open looks. We missed a lot. We got a great shot at the end of regulation. We just missed it. We've got to make plays when they're there. We've got to be able to make shots when they're there. That's pretty much our identity. We're a jump shooting team. If we don't shoot it well, tough sledding for us. That's what it was.
