Will Wade Breaks Down First Win Over North Carolina
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RALEIGH — NC State men's basketball coach Will Wade promised a "Red Reckoning" for the ACC when he was hired a little over a year before his first matchup against the Wolfpack's bitter rivals, the UNC Tar Heels. While his debut season hasn't gone entirely to plan, he did achieve one of his goals, knocking off the team from Chapel Hill in his first try.
North Carolina was missing its two leading scorers in Henri Veesaar and Caleb Wilson, but the Wolfpack still needed to put together a strong effort to knock off the No. 16 team in the country. Wade's job is far from finished, but the win over the Tar Heels represented a major step in the right direction for his program.
Wade's postgame press conference
What Wade said about his team
Wade was adamant after his team's one-point loss to Miami that its performance in that loss "would not sit right" with him. The Wolfpack got back to work quickly, knowing the Tar Heels were up next. Wade's group was on point from the moment the game got underway, relentlessly attacking a diminished UNC squad that never stood much of a chance against a hungry Wolfpack squad.
"I thought we were playing with more of an edge today. I thought our guys were locked in and ready to go. I felt that the last couple of days," Wade said. "We had a couple of good days of prep, so the guys got off the mat and you talk about how you always have to do your best work under tough circumstances and our guys certainly did that. I thought we played with more bite to us tonight."
NC State suffered a scare in the first half. Star forward Darrion Williams buried his first three shots of the game and looked like he was well on his way to a dominant performance in one of the biggest games of the season. When he went up to contest a transition shot attempt, he took a shot to the eye, causing him to bleed profusely before heading to the locker room. He returned with stitches above his eye, still managing to score 13 points in the victory.
"I thought Darrion -- It's too bad he got hurt, he was getting ready to go for a big game," Wade said. "He was getting ready to unload. He got banged up and came back. It shows how much this game meant to him, to our guys, so I'm very proud of him."
The 24-point victory marked the Wolfpack's biggest win over North Carolina since 1962. The Lenovo Center was rocking for the third-straight game, making it imperative for Wade to get his team over the hump after he felt as though he let down the Wolfpack fan base with the effort against the Hurricanes just one game prior. He didn't disappoint.
"I represent NC State, I represent our fan base, I represent our school," Wade said. "If it's important to our fans, it's important to us. It's important to me. You could feel it when you walked into that arena tonight; it was just different. You could just feel it. ... It's my job to try to represent the program and our school and our administration the best we can and I know how much it means to everybody."
The lacking pieces for the Tar Heels weren't lost on Wade. The Wolfpack faced a truly lesser version of what had been one of the stronger teams in the ACC to this point in the season. Still, NC State desperately needed a win, no matter who took the court and filled the opposite bench of the Lenovo Center.
"They're a great team. They're obviously down... One top three or four pick and then another potential first-round pick," Wade said, referring to Wilson and Veesaar. "They were down some bodies, but they were down those bodies against Pittsburgh and played really well. It gives other guys some opportunities. Zayden High has really come in, but we just needed to win... I do think it helped that it was North Carolina."
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) February 18, 2026
Wade and the Wolfpack earned a week off with the victory. NC State's next opportunity comes on Tuesday, as it travels just north to Charlottesville for a rematch against the 14th-ranked Virginia Cavaliers on their home turf. Wade can only hope his team regained some of its momentum with the win over the Tar Heels and is ready to make one final push.
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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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