Wes & Walker- Campus Corner

In this edition of the Campus Corner, the guys talk about Will Wade's rant about his team after last night's win and discuss Paul McNeill's special showing in that game.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's time for the campus cod on the TCT.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
All right, the ACC got a performance for the ages
last night and Paul McNeil and the NC State wolf
Pack they get a victory one O eight to seventy
two over Texas Southern. So first we will start though
with coach Will Wade. He was not happy with the
performance from his team, even in a victory, and so

(00:29):
we're gonna talk about this after we hear what he
had to say, because man, it doesn't sound like things
are going well in Raleigh, flound to Q it up there,
it's tough.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
It's tough.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
We got a lot of nice guys, got a lot
of nice guys, got great team GPA and all that stuff.
Over three to zero, with all that stuff, it's wonderful.
We're running a daycare, running competitive Division one college basketball coach.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I am an academics, I was a teacher. I'm happy
about three two, but.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
A competitive basketball program. And quite frankly, I've been trying
to get some urgency and some internal leadership, and I
think Q's done a pretty good job. Outside of Q
and Ben, those guys are playing as well as we
can ask them to play. We take on the personality.
We've got a lot of casual personalities on our team.
We don't have people that are rapped up and ready

(01:21):
to go. I mean, I had one of the kids
come to me, Oh, I'm tough.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I'm tough.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
I said, you're not in the top fifty of the
toughest players I've coached, not.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Even the top fifty. I want to hear that you
ain't tough. You make the top fifty. You would make
the top twenty.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
Five of the last five years if you have coach
still out of here. I mean, I want to hear that.
Like like when you got casual guys, I mean, it's tough.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
It's tough, but you know.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
It's a mount who can have put. But I did
think vin and and Q took took a step forward
with their leadership. But like today in our shoot around,
eighty eight mistakes in our shoot round, a chart all
of it. We made eighty eight mistakes in our shoot round.
We made twenty three defensive errors, thirteen offensive executioners thirty

(02:11):
six thirty six on those. The other ones were different,
thirty six errors on those. Our first team made fourteen,
our second team may twenty two. How the hell can
you be on the second team and watch the first
team do it and make eight more mistakes. You're running
the same stuff, casual lack of attention to detail, lack

(02:32):
of focus.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
All right, So we heard it right there for one.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
I mean, I don't know that I've heard many coaches
pay more attention to detail than Will Wade. I mean,
that is the first time in history that I've heard
of coach track mistakes and warm ups. But I like
it though. But we've been talking about this team. They've
been underwhelming. They've lost every big opportunity that they've had
to make a statement. They go out to MIUI, they lose,
they lose to Kansas, Like this team has yet to

(02:58):
look like the reckoning that was dubbed by this same man,
Will Wade. And now we're hearing him talk about guys
being soft and this team being too passive and all
these types of things that he hurled at this team.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
And we've been hearing some of that across the country.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
When you talk about Kentucky having the highest payroll in
college basketball and they've been losing a ton of games,
and their coaches have been saying similar things as well,
And that's kind of the thing that you run into
when you bring in a lot of mercenaries from another
school that's not a tax, that are not homegrown, that
you have not developed, just a thrown together group, and
you get some of this stuff, and I think NC
State is suffering from a little bit of it. But

(03:35):
with that being said, and with what coach Will Wade
just said, are there signs that the wolf Pack season
is just going to be an underperformance all year long?

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yep, there are signs to that. All those ls that
he's taken so far, that's a pretty good sign of
not winning as many basketball games as you promised everybody.
Will Wade decided to do a classic coach strategy thing
when using the press conference as a stage to publicly
call out his team. That message was not for the
people that are State fans. It wasn't for us pundits.
It was for his team. When he says specifically there

(04:08):
was a player that said he was tough, and then
he said he wasn't the top fiftieth, He wasn't in
the top fifty in terms of tough players that he's
ever coached in his life. Yeah, I mean all of
that was for his team, And I don't know how
much he's talking to the team in the locker room
where it sounds like that, but apparently it's not working,
so he went to the public space. And it does
feel like when you go to the public space, then
you don't have as many avenues to explore, like a

(04:32):
plan A, plan B. Like I can't imagine that this
was somewhere towards the top of the list of things
that you wanted to do to get some of that
toughness from your team. Now, what is funny about this
is it happened after putting up one hundred and eight
points and beating Texas Southern by thirty six and Paul
McNeil going for forty seven, which we'll get to. This
was after that, right, Like, that's what's hilarious to me.

(04:54):
But he knows, he knows that this is not it's
Texas Southern. You're going to have to play with that
toughness once you get the conference play to salvage everything
that you talked about to begin the season.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
All right, Yeah, I would agree with you one hundred percent.
And yes, that is a great message to his team,
and we'll see if they respond to that. Man, But
it just feels like this guy is already exerting himself
a ton with such little of the season that has
gone by, and so it feels like things are going
to be tough. Line, I got to get your thoughts
on it as well. But if you're not yeah ready

(05:28):
and we can just keep it going, we can talk
some he'l and we'll get your thought at you man
in a minute. So public Neil prior to Richmond County,
as I said, I mean, what a performance. He had
only eighteen shots he took to get forty seven points.
He was a perfect twelve of twelve from the free
throw line, twelve of eighteen from the field, eleven of
seventeen from three.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
We're going to get to that.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Also found time to grab ten rebounds and a still
no assists because there were none needed on this night tonight.
I mean, I saw when you look at this performance,
there were guys passing up Cadell Cope. Blynn had a
wide open three with nobody within ten feet, but he said,
I'm gonna kick it to my man because he is
absolutely fuego.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
He became the first Division IE player since at least
the four to five season to post forty five plus
points ten plus rebounds and eleven plus three pointers made
in a single game, and that was just absolutely tremendous. Also,
the forty seven points are the most for an NC
State or ACC player since Rodney Monroe dropped forty eight
against Georgia Tech at nineteen ninety one. It's tied for

