Breaking Down Year One of Will Wade

Short of the run to the Final Four, I cannot remember a basketball season that had this many . . . gestures wildly . . . things. State was great, but then it stunk, but then it was great, but then it stunk again. The absence of any consistency was the team's defining trait.

The Pack went through a ton of changes during the year to try and pin down that consistency. From its leadership to its usage of certain guys to its defensive scheme, it spent a lot of the year looking to overturn the right rock. It never did.

The disappointing loss to Texas in Maui, which Wade called a "total system fail," began a journey of change that ultimately led to a disappointing loss to Texas. While a bit heavy-handed, I appreciate the narrative structure.

There is a lot to try and reckon with from year one of Will Wade, from the high offensive output to the defensive cratering to the questions about what State should have been and why it was or was not that. I am not the arbiter of these things, but I'm happy to share my opinion on them.

NC State’s Offense 

State got a lot of compatible pieces on offense. This was a fun group on this side of the court. The Pack ended up with a top 30 opponent-adjusted offense that shot 39% from three, an excellent team number that was good for 9th nationally. 

The long pole in the tent was that level of shooting, spaced across three different guys, surrounding high level paint-touch creation and passing from Quadir Copeland. Copeland’s ability to get to the rim, even without a screen, and then make reads off help and deliver high-difficulty passes became the identity of this group. Most of the offense, including plays ran for Paul and counters involving Lubin, expanded out from this. 

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Darrion Williams was supposed to take on a larger piece of the creation responsibilities, but he was super inefficient in that role. Williams could initiate from so many different areas on the court when he was at Texas Tech, and that versatility is what originally drew coaches to him as a guy you could build a whole offense around. You could post him up, you could put him in pick and roll on the ball, you could use him in any kind of progression-based screening actions, you could isolate him, and in all those things, you’d feel comfortable. 

This didn’t materialize, and Williams largely became just an effective floor spacer for State. He was far from useless, but the inability to run offense through him tossed a wrench in a good bit of the scheme and ended up putting a lot more weight on Copeland to continue doing what he does. The numbers and the tape agree on this.

Williams’ three-point volume jumped significantly. His two-point volume dropped heavily, his assist rate fell, and his free throw rate fell. All of these numbers point to the same thing, which is that Williams was ineffective putting pressure on the rim and functioning as a creator out of the post. The Williams post-up sets were popular still, but didn’t work. The senior wing shot 37% from two in conference play, which is just nowhere near good enough. Out of 815 players in division one who took at least 100 two-point shots in conference play, Williams's 37.2% ranks 805th.

His best moments were mostly off the ball as a catch-and-shoot player and as a movement shooter in sets like a roll-replace action. Despite a 7/26 finish to the regular season, he still shot 40% from three. His perimeter shooting was a major player in some of State’s most meaningful wins including SMU and Clemson.

But Copeland really became the focus, and he delivered far beyond what anyone could reasonably expect of him in that role. During the regular season, he was 6th nationally in assist rate for qualifying players and shot almost 58% at the rim. Like everyone else, his numbers tailed off a little at the end. Duke and Virginia took a bat to some of State’s offensive numbers. But by and large, Copeland was a killer as the offense’s primary creator. 

Copeland could win off the bounce and create good angles with the spin move and his footwork, and his physicality in the paint was a huge problem for smaller guards trying to match up.

Copeland gets Isaac Carr in an isolation after a switch. His size is a problem here for Carr, who is able stay in front of the ball but is easily knocked off his spot and the scored over by the bigger Copeland.

Copeland wasn't just good at driving. He was a versatile driver who could come downhill but could also chisel his way to the paint depending on what kind of matchup he got, and it was incredibly dangerous to help with his vision and all the shooting around him.

This was maybe Wade's favorite action of the year, where they would ghost the guard-to-guard ball screen and let Copeland attack the double gap or hit the shooter if the coverage failed to cover him. Here, Copeland is again able to chisel his way to the paint, and he hits Lubin after Yigitoglu helps on the ball.

