NC State has blueprint to develop shooting guard Paul McNeil under Justin Gainey

NC State coach Justin Gainey saw first-hand two low-major wings pick Tennessee and leave as NBA players with some hardware from award ceremonies.

Gainey knows the blueprint for 6-foot-5, 190-pound rising junior Paul McNeil to reach his long-term dreams in a Wolfpack uniform. McNeil returned to NCSU after averaging 13.8 points and 3.6 rebounds, and he shot 42.7 percent from three-point land.

Dalton Knecht put up major points at Northern Colorado in 2022-23 in his breakout campaign. The former junior college transfer received an extra year from a court ruling and took advantage of it at Tennessee. He was a scoring machine with 21.7 points and 4.9 rebounds a contest, and shot 39.7 percent from three-point land en route to winning the Julius Erving Award for the nation’s top small forward.

Knecht went No. 17 overall in the first round of the 2024 NBA Draft to the Los Angeles Lakers.

“Dalton was an amazing, amazing guy,” Gainey said. “He was coming from the worst defensive team in the country, Ken Pom rated, and he was going into a team that the season before we were like the third-best defensive team in the country, right? It’s like complete opposites. You asked him why, and he said, ‘I knew I needed to get better on that side of the ball to do what I needed to do.’

Tennessee wasn’t sure what to expect from Knecht, but he proved himself in early wins against Wisconsin and Syracuse, and then exploded for 37 points in a 100-92 loss against North Carolina on Nov. 29, 2023.

“He felt like he could score on anybody, but he had to prove that he could guard for him to improve his draft status,” Gainey said. “That alone caught the eyes of the next level, the NBA. He was never an elite defender, but that commitment that he showed, that willingness every day to try to be better there, it caught their eye. It left a little less doubt in them that, ‘Man, we might be able to give them to an adequate defender.’”

Gainey saw a similar process when Tennessee landed sharp-shooting wing Chaz Lanier from North Florida, where he was coached by new NCSU assistant coach Matthew Driscoll.

“He was, he scored a ball just as well as, well, maybe not just as well [as Knecht],” Gainey half-joked. “He could score the ball similar to Dalton, more of a shooter. His defensive prowess was kind of in question as well. That’s why he chose to come there to prove that, ‘Hey, I can guard. I’m a complete player.’”

Lanier picked Tennessee over BYU and Kentucky, partly due to the Volunteers coaches and it also helped that he was from Nashville, Tenn. The move paid off for everyone involved.

Lanier averaged 18.0 points and 3.9 rebounds, and he shot 43.1 percent from the field and 39.5 percent on three-pointers, and he won the Jerry West Award for the nation’s top shooting guard. He went in the second round at No. 37 overall and made the Detroit Pistons this past season.

Gainey hopes to share the same magic with McNeil and have him reach the NBA heights of Knecht and Lanier, which will only pay off in recruiting.

NC State didn’t have any NBA players this past season, other than two who ended up transferring — Caleb Martin of the Dallas Mavericks and Omer Yurtseven was signed at the end of the season by Golden State Warriors and played in nine games.

“Moving forward and the guys that will be here that I’ll coach, I will be able to share that story of, ‘Look, it’s great that you can score. I don’t know if you’ll be able to score as good as those two guys [Knecht, Lanier]. If you do, man, we’re going to win a lot of games.’

“They also understood and valued the defensive side. To get to where these guys want to go [NBA], man, it’s going to be hard to just score your way there.”