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NC State Basketball

Keatts: "We Play Hard"

January 17, 2018
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NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media to discuss the upcoming game against Wake Forest.


What have you emphasized since the Virginia game and what do you what to see against Wake Forest?
We are fine.

Obviously, we lost a tough road game to a very good defensive team on their floor. I didn’t know this going into the game, but looking back at some stats I think Virginia in the last six years is 44-4 in the ACC at home, which is pretty tough.

I thought we had some great looks early in that game that certainly did not go down for us. When you don’t make shots, against Virginia they make you pay because they can control tempo and they are very efficient on the offensive end.

Does playing Wake Forest after three straight games against ranked competition worry you?
We don’t even talk about it, as crazy as it may sound, we don’t talk about whether they are ranked or not because we have tremendous respect for every program in this league and we know that Wake Forest is a very good team and obviously very capable if you do take care of your business at home. 

Was only having seven assists against Virginia a concern?
I wanted to think it was because we did not share the basketball but as I look at the stats everybody that has played them, nobody has had over seven assists against them all year long.

I think the only team that did was West Virginia and they came away with a win. I think they had 12 assists. 

I thought we had our chances early in the game. We never really got into a flow. I thought we had some good looks early. We didn’t make those shots. Credit a lot of that to UVA’s defense. 

We are fine. Obviously, it was a tough game for us. I thought that our guys competed all the way until the end and came up short. 

How do you see the backcourt rotation working with Markell Johnson back?
It gives us the ability to be able to rest some guys. When you look at it before this, Braxton and, especially Al Freeman, both of those guys were playing a lot of minutes and I would like to chop up some of those minutes off and be able to get Markell back in. 

You have had to go through a transition with bringing Abdul-Malik Abu back from injury, what is the transition like with bringing Markell back?
You are right. I wish I had the great fortune of never having to bring anybody back, but it is different because we have not had our group on the floor for long periods of time throughout the season. 

Markell will probably adjust a little bit more than Malik did obviously. I think in our system he will be fine. We are planning on playing him at some one and also some two but he was playing some good basketball before everything went down. 

Thoughts on Doral Moore of Wake Forest?
He is good. That kid is massive. He is a very good basketball player. We have got to do a great job of, number one, keeping him off the offensive glass, but the other thing if he can get two feet in the paint he is really tough to guard because he dunks everything around the basket. 

Then on the defensive end he changes all the shots. I think Omer and also Lennard both have to do a good job with him both on the offensive and defensive end being aggressive. Offensively and then defensively we have also we have to do our work early. 

Do you have to encourage Omer Yurtseven to shoot three-pointers?
No. The great thing about kids today is you don’t have to encourage them to shoot threes. If I allowed every kid on our roster to take threes they would. Omer just demonstrated that he can make them. 

It seems like the whole team feeds off of Omer Yurtseven? 
We are starting to trust him. He is a different kid than you guys remember and our guys remember from last year. A lot of time with post guys it becomes whether or not your guard guys are comfortable with you. For our guys, they are comfortable with him. He can score the ball inside and out so I think that they are okay giving him the basketball. 

He takes a lot of pressure off the guards. When you look around college basketball there are not a lot of post guys that you can throw the ball inside and they can score with their back to the basket. We are fortunate because of his development and his confidence that he can do that. 

Anytime you got a guy that can score well you want to give him the basketball. I thought Lennard was the same way. He carried us in a lot of games when we were able to throw the ball inside so those guys are taking a little pressure off the guards. 

Do you put an emphasis on in-state schools?
I don’t. It is the ACC. I don’t put any emphasis on playing one team over the other. For us, every game is important, especially when you have the opportunity to play at home. Like I have told you before, we have tremendous respect for every coach and every program in this league. 

Do you have a background with Danny Manning?
I don’t. I know he was a heck of a player. 

Danny was a great player and he has done a really good job with Wake Forest. He has done it the right way. He is doing a good job of building their program. 

What do you like and what do you think needs to be improved on at this point in the season?
I love the team that we have because they work hard and they are punching the clock every day. 

When you take a new staff and I am trying obviously to build a program and build a culture for these guys to buy in, the part about playing hard and giving great effort is what I love about this team. 

On every night things do not always go our way, but we play hard which gives us the opportunity to win games.

Al Freeman was scoreless against Virginia. How do you handle that with him?
It is two games. It is funny. It is weird. I am going to give Virginia a lot of credit. There is going to be a lot of leading scorers that go into UVA and come out scoreless. 

They did a tremendous job. I thought Al, I didn’t think he was aggressive. It is probably the first game that he has taken, I want to say, maybe five shots or less and I thought a lot of that had to do with their defense and everything else. 

We want to forget about that game as quick as we can and obviously move on to Wake Forest because we have got a great opponent coming. 

Will this be a game in the nineties? 
I don’t know. I have always said if you try to predict the score of what the game is you are always going to be wrong. 

A couple of things that I always feel like if you play a team twice, it is always a different game. We have only played one team twice which is Clemson but it was a completely different game than  it was at Clemson so as a coach I don’t try to predict that. 

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Keatts: "We Play Hard"

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