Will Wade Built a Cohesive Roster

NC State is on a four-game winning streak and is off to its best start in conference play since 2003. It hasn't been a consistent ride or one free of strife. The enormous expectations this team carried didn't necessarily help that, but State continues to be an efficient offensive unit that is doing enough to win almost every game it's in. All of the Wolfpack's goals are still very much in tact because it has the right pieces.

What wins basketball games? Coaches coaching? Players making plays? The answer is yes. The latter is generally an extension of the former, as coaching is an all-encompassing term. Perhaps the most important piece of modern coaching is guaranteeing fit through acquisition and development. This is a heck of a lot easier with budgets in the high seven digits (or whatever State’s actual number is), but a couple of key things have stood out this year with the pieces of this roster. It’s not just that they’re fitting well together, but it’s also how we got to that point. This streak of wins has put a spotlight on these storylines.

The Pieces Fit

Where Will Wade succeeded this offseason was in his ability to pair paint touch creation with shooting. This is pretty much the goal of every basketball team, and you can track back through the years of NC State offenses and align their efficiencies with their ability to do these things. When Kevin Keatts was able to pair Markell Johnson with four other players shooting over 38% from three, he built a top 25 offense. When very few of those pieces were in place last season, things went very differently.

State has not had a player that can create pressure on the rim and move the basketball like Quadir Copeland can since Markell Johnson was on the team. Dereon Seabron could get to the rim like nobody else, but the distribution component wasn't there. Michael O'Connell was an excellent passer, but his ability to get in the paint and compress defenses was his weakness. Copeland checks both of those boxes.

The senior point guard is shooting 61% at the rim on 118 attempts. There are 14 total players in America 6’6 or under that have taken that number of shots at the rim and are shooting a better percentage than Copeland. He’s State’s primary pick and roll guy for a reason, and that reason is that he’s been really good at it. His length and craftiness around the rim demands attention, and that’s a real problem for defenses when that player can also be found in the top 6 nationally in assist rate. He had 10 assists in 28 minutes at Wake Forest. 

When you can surround that skill set with high-end perimeter floor spacers, defenses start to have really poor cards to bet on. Paul McNeil is a 42.9% three-point shooter now. That’s 29th nationally among players that have taken at least 100 shots and 7th nationally among players that have taken at least 150. Darrion Williams is also shooting over 42% from three on over 100 attempts, and Tre Holloman, while at a slightly lesser volume, is sitting at 41%. 

Here is State setting up a spread pick and roll look. The gravity of all of these shooters creates so much space.

State has been able to space the floor with deep shooting gravity while also demanding help at the rim. That’s the basketball equation. Against Wake Forest, the Pack got off to a slow start, but it settled into these guard-to-guard ghost actions that the Demon Deacons were willing to switch. The action created a plus matchup for Copeland which he consistently won and drew help with, and that was how State ended up 9/14 from three in the first half. Copeland didn’t even shoot that well himself, but his magnetism in the paint set up everyone else. 

Copeland isolates after a switch and is able to get a piece of the paint easily. Help comes off 42%-shooting Darrion Williams in the strong corner and it's three points.

Literally the same exact thing, but this clip demonstrates how dangerous it really is to help off Williams if he's on that day. 23 is just in the gap here. He never turns his back to the shooter. The ball gets delivered above the actual shooting pocket for Williams though, and he gets this off instantly. I assume that's not on purpose but I like to think it is.

Wake softens the help off Williams. Copeland got the switch with Isaac Carr and he bullies him to the rim and scores. The help is too concerned with Williams to make any impact.

Development and Management 

Even though the pieces are fitting together, it isn’t exactly what we predicted we’d see. Being able to develop talent and organize fit within the roster is the first big success for Will Wade at NC State. 

According to Copeland, Syracuse never viewed him as a point guard. It wasn’t until he joined Will Wade at McNeese (and Alyn Breed got hurt) that he assumed such a large initiator role, a role that he’s carried to Raleigh as well. Getting Copeland into the right role for his game is the biggest win for Will Wade since he returned to college basketball. This dude was always a gamer, but he's being maximized now. Whether it's pick and rolls, double gap plays, or something else, State is building a lot of its offense around Copeland's ability to get downhill and make reads off help. It's not clear how much of this was the original plan, but a good coach will let the skill set determine the role fit.

I think a lot of people, me included, were expecting State’s main initiators to be Tre Holloman and Darrion Williams. Instead, it’s been Copeland and Williams. Holloman was recruited more as a floor-spacing off ball guard who only really assumed any point guard roles when Copeland was removed from the game due to touch fouls and Williams was injured. This has worked. 

Wade talks about analytics a lot, but there’s a lot more that goes into this than the numbers. Holloman is evidence of that. The numbers never pointed to an efficient floor spacer. He did shoot 43% from three as a sophomore, but on just 80 shots for the season. For context, that’s about Copeland’s volume as a three-point shooter this year. When Holloman’s usage went up as a sophomore, his shooting percentage tanked to under 33%. 

He was never a rim pressure god, but the strongest part of his game was ostensibly as a passer. The latter enables the former a lot of the time, and it's fair to think that could raise questions about a high-volume on-ball role. This staff evidently saw something that made them believe in a different outcome, and he’s popping off now as a pure floor spacer. The senior guard has taken 30 more threes than twos this season and maintains a 41% mark.

The ability to develop and organize fit is probably the most important trait a coach, especially a coach in the portal era, can have. It’s far more valuable than the always overrated in-game coaching. I can’t speak to some of Wade’s commentary on intensity and having “nice guys,” but from a skill set perspective, this is a well-built roster designed to score, and would you look at that? NC State is 20th nationally in effective field goal percentage. 

The team still has plenty of warts. It's inconsistent in many ways and a wide variety of outcomes remain on the table, but when you can construct a roster that gives opponents so few correct answers, the arc of the long season does tend to bend your way. We'll see how it plays out for NC State.