RALEIGH, N.C. — Will Wade promised immediate results in taking over as the men’s basketball coach at North Carolina State. That has begun with a fast start that has the Wolfpack ranked nationally and heading to the prestigious Maui Invitational in Hawaii next week.
“I think our foundation’s strong enough right now to withstand some adversity,” Wade said during a news conference Thursday. “Whatever’s going to come at us, I think we’re built for it. I think we’re going to find that out about ourselves as we go through the tournament.”
N.C. State cracked the AP Top 25 on Monday at No. 25, which has the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Wolfpack (4-0) as the lone ranked team as of now for the Maui Invitational, the traditional tournament that has been joined over the decades by others in college basketball’s ode to warmer climes during Thanksgiving week.
Through Wednesday’s games, N.C. State ranked fourth in NCAA Division I in scoring average (100.8 points per game) and 11th in shooting percentage (.538). The Wolfpack’s offense checks in at No. 15 in KenPom for adjusted efficiency (120.6 points per 100 possessions), while also ranking ninth from Bart Torvik and 16th by Evan Miyakawa in their advanced metrics.
The closest call came Monday with an 85-79 home win against Virginia Commonwealth University, the preseason favorite in the Atlantic 10 and a former post for Wade, who was an assistant for VCU from 2009-13 and the head coach of the Rams from 2017-22.
Wade, a 42-year-old Nashville native, was hired by in March after two seasons at Louisiana’s McNeese State, which swept the Southland Conference regular-season and league tournament titles both years he was there and reached the round of 32 in this year’s NCAA tournament. He revived his career with the Cowboys after a season away from the sport, having been fired at the end of a five-year run at Southeastern Conference member LSU in the wake of an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations.
Before his time at VCU and LSU, he got his head coaching start in the Southern Conference with two seasons at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga from 2013-15. Now he’s back in the ACC, where he was a graduate assistant at his alma mater Clemson two decades ago.
And at N.C. State, where he received a six-year contract as the replacement to Kevin Keatts — who was fired after a disappointing 2024-25 season that followed an NCAA Final Four run just a year earlier — Wade’s roster overhaul is paying off quickly. Texas Tech transfer Darrion Williams, the preseason ACC player of the year, has scored 23.2 points per game and is joined in averaging double figures by fellow portal additions Tre Holloman (13.5) and Quadir Copeland (13.2). In addition, Paul Neill Jr. (15.2), who remained with the Wolfpack amid the coaching change, is elevating his game as a sophomore.
As a result, N.C. State is ranked in the regular season for only the third time since the 2018-19 season. And this is the first time the program has appeared in the AP Top 25 in the season’s opening month since November 2012.
Wade took over the program with confidence, vowing the Wolfpack would be an immediate winner. That included talking about “a reckoning” coming for the ACC and college basketball as a whole while promising: “You’re going to have to deal with us.”
That remains pure music to the ears of Wolfpack fans, a rabid fan base that has long yearned to see the on-court play realign with the program’s tradition-rich past.
There has been success in NCAA tournament bids and 20-win seasons, but often in fits and starts. Even the program’s most glorious moment since the Jim Valvano era — an improbable and electric run to the 2024 ACC tournament title followed by an even wilder ride to the NCAA Final Four — was followed by a crash-out last year.
The early results this season have offered the first glimpses of what Wade’s vision looks like, notably with high-end offensive efficiency behind his staff’s lean-in on analytics. It also offers plenty for Wade to focus on when it comes to improvements.
“We’re still giving away way too many possessions,” Wade said. “What we did against VCU, we have to understand, it’s not sustainable. We took 19% of our shots from mid-range, which is way over our number.
“Over half of our shots were off the bounce. There was one team that made the NCAA tournament last year that took 46% of their shots off the bounce. One team. So what we did against them was an outlier.”
Still, the data also showed a “pleasant surprise” on the glass.
“We look like we’re holding on for dear life sometimes rebounding, because we are against some of these bigger teams,” Wade said. “But our rebounding — defensive rebounding — numbers are better than we were anticipating, and we were anticipating a bit low.”
Wade had one other piece of positive news Tuesday. Houston transfer guard Terrance Arceneaux should play in Maui after he missed the past two games due to Achilles tendon soreness.
“I’m pleased we’ve won, that’s good,” Wade said of the first four games. “But we’ve got a lot of work, a lot of work ahead.”