The above action was an excellent fit for this personnel with Copeland's ability to work one-on-one in space and McNeil's skill set as an elite movement shooter. Adding Williams in the strong corner made it even more difficult to guard. McNeil unlocked a lot of fun stuff for Wade, and he made the most of it. One of the bigger differences between the offense and the last coach's was plays like the one below. Almost everything Keatts ran was read-based, and the shooters were spacing elements to those actions. With Wade, we saw an uptick in stuff ran specifically to try and get a jumper for McNeil.

State's heavily-used veer action, where a five-out ball screen immediately flows into a flare screen for McNeil.

McNeil, Williams, and Holloman combined to shoot 41.5% from three. That'll work, and two of those guys weren't great shooters the year prior. There’s a lot of talk about with the roster construction, but overall I was pretty pleased with what State was able to bring in from an offensive perspective. Finding three high-end shooters and a Quadir Copeland shouldn’t be taken for granted, especially given the fact that several of these guys didn’t have the history that pointed to this type of outcome. The pieces fit together really well, and even with the curveball of not being able to depend on your perceived centerpiece to create offense, they still managed to build something potent. 

NC State's Defense 

That’s all! Thanks for reading! 

Just kidding, we will talk about this messy, ugly turn of events that diverted State’s path from a 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. State’s defense was bad at the beginning of the year, then it started to improve, and then the bottom totally fell out. The last seven games of the regular season were dreadful. 

The Pack allowed teams to shoot 58.5% from two over the last seven games of the regular season and 38.5% from three. If you extended those numbers over an entire season, they would be good for 356th nationally and 360th nationally, respectively. That’s not really very good. 

Wade wanted to bring his switch-heavy scheme to Raleigh. It’s why the roster building project focused on bigs that could move their feet and be active switch defenders on the perimeter instead of 7-foot monsters. In order to do this effectively, you first have to have some level of containment of the ball from your entire lineup. Then, you have to have your pieces in place to communicate and manage the mismatches that the system will naturally create. This is obvious stuff. 

State was never great at containing the basketball. That was probably a given with this team. Some of the lineup did its best, but it never had elite defenders that were also able to play extended offensive minutes.

That said, communicating all of these pieces is what I think really popped the tire. That was the fixable issue. It looked clunky with critical busts, late switches, and issues with general organization that were never remedied. Copeland was messy in rotation all year, but it was far from just him.

Starting with the Auburn game, State expanded its menu of defensive schemes. It had used the 1-3-1 zone as sort of a pace changer early in the year, but after Maui is when we saw it started to introduce new ball screen coverages to mitigate the issues it had with the aggressive switching. Later in the year, it sprinkled in some other coverages as well before eventually trying its hand at the 2-3 zone during the last two games of the regular season. 

Still, I think switching one through five was State’s best defense, at least during the regular season. This was never going to be an elite defensive team. Lubin performed admirably, but he isn’t the switch defender that Musa Sagnia is. Unfortunately, Sagnia is bad offensively, so that kind of hamstrung you there. Darrion Williams was never an elite on-ball defender. You don’t recruit Darrion Williams to be that. That’s not why he’s on the team. State got beat off the bounce a lot by quality guards (except Seth Trimble). 

To a certain degree, there was a tradeoff here, which it sounds like Wade regrets. The offensive skill set looked deep for a lot of this group. These were not elite athletes, though, and they were not great defenders. Containing the dribble was at times a challenge. Still, though, it didn't need to be as difficult as it was. State bet big on a potent offense to lead a good-enough defense, and it was almost right. 

I think the team has four additional wins if it was able to execute the scheme more cleanly, actual matchups notwithstanding. The frustrating parts were the communication busts more than anything else. State had two guys carrying the same player off a ball screen that they meant to switch more than an acceptable number of times, it was late in rotation a lot, and an inability to set the defense in transition was a killer. State’s transition defense reached levels we will not speak of by the end of the year. 

