‘We’ll be judged on how we respond’: NC State moving on from Louisville loss

No players attended N.C. State’s postgame press conference after the team’s 41-point loss to Louisville, after the Wolfpack gave up a historic number of points to an opposing team and player on Monday night.

Wolfpack head coach Will Wade only spoke for about six minutes. He used the word embarrassing five times in one answer. It was that kind of gut punch for the first-year N.C. State head coach and his team.

N.C. State (18-7, 9-3 ACC) had won six straight games, the longest active streak in ACC play and the longest regular-season conference streak for the program in 51 years. The team was 6-0 on the road in league play this season, too.

Those streaks came to a screeching halt, Wade said, after the 118-77 thumping against No. 24 Louisville.

“Give Louisville credit, those guys played tremendous,” Wade said. “Coach (Pat) Kelsey had them ready to go. Phenomenal coach. They play with great pace. They made us pay for all of our missed shots at the rim, some of our quick 3s. They made us pay in ways that other teams could not make us pay. They deserve all the credit. Shouldn’t be about us and how poor we were. It should be about how well they played. They rose to the moment and we didn’t.”

Wade said he’s not sure if this is a burn-the-tape kind of game or one the team will break down in painstaking detail. He’ll have to figure that out. Regardless of what he decides to do, it’s not one they’ll soon forget.

What happened?

In a chance to showcase the program on a national stage and pick up another major NCAA Tournament resume-boosting win, virtually everything went wrong.

Beyond giving up 76 points to two players alone, the Pack was out-rebounded 42-28. The Cardinals finished with 21 assists and N.C. State only forced 10 turnovers.

Louisville (18-6, 8-4 ACC) finished the night with nine stretches with three or more made baskets in a row. It had a run early in the second half with five consecutive makes.

The Cardinals scored 14 points of N.C. State’s turnovers and nine fastbreak points. They recorded five dunks and scored 1.5 points per possession.

According to Synergy Stats, Louisville gives up most of its points in the midrange and 3-point range. The Wolfpack missed six layups and a dunk, seven rare chances at the rim against Louisville on which it needed to capitalize.

Even worse, though, the Wolfpack was held to 18.2% from 3-point range, seven percentage points under its previous season low. Tre Holloman, typically a 41% 3-point shooter, was held to 1 of 5. Paul McNeil went without a point or rebound.

ACC Player of the Week Quadir Copeland dished out 26 assists across the last two games for back-to-back double-doubles on scoring and assists. On Monday, he had 10 points, three assists and four turnovers. N.C. State is 9-0 when he finishes with at least nine assists. It is now 10-7 when Copeland finishes with fewer than nine assists.

“That’s on me as the coach,” Wade said. “I didn’t have us prepared. I didn’t have us ready as I thought we were. It’s on me. It’s not on those guys. Those guys, for the most part, try to do what we ask them to do. And I didn’t have a very good plan, and I didn’t have a very good pulse of our group tonight. Disappointing night.”

How does Will Wade plan to address this?

Wade has been in this position before in his career, and the team has to move forward. When N.C. State has three straight games against expected at-large NCAA Tournament teams, it can’t let this one linger.

“I believe in our group still,” Wade said, noting he thought the team had its best shootaround of the year earlier in the day. “We’ve still got a good team. We just won six in a row. That’s hard to do in the league.”

Monday night was a speed bump, he said. The Wolfpack has to get the car over the hump smoothly without it knocking “the car out of alignment and get us wobbling all down the road.”

N.C. State, despite the loss, still sits at No. 4 in the ACC standings and has a KenPom ranking in the national top 30. Its NET ranking, at No. 27 entering the game, will likely be around the same area.

Its schedule still features three Quad 1 games and three Quad 2s. N.C. State is in contention for a double-bye in the ACC Tournament and is, at the moment, still a projected NCAA Tournament team.

Kelsey and the Cards have been in this position, too. They were nearly run out of Cameron Indoor Stadium in their 83-52 loss at Duke on Jan. 26.

“Playing Big Monday a couple weeks ago, we got beat like we stole something,” Kelsey said. “It was good on the national stage to play really well tonight. Even after that butt kicking, our guys didn’t panic; just continued to do what we do. … Just proud of those guys. I was tough on them after the Duke game. It sure wasn’t all their fault. I coached bad. We played bad. Everybody on the roster played bad, but I really challenged those guys.”

The Cardinals didn’t play to their standard and Kelsey’s approach worked with his team. N.C. State didn’t meet its expectations, and Wade seeks a similar result with his.

“It’s not like the season ends tonight. It’s one loss,” Wade said. ”It’s an embarrassing loss. It’s a terrible loss, it’s poor, but it’s one loss. It’s not like you get three losses for tonight. We probably should, but you don’t.

“I think we’ll be judged on how we respond and how we move forward from here. Our team has been good with that all year, and hopefully we will continue to do that. We’ve got to go back and work to put ourselves in some more of these moments and see if we can rise up and play a little bit better.”

This story was originally published February 10, 2026 at 6:15 AM.