NC State’s men’s basketball team needed players, almost a whole roster of new guys. And in an era of unlimited transfers, immediate eligibility, high school reclassifications and appealing international players, that’s a lot of places to scour for the next Wolfpack team.
One of the first places Will Wade’s new staff looked: Assistant general manager Patrick Stacy’s spreadsheet.
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Stacy’s formula weighs a variety of basketball statistics important to the staff, assigning different values to each, to produce a single number between zero and, typically, eight or nine.
“We call it the Wade stat,” NC State assistant coach Brandon Chambers said. “You had to plug it in and make sure it meets the Wade stat.”
NC State is counting on its revamped roster, built in part based on the math, to make good on Wade’s promise of reaching the NCAA Tournament in his first season. The team has just two holdovers from Kevin Keatts’ final squad in Raleigh — sophomore guard Paul McNeil and walk-on Jordan Snell. NC State added nine college transfers, two high school players and one international prospect. Wade is still looking for some additional depth in the post.
Wade likened the metrics to a GPS that can bring you to the right neighborhood. It still takes a more human element to know exactly how to get into the house.
“Once you get that conglomerate of players in the general vicinity, you’ve got to watch the film, you’ve got to crunch the numbers,” Wade said. “Then say, ‘All right, this fits best for us, we’re going to do this. This doesn’t fit as well. Even though the numbers look good, we’re going to throw it out.’
“The analytics do a good job of whittling the field down to a workable number. Then you’ve got to go in and still got to use your instincts and your know-how once you get to that data set.”
The ‘Wade stat’
What exactly goes into the Wade stat is a secret the new Wolfpack staff wants to keep, but there are hints – both from what they say they value and the stats they use while talking about players.
“A lot of it’s just common sense,” Stacy said. “You want guys that are efficient when they’re on the floor, they don’t turn the ball over, they make the team better. That’s the crux of what our formula is.”
Chambers said the four most important stats in basketball are effective field goal percentage, offensive rebound percentage, free throw rate and effective field goal percentage defense. NC State, Stacy said, wants players who make their team better when they’re on the floor, so they look at on-the-court/off-the-court stats per 100 possessions.
The model can filter by player archetype that Wade has had success with previously, based on variables such as usage, how well they shoot from 3-point range or passing rates.
“It’s easy to filter down and look at those things and find a good picture of what’s going to make us successful and what’s going to work well within this system,” Stacy said.
NC State signed players from winning programs, something of a tiebreaker as the staff looked through the metrics and sorted players.
Guard Terrance Arceneaux played in the national title game with Houston. Forward Darrion Williams, the prize of the class, helped Texas Tech to the Elite Eight. Guard Tre Holloman, one of the first transfers to commit, and Michigan State reached the Elite Eight. Copeland and Alyn Breed came with Wade from McNeese State which reached back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and beat Clemson in the first round in March.
“We value the winners in this group,” Wade said. “Let’s kick out some of the guys who haven’t won as much. All things being equal, we’re going to tilt toward the guys who have won.”
NC State signed some players they believe may have been underutilized at their previous school, looking at rate stats (based on per possession or per minute) rather than total stats.
Wade made headlines when he said that North Carolina was “too dumb to play” Ven-Allen Lubin enough and promised to keep him on the court at least 28 minutes. Stacy pointed to Lubin’s efficiency when he does play. His 69.4% two-point field goal percentage ranks 10th in ACC history for a single season since 1992.
Stacy said McNeese State transfer Quadir Copeland, a 6-foot-6 guard, is one of nine players over the last 15 years to score (9.2 points), rebound (3.3 rebounds) and assist (4.5 assists) at the rate he does (in just 21.9 minutes per game) at his size.
Wade cited Wyoming transfer Scottie Ebube’s 18% offensive rebounding rate, calling him an “elite offensive rebounder” with “one discernible skill that can help us.”
Maybe it’s slicing the data too finely. As the old saying goes, statistics are one of three kinds of lies. But no one is arguing, least of all Wade, that these players are perfect — one reason they were available in the first place. NC State did sign four-star high school player Matt Able, ranked No. 24 overall by ESPN.
Lubin is undersized and needs more attempts from 3-point range. Copeland, who played two seasons at Syracuse before one year at McNeese State, is a 20% 3-point shooter. Ebube commits fouls at a very high rate.
“You’re not dealing with perfect options, especially in the transfer portal,”’ Wade said. “There’s really good players in there. There’s some lemons in there, too. You don’t get to kick the tires on everybody and check the oil. Sometimes you’ve got to make decisions pretty quickly. First off, you’ve got to understand what imperfections you’re willing to live with.”
Weighing the numbers
That’s where strength and conditioning and player development come into play. Joseph Anderson, the Wolfpack’s new director of player development, is “an old school guy at heart.” He wants players in the gym, getting up shots, finishing through contact. But that’s part of the process.
“When you're dealing with the imperfections, you also want to figure out which of the ones you can fix quickest,” Wade said. “This kid may be 5.4 but he's maxed out at a 5.4, and he's going to cost X amount. This kid may be a 4.8 but we see, with a couple tweaks and a couple things that we've been pretty successful at, by the time the season starts, we think we can get him to a 5.8 and he's a little bit less [money]. All right, we're going to take that kid. It allows you to see through that. It's not strictly a numbers graph or money graph because you've also got to understand where your development strengths are, where your program strengths are and what you can fix, and what you can't fix.”
With programs paying players directly through revenue sharing, Stacy has incorporated value into the formula. Using successful NBA franchises — general manager and chief strategist Andrew Slater has worked with the champion Oklahoma City Thunder in various capacities since 2018 — as a model for pay structures, the Wolfpack can assign a percentage of its budget for each roster spot.
Stacy graduated from Loyola-Chicago and worked both in finance as a financial analyst and with the Chicago White Sox as a baseball operations associate. He founded Jam Basketball Intelligence, an analytics company that compiles scouting reports and identifies strengths, weaknesses and tendencies. He advised more than 20 programs and spent last season at Wyoming.
It was his predictive work that converted Chambers, who followed a much more traditional path to NC State — started as a team manager, coached at the high school, AAU and small college level, director of basketball operations before getting onto a bench at the Division I level. He considered himself in the middle of the great analytics debate.
“Stacy showed me the baseball model of expected wins, and he was able to, almost to the number, predict the number of wins that we had at McNeese the first year,” Chambers said.
The second season, Stacy predicted the number of points that McNeese State would score and allow — and he nearly nailed it to the exact amount.
“It’s remarkable, honestly,” Chambers said. “I have completely gone in, all in, on analytics.”