No. 25 NC State focused on playing cleaner offensively after tight win over VCU

It wasn’t something that needed to be asked in the postgame press conference. Instead, they brought it up on their own. 

As NC State’s Darrion Williams and Tre Holloman talked about their combined 53-point effort in an 85-79 win over VCU, the 25th-ranked Wolfpack’s veteran stars pointed out what needed to be corrected rather quickly. 

“My teammates trusted me, my coaches trusted me. I put in the work and the results showed, but I had five turnovers,” said Holloman, who scored a career-best 25 points on 6-of-12 shooting and 10 free throws. “I got to be better there. As the point guard, as the leader, I’ve got to value the ball.”

Added Williams: “I had some bad turnovers down the stretch that could have cost us the game, but my teammates had my back and we came out with it.”

While the Wolfpack was able to earn its fourth straight win to start the Will Wade era in Raleigh, it wasn’t pleased with the “six-minute game,” the last half dozen minutes that the 42-year-old coach wants his team to play its best in. NC State committed five of its season-high 17 turnovers in that stretch, including a pair from Holloman, the team’s go-to point guard. 

Despite the giveaways, the Wolfpack was able to withstand the Rams’ second-half surge that applied the most game pressure thanks to a 22-of-27 showing from the free throw line in the second half with 10 of those makes coming in the critical final stretch that Wade is focused on.

“We were very fortunate to win,” Wade said afterwards. “We got outshot by 12 balls, which is hard to do. We won it at the free throw line, we drew a bunch of fouls.”

VCU coach Phil Martelli Jr., who is in his first season at the helm of the quality mid-major that produced Wade off Shaka Smart’s coaching tree, knew his team would be able to keep itself in it by earning extra trips down the floor via its defense. They were successful in speeding the Pack up.

“We were right there, we weren’t backing away,” Martelli said. “There’s no give to this group. … They were trying to throw the knockout [punch], and in one of the huddles, one of the guys said, ‘There ain’t no knockout punch.’ We’ve got a strong jaw, but we’ve got to be able to give it back.”

Although VCU plays an aggressive defensive scheme that’s designed to cut off passing lanes, NC State’s players believed the high turnover effort — handing the ball away 24.6 percent of their possessions, to be exact — was their own doing. They acknowledged the team tabbed to win the Atlantic 10 in the conference’s preseason poll had a quality unit, but it boiled down to the Wolfpack needing to be more patient within the offense moving forward. 

Some of it was the Pack trying to make a hero play, as Williams put it, while the Rams were determined to earn a Quad 1 win in front of 14,805 raucous fans inside the Lenovo Center in the first-ever meeting between the two programs. 

“We were rushing and trying to press,” Holloman said. “Just be smarter. Make the simple play.”

Holloman’s five turnovers tied a career most, which he set against Samford last November as Michigan State’s starting point guard, but he wasn’t the only culprit. Senior guard Quadir Copeland, senior center Ven-Allen Lubin and Williams all had three giveaways each to make up a majority of the turnovers. 

Wade wants his team to play confident and fast, but the Wolfpack has to do so by taking care of the basketball. The Pack’s style of play relies on efficient shooting and team rebounding, so giving opponents extra possessions at a consistent clip isn’t going to sit well with him.

Earlier this month, following a 94-70 win over UAB as his squad committed 14 turnovers, Wade laid out his expectations pretty simply.

“Here’s what our point guards have to understand. When you have the ball, you have our program in your hands. You have NC State in your hands,” Wade said following the win over the Blazers. “All the fans watching on TV, everybody who cares about our basketball program, you have them in your hands. You have to take care of the ball.

“Ball security is job security. If you want to be the point guard, then you have to secure the ball. You’re dribbling that ball for hundreds of thousands of people. There’s a lot of people that care about our program.”

As NC State prepares to take an 11-hour chartered flight to the Maui Invitational on Friday ahead of its three-game stay in Hawaii, beginning with Seton Hall on Monday afternoon (2:30 p.m., ESPN), taking care of the basketball is at the top of the Wolfpack’s to-do list. 

“We weren’t clean. We didn’t value the ball like we needed to, but we made our free throws, which was enough in this game,” Wade said. “We made our free throws. We got enough stops.”

It will start in the coming days inside the Dail Basketball Center film room. Wade certainly has his team’s attention when it comes to valuing the ball, and the expectation will be for that to be corrected as soon as possible.

Lubin, the North Carolina transfer, did believe that being able to learn from the win when it comes to turnovers is an important lesson from a non-conference tilt against one of the top mid-majors in the country.

“That’s something that coach has always emphasized, taking care of the ball, especially in critical moments like this,” Lubin said. “This is great preparation that we need to take care of the ball and not put us in this position.”