Reacting to the Wolfpack's Ugly Loss to No. 1 Duke
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The ugly losses to the top teams in the ACC continued to pile up for NC State on Monday, as No. 1 Duke came into the Lenovo Center and secured a 29-point victory over the Wolfpack. After hanging around for the first eight minutes of the game, it became evident quickly that the Pack couldn't contend with the nation's top-ranked program and the class of the league.
NC State tried to switch things up defensively, dropping into a zone defense consistently for the first time in the 2025-26 season. It worked early on, but Duke quickly diagnosed the change in defense and began to pick it apart and establish itself in the paint. By that point, the Wolfpack offense went cold on the other end.
— NC State Men's Basketball (@PackMensBball) March 3, 2026
On this episode of the NC State Insider Podcast, host and lead beat writer Tucker Sennett breaks down what happened throughout the loss, the decision to switch to a zone defense and where Will Wade and the Wolfpack can go from here in their quest to play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2024.
Watch the new episode below
Wade discusses the loss
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.
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."
While Wade felt confident about his team's position in the NCAA Tournament field as things stood after the Duke loss, he admitted that NC State's back is against the wall more than it has been in weeks past. Saturday's collapse in overtime against Notre Dame hurt, joining a list of losses that have created some unrest in the coach himself and the passionate followers of the program.
"We're in one-game seasons from here on out," Wade said Monday. "The Stanford game is huge for us. A game like tonight, obviously you don't want to lose by 30, but tonight is a tough task. The problem is having a seven-point lead against Miami, having the seven-point lead with two and a half minutes at Notre Dame. Those are the problems."
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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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