NC State
Keatts: I'm asking guys to take advantage of every minute that they are in the game
Kevin Keatts speaks to the media after a 76-60 win over Virginia.
Uh, let me turn mine on so I can record this too. Make sure we are. No, I'm kidding. Um, good game for us. And it, it's a good game because it's a really tough scout. You know, typically when you're scouting the team, you know, you gotta obviously scout their offense and, um, you know, figure out how to stop them. Well, U VA is very unique on both ends of the floor. So we had to figure out we had to come up with a great offensive game plan and also a great defensive game plan and Tony's done a great job. We were really concerned about them doubling our post. Uh, obviously last year, I thought they were very effective against DJ when they, um, doubled us in the post and we really worked on. It had a little bit of a cheat sheet because Notre Dame kind of doubled us the same way and we were able to find people, but I thought we completely, um, won the game on the defensive end. Our guys were locked in and we talked about being a better defensive team this particular night and, uh, found a way excited you know, three and oh, and of course, Craig does a great job of updating me three and o since 2013. So we're excited where we at right now. Questions. I uh then earlier in the week, I just your thoughts on how balance, how it was funny because if I asked you guys before the two games, you said you would have said we could have scored 76 possibly at Notre Dame and 50 something 54 it just reversed. And, uh, you know, I really feel like, uh and, and give Notre Dame a lot of credit, you know, Michael's got them really defending. I thought coming off the 10 day break, we wasn't as sharp. Um but we relied on our defense, we're growing defensively, but, you know, when you score 76 points against a really good Virginia defense, then you're doing a good job. We had 14 assists, we moved the ball, the ball didn't stick. Um You know, we made the extra pass and I think that's what helped us, but it's, it's growing on sort of the slope. Was that was tonight's performance a result of that or do you think he was specially motivated? No, I think, I think he's just getting better. Luke, I mean, I just, you know, when you, we, we play, what is this, the, how many games that we play? 14 games? And I think he's just growing up, I think he's understanding what I'm looking for, he did everything great except for that long three that he took on the wing. But I think, I think it's because of the fact that, you know, he's getting reps in practice, he's starting to feel comfortable the way we want him to play. He's playing harder, you know, at the beginning of the year, he was flying around and then as a freshman you hit a wall a little bit now, I think he's coming back around now because we're an AC C play. All contributing was today a good example to the amount of depth. Yeah, you know, we played nine guys and, and those guys like the three guys at Notre Dame that were really good off the bench was Mo Ben and Michael. I thought MJ Rice came in and gave us a lift. I thought Ben and Michael were good again. Uh You're gonna get some of that. I think we're one of the things we wanted to do after Christmas was help develop our bench. You know, we wanted to make sure. And it's tough because I, you know, Cam Woods didn't play tonight because he and he's a good player. Uh We're getting caught in rotation. I'm asking guys to buy into roles and play and take advantage of every minute that you get when you're in the game. And I think everybody's buying into that. Well, the, the, the guy who loves Michael o'connor more than anybody is DJ Horn because he can now slide over to the two and he can score the ball. Michael's the closest thing that I've had in a long time to a pure point guard, even with JJ, he was a combo guard. And so we're, you know, he, he allows our other guys to be able to play. He completely chip understands his role. Uh you know, he would rather leave the game now with four or five assists and trying to score 12 or 13 points. And when you got older guys who are buying into their role, you could have a chance to be really good as a team. Do you feel like you have a sense of what the rotation is starting to look like as you? Yeah, I mean, I think we got, you know, right now, eight or nine guys when we can add nine or 10 as we go, but I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, you, you see uh LJ Thomas or, or Breon or Ernest Ross, Ernest Ross was playing really good basketball when he came back from Christmas and then obviously he turned his ankle. So, you know, I think, I think we're gonna, we're looking for one or two more guys to add to that rotation. I like where we had about eight or nine cam's going to have a boom soon. You can see MJ starting to get a little bit comfortable what he's doing out there. Well, we want to go into every game with a win. And, you know, I like, I, I tell everybody, look, I said to our guys, you have done a great job of taking care of wins on the road. They're golden in the AC C now we're home. You got a good opponent in Virginia. So we just build on him. You know, I, I, you know me, you guys know me, I don't even look to the next game. You can call me tomorrow. As I tell Luke all the time or whoever asked, he asked me, call me tomorrow. You want to talk about who we play next? But I don't get caught up in that. Did you feel like you had kind of a game plan? Like a checkmate kind of standpoint? And the players in locker were saying that they felt like they had a great game plan. Yeah, you know, we, we did a great job. Now, I was, I was a little nervous as a coach because when you play at two o'clock against a team that demands so much respect in the scouting port area. It's tough. And so, you know, we had to, we got back at 3 a.m. You know, we took off. No, we didn't take off on Thursday. We got back into the gym about one o'clock. We only watched film. We only did kind of a walkthrough the next day. We practice at 10 a.m. We had a um shoot around this morning at nine o'clock. But, you know, as coaches, we want to feel comfortable that we have everything in and we were pushing stuff. And so I gotta give these guys credit, you know, they learn from film, they learn from our walk throughs, even though we didn't physically guard it for two days. Like most things that we have to prepare for. Yeah. Yeah. II, I thought like II I wanted to look at the stat sheet and see JT with seven points and I would have been extremely happy. But the mere fact that he played great defense on Beakman the entire game and ended up with 15 points, shows me that he's becoming a complete player. I thought he was really, really good and he won't get, um, you know, he won't get all the accolades of offensive tonight, but I thought that his defense was as good as anybody's played on Beakman so far. Is there any kind of X ray? Do you still got? No, no, I, I am grateful. I say this all the time. Like it was when I woke up this morning, I went to shoot around, it was raining everywhere. I'd heard everything about the, the ice may be coming and I never get caught up into who's in the, who's not in the building. I just, I'm grateful and thankful for whoever shows up and the folks that came out who, you know, could have stayed at home because of the rain. Man. I'm so proud and grateful to those guys and I want to thank them but has nothing to do with have been. We'll play, just remember. We played during COVID. There was nobody here. So we'll play if it's 10, if it's 20,000, we're gonna play basketball. We demonstrate that look. Well, it was one of my best play calls. What are you laughing at? Why are you choking to one of my, one of my best play calls of the year is Get Dennis Parker, the ball at half court with 1.4 seconds on the clock. I just knew he was gonna drain that. It's a great call. They said the lot. So, no, I was supposed to go to DJ. Who said that. Oh, shit. He don't, he don't know, he's a freshman. He wouldn't understand that. He was absolutely supposed to go to the. It's almost like Whittenberg said it was a pass just so, you know that. Thanks. You guys have a good one.