Talent – This is a deep team with rookies that might surprise
NC State has six seniors (Lubin, Williams, Holloman, Copeland, Breed, Ebube), all but Breed are exhausting their eligibility this year and all are hoping
to have seasons that cement their future professional careers somewhere. The Pack has two juniors (Deng, RS-JR Arceneaux), both of whom should be important pieces this season. They have sophomore Paul McNeil who is expected to play a much larger role this season. And then there are two very important freshmen, Matt Able is expected to be a significant contributor this season and Musa Sagnia (listed as a freshman, but due to international pro experience will not have the same eligibility as a freshman) will be the backup center. From that simplistic perspective, you might predict a 10 or 11-man rotation depending on Breed’s availability.
Flexibility – This team is filled with players that can defend and play multiple positions
It will be interesting to see how often Coach Wade puts players in a position other than their expected primary role. Here’s the expectation on where each player MIGHT play this season:
- Point Guard: Holloman, Copeland, Breed
- Shooting Guard: McNeil, Able, Holloman, Breed, Copeland
- Wing / Small Forward: Arceneaux, Copeland, Able, Williams, McNeil
- Forward: Williams, Deng, Copeland, Sagnia, Lubin, Langdon
- Center: Lubin, Sagnia, Ebube, Wilkins
How deep will the rotation be?
In a recent interview with Ovies & Giglio, when asked, Coach Wade said, [We’ll] “Probably play nine. Eight to nine is my ideal size and that’s probably what we’ll go with. And have a tenth, or ninth and tenth that’s ready to play in a pinch”
Looking at his two seasons at McNeese and five at LSU, Coach Wade had a 9-man rotation five of those seven seasons, including the most recent four seasons. The exceptions were both 8-man rotations, the COVID season, and ironically ’18-’19, the season LSU made it to the Sweet 16. Coach Wade’s best NCAA tournament run.
The model: How would the minutes breakdown in a 9-man rotation?
- I identified the top nine players in Coach Wade’s seven season’s rotations by total minutes played and created a model of average minutes for roles 1-9, highest to lowest utilization.
- I used player average minutes based on the number of games the team played, rather than the traditional method using the number of games the player played. (Ex. Breed played 60 total minutes last season. Based on the two games he played, he averaged 30 mins per game in the traditional calculation. Based on the 35 games the team played, he averaged 1.7 mins per game – placing him outside the regular rotation for the purpose of this model.)
Factors to Consider in Assigning Minutes:
- Play the seniors – experience is gold – They are going to be heavy usage players.
- Play the elite defenders – Earlier this fall, Isaac Trotter, 247 National College Basketball Writer identified the best defenders in the country and his list included Arceneaux, Copeland, and Holloman. Darrion Williams has been identified by several analysts as a very good defender who should be even better this season with the ankle injury behind him. And Coach Wade described Sagnia as an “elite defender”.
- Don’t forget the juniors – According to the analysts over at Field of 68, contrary to the old ‘sophomore jump’ maxim, statistics show that the sophomore to junior improvement is frequently the most substantial.
- CBS Sports included RS-Junior Terrance Arceneaux in their list of their best defenders in the country. “The 6-6, 205-pound wing can guard four positions effortlessly.” He was used at both the 4 & 3 regularly last season at Houston. This season he is most likely to spend the majority of his time at the 3, since the Pack has one of the best forwards in the country. He’s also more than a full year away from his Achilles heel injury. Terrance will be a high usage player and most analysts expect his offense to improve.
- Junior Jerry Deng is an outstanding 3PT shooter. During the offseason workouts Coach Hamilton tested him and he hit 24 of 25 from 3PT. Improving his rebounding has been an offseason objective.
- The long anticipated arrival of Paul McNeil – Recently the “Stats by Will & Jim” podcast did a nationwide analysis to predict the top 10 candidates in the country primed for a breakout ’25-‘26 season and included P2 on their list.
- Outside the regular rotation – Breed might start slow due to recovering from his knee injury but hopefully will get meaningful game time and make a difference later in the season, I arbitrarily assigned him 5 minutes, but there is a chance that with his experience he could pull minutes from McNeil / Able. The remaining available minutes were divided equally between Ebube, Langdon, and Wilkins. Kontuniemi is redshirting this season, and Snell is a walk-on.
