Kevin Keatts: "Our Guys Came Out With A Defensive Mindset"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for the ACC's weekly zoom call to discuss the Wolfpack's road play, Casey Morsell, and much more.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the Zoom Call.
What were some positives from the BC win?
I thought we were very aggressive offensively in that game.
It was a good game to see Casey and both Jayden Taylor play well. Horne had obviously in the previous six games completely carried us and at times I felt like he didn't have much help from the guard spot.
To see Casey being aggressive, driving the ball to the hole, and ended up knocking down at three. Jayden Taylor I thought was really, really active. He got to the free-throw line and he was seven for seven from the free-throw line.
We're going to need those guys to play well down the stretch. Horne’s been Superman for us for six games, and we needed someone to step up and play well with him.
I thought those guys really responded. We'd had a couple of conversations about, “Hey, how can you score? How can you help?"
Then you add in the fact that I thought DJ Burns played one of his best game the entire year. It gave us a great inside-out punch that we needed.
What is your reaction to the court storming in Duke-Wake and what should happen going forward in the conference?
You've either gotta get rid of it or you've gotta organize it.
What I mean by that is, think about this now, let's just say when the game is over it takes two minutes to... the teams just shake hands and then the teams will leave the court. I don't know why it can't be a situation where before the game it's discussed... if you think you've got a pretty good sizable lead, the announcer can make a statement where there will be an organized, court storming after the game, but the other team has to leave the floor.
You get the same effect.
Or you just have to get rid of it all together. In those situations a few years back, we were playing Duke here at home. Coach K was coaching and the one thing that I said to him was, "How do we get your players off the floor because it looks like our students are setting up to storm the court?"
I just think the communication part up front has to be there, but I think it can be much more organized than anything.
You don't have to storm the court when the clock hits zero. You get the same effect. You can make it two minutes later. You can put two to three minutes on the clock, and then everybody gets a chance to because the goal is to have fun and celebrate with your team, not to have any type of controversy with the other team.
After the Syracuse game you talked about other guys stepping up. How do you carry that from the weekend forward?
We weren’t happy as a program and a staff, especially in that first half defensively. First of all we challenged our guys defensively to be better and we needed some other guys to play better on the offensive end.
DJ Horne shouldered a lot of responsibility and other guys weren’t stepping up, especially on the perimeter.
Against Boston College we made sure that we did a good job defensively, taking guys away, making it tough. They came in against Miami making 15 3’s and nine against Florida State. Sure they ended up with nine but it was moreso when the game was probably in hand. So we wanted to do a good job of taking that away.
Post is such a hard guy to guard and if you told me we could hold Post to six points and McGlockton one, we’d take that all day.
I think our guys came out with a defensive mindset and did a great job with that.
These last four games you have some real opportunities to make a jump. How do you approach this?
We have some good opportunities as you said. We’ve jumped a hurdle, and it’s silly in our league that a team as good as Boston College will be a Quad 3. So we did a good job of taking care of homecourt advantage against those guys.
You get a chance to go on the road and play against a good Florida State, obviously Carolina, Duke, and Pitt left. The way we do it, we have to concentrate on one at a time. The next one is Florida State.
It’s still hard to believe that as good as our league is and competitive as our league is, everything is based on numbers. If you took a 17-10 team that’s 9-7 right now and you applied that to another league, they’d probably be a five seed right now, but unfortunately we have numbers tagged to us, which really hurts.
It hurts with fanbases, it hurts with administrations. It hurts with a lot of it because the way it looks, we may only get five teams in and there are ten teams and probably out of those ten teams probably also deserve to play in the NCAA Tournament.
We have to really lock in and try to take care of each. They are all individual games even though there are four of them, you have individual games and they all present a different challenge for you.
Thoughts on Mo Diarra’s play/confidence. How do you reach him and motivate him?
Well you want guys to be playing with confidence.
He’s starting to knock down shots for us. Three things he’s done for us lately he’s really rebounded the basketball, defended, and he’s also knocked down some three’s. I like the confidence part of kids. I’d rather have him thinking he can make every shot as opposed to him wondering if he can.
That’s what he’s provided to us... energy, the confidence, and the swag that he’s playing with right now.
You are above .500 in the league on the road. What’s been the key to you guys playing well on the road this year?
We’ve got some guys who have been just completely locked in. As you know, if you’re fortunate to get a road win in this league, or any league, they are golden.
I think one of the things we’ve been able to do is kind of focus on the road. That’s a hard thing to do now, just to get guys locked in.
The one thing that will help you win road games, and I think it’s helped us, is some of them have been some of our best defensive games... you’re not letting the home crowd really get involved and you’re defending.
I’m proud of our guys and what we’ve done so far on the road, and hopefully we can continue that.