Stuff like this is the stuff that was fixable. Isaac McKneely slips the ball screen with Mikel Brown, a pretty common way to attack a switching defense. Able switches the screen, while Copeland does not. Mikel Brown does nothing of note and ends up with a wide open look.

State biffs it badly in transition. Breed and Copeland both match up with the same guy, and there is nobody guarding the eventual shooter.

The postseason exacerbated some of the frustration because we actually did see State defend decently. Wade committed to switching one through four and hedging ball screens involving the big during the ACC Tournament. He carried this practice to the First Four as well, and I actually thought it looked pretty good. UVA made shots, but it wasn't handed nearly as many freebies. Texas was handed very few and ended up shooting 36% for the game. The Longhorns scored 34 fewer points than it did in the first matchup.

This defense will benefit from an injection of size and athleticism, but it was always capable of more than it showed, regardless of those physical traits. It shouldn't be bailed out by the idea that these defensive issues were somehow innate in the bodies it had. They were not.

Was this Year a Success?

Before the season, if you had offered me 20-14 and a First Four exit in the NCAA Tournament, I definitely would have turned you down. I was higher on this group than most and had State’s ceiling in the 5-6 seed range. That doesn't seem far off, as it was on that path prior to losing by 41 to Louisville and then choking away the Miami game. 

I think this group had more juice than its ultimate fate will show. For that reason, no. This was a not a successful season by really any metric we want to use. But it wasn’t a galactic super failure either. It was just kind of eh, with a very exciting stretch and a very disappointing stretch to help fuel some explosive takes in both directions. It was a team that fell short of its actual ability. But it was also year one. 

Yes, year one is still a thing. It just looks a little different than it did ten years ago. You don’t need three years to turn over the roster anymore, but a coach still deserves more than a year to figure his stuff out. Variance is high year to year for a lot of programs, and year one can always be on the low end of the spectrum. So while it would be silly to pretend that an 11 seed is a great year where the big goals were accomplished, it would be even sillier to act like State’s attempt to rebirth its basketball program has already failed.

Next Year

State is going to turn over a lot of this roster. It has to because most of it graduated. I would certainly love to retain both Paul McNeil and Matt Able.

You cannot ignore the impact McNeil has and the gravity he carries as a shooter. The difference he makes for spacing within your offense won't show on the stat sheet, but it's a big part of how he enabled Copeland in addition to just himself this year. I also thought he improved as a rotational defender this. He is by all accounts a serious worker, and this is not a guy you want to see walk away.

Able isn't that level of shooter, but he's a full package player who can score at all three levels, defends well, and is an excellent rebounder for his size. State actually wanted to lean into his ability to make that floater as a tool to counter Texas' drop coverage in Dayton.

Speaking of three-level scoring, that figures to be a target trait in the portal. Copeland was very much a one-level scorer. Now, he compensated for that as well as you possibly can, but Virginia and Texas were able to use their rim protection to challenge him in ways he struggled to find answers for.

Both played drop coverage, minimized help off the corners, and really forced him to score against a quality big. It's not a coincidence that he was 10/26 in these games. A little floater could go a long way for him. Don't get me wrong, I'd sign up for another year of Quadir Copeland in a second, but with that being impossible, I think you'll see a change in scoring profile for sure.

The obvious need comes in the frontcourt, where State signed up for the consistent finishing ability of Ven-Allen Lubin in lieu of a lengthy athlete. The Mo Diarra body type will likely be a focus here if I had to guess. Diarra was at least 6'10 and could truly guard the ball at all five positions. State could use someone like that if it wants to switch everything going forward, and even if it doesn't.

James Scott out of Louisville was a guy who fit this mold and also offered a lot as a rebounder and a shot blocker. State didn't like the price tag here, but I wonder if it thinks about Scott ever. I know I did as he averaged 11 boards and three blocks in the SEC Tournament. This body type is my expectation for portal targets in the frontcourt.

Whatever comes of it, Wade has absolutely beaten it into the ground that they have changed their scouting process. Expect a lot of differences next season. Nothing is static with this coach.