Reacting to NC State's Ugly Loss to No. 24 Louisville
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NC State's first appearance in an ESPN "Big Monday" TV slot ended in disaster, as the Wolfpack got thoroughly thumped by the No. 24 Louisville Cardinals on the road. Will Wade's team simply had no answers for a red-hot Cardinals squad that hung 118 points on a leaky Wolfpack defense that conceded 76 points to just two players.
On this episode of the NC State Insider Podcast, host and lead beat writer Tucker Sennett breaks down what went wrong for the Wolfpack, detailing some of the defensive shortcomings the Pack showed when trying to slow down Mikel Brown and Ryan Conwell.
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Wade's thoughts on the loss
Nothing went right for the Wolfpack. It became evident that it might be that kind of night early, as Louisville shot in front with an early 14-4 lead. Every time it felt like NC State might punch back offensively, something went wrong on the other end of the floor. When Wade was asked what he thought specifically failed on the defensive end, he offered a hard truth.
"Everything," he said. "We just got whipped off the bounce. They beat us every way possible. We got torched. We gave up 76 points to two players. I don't know if I've ever seen that. We got torched and they picked at some matchups and we could just never get our footing... We just got hammered."
The 118 points marked the second-most points allowed by a Wolfpack team in program history, with the high watermark being 124 points back in 1978. That certainly leaves a mark on Wade's group, but it also might provide something of a learning experience with a few weeks left in the regular season. After beating Virginia Tech, Wade warned of a potential letdown, saying that the Wolfpack couldn't win games without a B+ or A effort. Obviously, it got neither on Monday.
"They had more defensive rebounds than we had total rebounds. Look, you can look at that stat sheet all you want, we got beat in every category," Wade said. "We were outcoached. We were outplayed. I didn't have us prepared for the moment. We were outclassed in every way imaginable and the stat sheet reflects that."
The Wolfpack will need to turn things around on the fly. Wade knows that better than anyone and is already trying to get that process going, even before his team left the KFC Yum! Center after the loss.
"I've got to figure out what to do. There's certainly things that we're going to have to show, but we've got to move forward," the coach said. "Unfortunately, I've had this experience before. This happened to me one other time at a previous job. They set the SEC record for threes on us. It was at home... Alabama made over 20 on us. We move forward from that... We've got to find a way to be better on Saturday against Miami."
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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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