Keatts, Dorn, and Freeman Discuss the Seton Hall Loss

NC State's Kevin Keatts, Al Freeman, and Torin Dorn met with the media after the Wolfpack's 94-83 loss to Seton Hall.

Opening Statement...
COACH KEATTS: Well, first of all, I'd like to congratulate Seton Hall. I thought they did a tremendous job. The feeling that we have right now is the feeling that they had the last couple of years. They had seniors obviously that felt this way and they had another opportunity, and I thought they played like seniors down the stretch, obviously, to win the game.

I'd like to say that I'm so proud of my team. When I took the job, I didn't want to just have a team. I wanted to build a program. And I thought these guys, when you look at every guy in our locker room, they did a tremendous job.

A lot of these guys came to play for me before they even knew how I was going to play. And the guys in the program stood by us, and I'm proud of them.

When you think about a first-year program, and we went 21 games and we go 11-7 in the ACC and finish third. I'm proud of them.

Never really could get over the hump. I thought we fought in the entire game. We were right there, and then every time we made a play, I thought they had an answer for it.

Al, final game here. You had 36 points. Describe what you saw out there on the court. Again, it was a situation where your team got close, but, as Coach said, never able to get over the hump.
ALLERIK FREEMAN: Yeah. Like Coach said, you know, when we got close, obviously they had a lot of older guys with a lot of experience. They were able to just make the most out of the possession. Kind of turned momentum. And just one of those things. One of those things where we get one loose ball, one rebound, you know, one shot goes in and maybe get some momentum and it can lead with a snowball effect, can lead to some other things.

But they did a great job just handling the adversity, handling our runs. And they were able to kind of just keep us right there. They did a great job. There's nothing really you could say.

How does the experience of playing in this tournament, Torin, set it up for the offseason?
TORIN DORN: It was good to get the experience. A lot of guys in our locker room, it's their first tournament. So it's good to be able to return a team with some tournament experience and be able to take that into the next year and build on it, build on what we started this year.

There are a lot of whistles tonight, a lot of free throws. Was it hard to get into some kind of rhythm offensively or defensively when you kept hearing the whistle all night?
ALLERIK FREEMAN: Like I said, this is one of those things, you know, a lot of -- there were some calls I felt like were tick-tack calls. Maybe on their end that wasn't on our end. But I'm sure they can say the same thing.

So it was just like you said, a lot of whistles. And just as us players, gotta make the adjustment and just try to guard with our feet instead of our hands. So, you know, like I said earlier, when we would cut the lead down, they would do a great job of just putting their head down and trying to get to the free-throw line, kind of stop the momentum, stop the play a little bit. And their guards did a really good job tonight.

TORIN DORN: It was a lot of whistles. But Coach always preaches that you have to win all different types of games. So you just have to adapt, learn how the refs are calling it and adapt and win all those types of games.

We just weren't able to do that. But that's good for us. Moving forward we'll be able to take this experience and build on it.

For both the guys, but especially Allerik. You guys played so hard and so well. How hard is it to walk away after a game like that?
ALLERIK FREEMAN: I mean, it's tough to lose any game, you know. We wish we could run it back. But it doesn't work like that. And that's the beauty and the ugly about the NCAA is that it's one and done.

They did a great job. Like I keep saying, they were able to control the game once they got up down the stretch, where we were playing as hard as we can, trying to sell out with everything, every single defensive play. And they took care of the ball enough to hold us off.

And it just sucks, especially when you're a senior and my last college game ever. You know, you always hear, your coaches and other seniors say before you, how they would do anything to put the jersey back on, to have another practice, to keep playing and stuff like that.

And you want to listen to it and you want to take it for exactly what it's worth and really digest it, but until you're really faced with it, until you experience it yourself, you can't really, really understand it, until, you know, it's ten minutes left in the game and it's a back-and-forth game and you need to win and you're just trying to give everything you got.

So you know, it sucks. It's tough. It's tough to lose any game.

TORIN DORN: Like Al said, it's tough to lose any game, especially when you put so much into it throughout the whole season. And this is an extremely hardworking group of guys. So when you put your all into something and don't get the result that you would like, it's always tough. It's just tough.