Desperation Defining the End of NC State's Season
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RALEIGH — Just a few weeks earlier in the season, NC State had the look of a team that could compete at a high level by the time the ACC and NCAA Tournaments got underway. Now losers in five of their last six, Will Wade and the Wolfpack are in a position that is somewhat different for the experienced coach: a desperate one.
The desperation was on full display on Monday, as the Wolfpack hosted No. 1 Duke at the Lenovo Center while looking to respond from another late-game collapse over the weekend, as it fell to Notre Dame in a 96-90 overtime thriller.
NC State's crumbling defense and resume forced Wade into a new level of desperation, something difficult for a coach who preaches living in reality, against the Blue Devils. It failed, as the Pack lost by 29 points.
"The Genius of Desperation"
Entering Monday's game, NC State played a zone defense on just 59 possessions, according to Brendan Marks of The Athletic. After Ven-Allen Lubin scored the opening basket against the Blue Devils, the Wolfpack slid back from its usual three-quarter-court pressure and instead played a zone. After Notre Dame threw the Pack off with a zone Saturday, Wade opted for that change himself.
"We were told... Right after we lost to Notre Dame," Quadir Copeland said when asked about the zone. "Then we ran the zone. It was effective in the beginning and then, every team adjusts. No. 1 team in the country, so no excuses at the end of the day. I think with our group, we can beat anybody. They made great adjustments and it worked."
Wade added some more context to the decision to play a zone. He explained that when he arrived home in Raleigh, he noticed a book on one of his shelves. It was "The Genius of Desperation," a 2018 book by Doug Farrar about schematic innovations in football. After avoiding a zone defense throughout the season, Wade finally broke down and gave it a whirl against the top team in the country.
"I saw it on my shelf and I pulled it off my shelf... And I said, 'You know what, we need to probably try something different,'" Wade said. "This probably wasn't a great team to try it against. When we went man, we fouled them almost every possession. We'd have fouled everybody out if he played them in man. It was worth trying."
NC State's defensive shortcomings contributed to a number of the disappointing losses over the course of the ACC season, but Wade trusted his system. The Notre Dame loss was particularly eye-opening, as the system completely collapsed. Now, the Wolfpack is in a position where it's trying everything it can to stay in the fight. That's all it can do at this point.
"We're going to have to just junk up with our defenses the rest of the year and we've got to build off of it," Wade said. "Our guys did a solid job. We installed it twice (Sunday) and once today. Not everybody has wings on the backside and can mountain on the backside with Boozer, so there's just some mismatches there, but they may have scored 120 if we played man the whole game ... Out of desperation, we tried it and it worked for about eight minutes."
Finding a way down the stretch
The losses to teams in the part of the conference that Wade calls the "middleweight" and "lightweight" are ruining what should've been an easy waltz into the NCAA Tournament field. The importance of the next two games elevated significantly after losing to Notre Dame, pressing the Wolfpack against the wall more than at any other point in the season. Copeland articulated it best.
"Win. That's the best game plan there is," Copeland said. "What else can we really do? Not lose games."
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Tucker Sennett graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Sports Journalism from the esteemed Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. A former basketball player, he has gained valuable experience working at Cronkite News and brings a deep passion for sports and reporting to his role as the NC State Wolfpack Beat Writer On SI.
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