In life, sometimes you lose something or someone too early. You wake up the next morning with grief weighing you down like a ton of bricks.
But other times, you’re just at peace when it’s time to say goodbye. Like when my old dog, ‘Max’ passed. He was old, hobbling around, his vision was all but gone, and he was in constant pain. His best days were behind him, and no matter what surgery or medicines we tried, nothing was saving him.
But I loved Max, and I was loyal to him, so I dreaded saying goodbye. Even though I knew it was time. The morning after I had to say that goodbye, the feeling was different from what I expected. It wasn’t despair or depression; it was relief. I was at peace. It was time. Because of that, moving on was easy, and I was able to do it with a clear mind and a clear conscience.
Why am I talking about my dead dog in a basketball column like some sort of lunatic?
Well, because, as strange as it sounds, when I woke up this morning after NC State’s 68-66 loss in the First Four play-in game to Texas, I had a feeling that didn’t match my normal post-loss feelings.
There was a sense of relief in the fact that this season had ended, and this wasn’t normal. But when I tried to look back at another moment where I felt this sense of relief in loss, that ‘Max’ moment was the only one I could find.
I’m not trying to get a cheap laugh out of any of the sickos in the room. Nor am I trying to compare basketball to something much more serious, like death. I’m simply working through a set of feelings that are mostly foreign to me, and I’m doing that right here in my column, with the only people who might understand.
You guys.
But don’t be confused. This isn’t apathy. In fact, I’m excited about what comes next. I’m excited to see what Will Wade can build here at NC State, and I couldn’t care less about expectations that weren’t reached in year 1. If the Wolfpack is going to reach the pinnacle of college basketball again and be looked at alongside the blue bloods of the game, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to have to be done right.
This season was a learning experience for everybody.
Heck, we wanted Wade because we wanted a coach who would stand up, refuse the narrative that NC State isn’t on the same level as some of the ACC’s elite programs, and work to prove that. Remember the Rick Barnes infatuation here in Raleigh? All thanks to when he got in Dean Smith’s face on the sidelines when he was coaching Clemson. We’ve been clear for years, we want someone to embody that.
Wade embodied that.
Early in the season, with those press conferences that we all love to talk about so much. The one where some of you swear he promised that in 3 weeks, he’d fix what nobody else could in 40+ years. He stood up and made the claim that Wolfpack is coming for that spot. He put his money where his mouth is.
But in what world do you step up to a champion, get in their face, and think they’ll just move aside for you?
They’re in their spot for a reason.
And so when Wade stepped up this season, he stared college basketball in the face and proclaimed NC State was coming; he believed it and was here for that fight.
But the first punch landed on his chin, and it knocked him back for a second.
That’s how I’m looking at this season.
I’m not embarrassed about Wade’s ‘RED RECKONING’ proclamation at all. In fact, talk that talk. Keep asking for their best punches. You’ll get them. But that can’t stop you from coming back. Over and over and over.
Every swing they take, you learn. Every time you get hit in the chin, you get a reminder of the pain you’re working to eliminate. You want to not get hit in the chin anymore? Work harder, get better.
The difference between Will Wade and the coaches we’ve had for the past 40 years is that this season isn’t going to force him to recalibrate his approach. He’s stubborn, and he’s obsessed with finding success here. He made that clear on day one. The mistake you’re making is thinking that those comments were for you. With every other coach you’ve watched here at NC State, those comments WERE for you. With Wade they are flags in the ground for him and his team. They are expectations set and vocalized to create clarity of the roadmap.
You can’t get somewhere if you don’t set your destination.
But roads might be closed, and there might be traffic. So you might need to find an alternative route, and that might mean you don’t get there as fast as you were assuming. But the destination doesn’t change.
We’re only on the first leg of this journey. We hit some traffic, it’s frustrating, but we’re on the way.
From not making the ACC Tournament to a top-half league finish and an #11 seed at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Not where we want to eventually end up, but progress.
What I’m trying to say is, try to work through your feelings and frustrations today with a little rationality.
This season is over, and like I was trying to explain. It’s kind of a sense of relief. The flaws this team had were fatal. There wasn’t a fix for the front line of 6’6 and 6’8. There wasn’t a fix for a set of guys who never really meshed with Wade’s vision.
And you know what, whose fault is that?
Wade owned up to all it in his presser last night…
“Well, I mean, look, we’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to reset for next year. So we didn’t have the year that we wanted to have, and we’ve got a lot of things that we need to make sure that we’re in better shape for moving forward. So we’ll get to work on that as soon as the wheels hit the ground tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we’re going to be better. We put this together pretty quickly. We didn’t spend as much time on a couple of things. We just looked at some analytics, the personalities, and some of that stuff is very, very important. And we’re going to do much more due diligence this year, and we’ll have a better mixture of things moving forward.”
He’s accepted the blame all season long, whether he deserved all of it or not.
Yeah, he put together this roster. But it was filled with seniors who had played in the NCAA Tournament. You’d think there would be a lot more leadership, a lot more grit and determination in a group like this.
There wasn’t. And what I saw was a coach who was trying everything to make up for that fact. He tried motivating internally. He tried to do it through the media. He let them lead for a bit, then he had his ‘hostile takeover,’ but this team never responded.
The flaws were fatal. Lack of size. No true leadership on the floor. No fire burning inside. Lack of focus. No visible chemistry. This team, aside from a few guys, looked like what they were, what they were…. ‘hired guns.’
It seemed like there was a group here that didn’t necessarily want to be HERE. They seemed like we were renting their services for a one-year paycheck. This, I believe, is what Wade was talking about when he mentioned ‘personalities’ in the quotes above. And that’s why moving forward today is a lot easier.
Will Wade, as usual, is being transparent and honest.He wasn’t able to connect with this team. They weren’t able to connect with each other. And because of that, we, the fanbase, never really genuinely connected with them.
And that is why, this morning, you may have woken up feeling that strange sense of relief that you’ve never felt at the end of an NCAA tournament loss. It’s over now, and even though it’s something you’ve loved and invested in, I think we can all agree that it was time to move on.
So don’t mistake that peace for apathy. Don’t lose the plot. This season was the punch in the mouth you get when you publicly challenge the status quo. But the response we’ll get is the exact reason we hired Will Wade to begin with.
The plane will land in Raleigh, and the next chapter of the Will Wade era will begin.
Lessons will be learned, personnel choices will be different, the style of play will be adjusted, but Will Wade will be right back up at that podium next season, letting everyone know what he intends to achieve. And whether you like his style or not, he seems more than willing to take those punches over and over until he delivers on his promise.