(06:32):
fifth though on the packs all time list that's hard
to believe, which is headlined by David Thompson's fifty seven
points against Buffalo State in nineteen seventy four. So what
a performance by him. And so when we look at
this here, we were talking about player of the Year candidates,
and I'm not saying that this makes him the player
of the year by any stretch of the imagination. But

(06:52):
when we talk about NC State looking for a go
to guy, and we thought that Darien Williams was going
to be the guy, and he's played pretty well this season.
But when we look at a performance like this, is
that Paul McNeil proving that he could be the answer
for NC State as their go.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
To guy, certainly an offensive spark. I think Darien Williams
is still the better basketball player, but against big time
competition against Kansas, he only played eighteen minutes, and that
was an overtime extended game where he was one of seven.
Against Auburn, he was three of nine with only seven points.
Did have twenty against Texas that was a five point loss.
But the other big game that you can go back to,
maybe a little bit before some of the big time

(07:29):
competition they played. I guess the loss of Seaton Hall
is something that you would consider a big time game
with the way that they've played. He was two of nine,
so he's shown up for a big game, just one
time offensively, and that's what I think is maddening.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Man.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
Forty seven is a jaw dropping number. That's where you're
stress on that type of efficiency. Yeah, just a crazy number.
And what's funny is he only played twenty seven minutes,
so you're throwing up a bunch of shots. Even eighteen's
not crazy, it's just still a bunch of shot shots
on a permanent basis, Does this mean that Will Wade
is going to play a more because he got twenty
seven against Texas Southern. I think you play him a

(08:05):
lot of minutes because you're up by a lot of
points and it's Texas Southern, but against big time competition,
he's really hovering around twenty. Here's what I wonder. He
was playing a lot at the beginning of the year.
It feels like Paul McNeil was kind of a message
guy for Will Wade. Okay, if you're not gonna play
defense and you get twenty five minutes a pop at
the beginning of the season, now we're bringing you down

(08:27):
to twenty. Like he had not reached the twenty minute
threshold in the last three games before this one. Wes
I wonder if this gets him back in the good graces.
And the other thing is, man, is it enough? As
crazy as it sounds to say, is forty seven points
and eleven three pointers made enough? Thirty six point victory
wasn't enough for Will Wade to be satisfied with his team.
So we know that offense it's not the issue. It's

(08:49):
the defense, it's the toughness, it's that mentality. Did Paul
McNeil show that with the forty seven point performance? I'm
not so sure, because I thought Will Wade would have
been okay with his team's performance with an almost forty
point victory, but he wasn't. So now I would love
to know how he feels about Paul McNeil going forward
because of the crazy numbers that he put up.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Also to his eleven three pointers, they tied an ACC
single game record held by Georgia Tech's Dennis Scott and
Wake Force Craig Dawson. But this is a young man
that's capable of that, and that was his reputation coming
into the NC State program is that he was a
top tier scorer because it was at most points he
scored at the collegiate level. This is a guy that
had a seventy one point game at Richmond Senior High School,

(09:28):
who surpassed a seventy four year old record in the
North Carolina High School Athletic Association. So do I think
that this proves that he could be the answer? No,
I will say it does not, because he does need
to be more consistent. He does need to show that
how does he follow this up? Because you can't drop
forty seven and then come out and get ten in
the next game. You got to be now a guy

(09:49):
that's going to be looked at as at least eighteen
to twenty two points per game. And this should be
the start of his season right here where he steps
up and becomes one of the best performers in the conference.
But let me know NC State fans, let me know
ACC fans on the fan duel text line seven h
four five seven.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Ninety six ten.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Where do you rate this performance as far as ACC
performances that you have seen? Is it one of the best,
we can keep it simple, rate at one to ten
or however you want to explain it. Founding your thoughts
quickly on Will Wade in the state of NC State
and Paul McNeil's performance last night.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
I mean McNeil certainly was outstanding.

Speaker 5 (10:24):
He had moments in this game where it looks like
he was, you know, the best player on the floor.
And we thought for the longest time that it was
Darien Williams that was going to be the guy carrying
this team. You look at the numbers. I mean, he's
a guy that's that that is capable of being one
of their leading scorers. So maybe this is the guy
that they need alongside of Darien Williams. Now, I will

(10:46):
say one thing that's interesting is if you go back
to the comments from will Wade, notice whose name was
not said during that dude the rant about guys that
are playing well, He didn't he Darien Williams, So I
think in his mind he believes that Darien Williams needs
to play better. Look, I get it, I get that

(11:07):
that's a motivating tactic. I don't know how that's gonna
play in that locker room. I don't know if gods
are gonna feel like, hey, that's pretty cheap to kind
of call us out in the media, or if they're
gonna respond to it. So hopefully, if you're an NC
State fan, the response is one of, Hey, we're gonna
prove to coach that we do know what we're doing.

(11:27):
This is what this is what's gonna officially change the season.
But you just never know, especially with college kids nowadays, Man,
what's what brings home with them in terms of what
you're saying in the media,