“It’s not working. S-, it’s concerning that it’s taken this long and we’re not there yet,” said Wade. “From now on we have all the big competitions. Kindergarten is over.”
NC State, now 8-4 on the season, has yet to beat a major opponent after losing to Kansas in overtime on Saturday.
“It’s hard. We have a lot of nice guys,” Wade said. “I’ve got a great team GPA, got all that stuff, over a 3.0. It’s great – if we’re running a daycare center. We have a competitive, Division I college basketball program.”
This offseason, Wade made headlines for landing some of the nation’s most sought-after transfers, such as guards Tre Holloman (Michigan State) and Terrance Arceneaux (Houston), plus All-Big 12 forward Darrion Williams (Texas Tech), who chose NC State over Kansas. Still, Williams did not play Wednesday due to a shoulder injury, and for the first time this season, Holloman did not start, scoring nine points in 18 minutes off the bench.
Arceneaux has played just 20 or more minutes in two of the team’s first 12 games.
“I had one of the kids come up to me, ‘Oh, I’m tough, I’m tough.’ I said, s—, you’re not even in the top 50 strongest players I’ve coached,” Wade said. “You’re not tough. You didn’t make the top 50. You wouldn’t make the top 25 of who I’ve coached in the last five years – and I sat out a year. I don’t want to hear that.”
Instead, NC State was carried Wednesday by sophomore guard Paul McNeil, who broke out of a shooting slump to score a career-high 47 points, the most by an ACC player since Rodney Monroe in 1991 — 15 years before McNeil was born. McNeil’s 11 made 3-pointers set a new school record and tied the ACC record for 3-pointers in a single game.
However, outside of McNeil, who made 12 of the team’s 34 made baskets, only backup forward Jerry Deng scored in double figures.
“Casual. Lack of attention to detail. Lack of focus,” Wade said of his team. “That’s great when you have someone setting the ACC record for made 3s and the school record for made 3s, but we’re relying on the hope that one of these cats is going to go ballistic every night. We’re relying on that – just hope – and hope is a bad strategy in my opinion.”
The only two players Wade mentioned by name for meeting his standards were starting center Ven-Allen Lubin, a transfer from North Carolina who leads NC State in rebounding, and guard Quadir Copeland, who followed Wade from McNeese this season.
Copeland has been the team’s emotional leader so far, scoring a team-high 19 against Kansas. Importantly, Wade was confident he would take the team’s potential game-winning chance before the Wolfpack lost in overtime.
“Honestly, I’ve been trying to get some urgency and some internal leadership, and I think Q’s (Copeland) have done a pretty good job. Outside of Q and Ven (Lubin) — those guys are playing as well as we can ask them to play — you take on the personality (of your players),” Wade said. “We have a lot of informal personalities on our team. We don’t have people who are enthusiastic and ready to go.”
Wade also crushed his team for a sloppy shootaround, saying his players committed 88 errors, including 23 defensive errors and 13 offensive execution errors. He was particularly frustrated that after the first team made fourteen errors, the second team was even worse, at 22.
“How,” Wade asked, “can you be on the second team and watch the first team do it and make eight more mistakes?”
Dating back to his days as head coach of VCU and LSU, Wade has always been known for his blunt transparency with both the media and his players. He was infamously caught on a federal wiretap complaining about a “strong offer” he made for a recruit who ultimately went elsewhere, contributing to his dismissal from LSU.
“I’m not everyone’s cup of tea,” Wade said The Athletics in November about his polarizing reputation.
NC State’s last major non-conference game is Sunday against Ole Miss in Greensboro, NC. While the Rebels have struggled this season and haven’t had any major wins, this is the last big chance for Wade’s team to boost their non-conference resume.
And as Wade said Saturday after the loss to Kansas, he’s aware his team is running out of time to build its NCAA Tournament case.
“I’ve been worried for weeks. We are who we are,” Wade said. “I said it a few weeks ago: if you’re not physical and strong, you better be alert and aware – and we’re still none of the four.”
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