Wade Preaches Patience for NC State After Kansas Loss
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RALEIGH — While NC State's matchup against No. 19 Kansas ended disappointingly with a 77-76 overtime loss, Wolfpack head coach Will Wade remained calm about the trajectory of the season through 11 games.
His team had multiple chances to walk away with the victory, including the final possession of regulation, when guard Quadir Copeland just missed a runner down the baseline to ice the game. The team showed promise defensively, holding the line against a strong Jayhawk squad for the most part, although Melvin Council Jr. put together a historic 36-point outing. Even so, Wade believes that while NC State needs to show urgency, it's not time to ring any alarm bells.
Watch Wade's press conference
Wade says stay calm... For now
Moral victories aren't in the belief system of most Division-I basketball coaches, but there are always positives to take away from losses. Wade was asked about whether his team showed those positives in the loss to the Jayhawks and he offered an interesting perspective.
"It's like I told the guys. The results right now are lagging from our work; the results haven't shown on the scoreboard yet," Wade said. "But, we were massively better than we were 10 days ago when we left Auburn. The team is a lot better... Now, you can splinter when you're taking on water on these losses like this, but I don't believe this group will."
NC State struggled out of the gate offensively, but improved as the game became a back-and-forth battle down the stretch. The team leaned on a much-improved defensive effort and star forward Darrion Williams found his rhythm in the final minutes of regulation and in the overtime period as well.
"We are getting better defensively. Offensively, we're playing a little bit better, but we got good shots," Wade said. "We missed a lot of threes tonight, but we are getting better. Now, we've got to stay together and keep making that progress, but we are making improvements and the scoreboard just hasn't been able to show that yet."
Wade's first season in Raleigh isn't the first time one of his teams struggled in the early stages of the season. His McNeese State team, which defeated Clemson in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament, began the year 5-5. His emphasis with his teams in the past has been to stay together and let the progress build over time.
"We've figured out some of the rotational stuff. We've figured out some of the parallel tracks that our guys need to run on," he said. "We've made a lot of progress, and we don't want to erase the progress. And if we keep making progress, I feel really good about where we'll be at the end of the year... I think we'll like where we are and we'll appreciate the struggle."
While he's proud of the team's progress and believes better things are coming, Wade also understands his team missed a number of crucial opportunities. Now, things are becoming more urgent for a Wolfpack team that needs to kick it to another gear without fully panicking.
"Time is running out. I'm not hitting the panic button... But there is an urgency about what we're doing," Wade said. "We've scheduled these games and we haven't won them, and we've also played the toughest non-conference schedule in our league by a pretty wide margin, but we haven't won the games. That is just a fact. But our team is good enough to win a lot of these 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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