Kevin Keatts: "We're Clicking At The Right Time"

NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media Wednesday afternoon in the lead-up to the Wolfpack's matchup versus Texas Tech in the 2024 NCAA Tournament.    

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the press conference.

There's teams that you have obviously deep ties against, the challenge, you don't know anything about these guys you're playing tomorrow. There's not that connection, that emotional edge. How do you rebuild it for your guys?
Yeah, that's a really good question because one of our motivating factors in the ACC is we almost was like on a revenge tour against that collection of group that we beat. We were 2-6, and we were trying to figure out, all right, how do we clean our stuff up and get better and not make the mistakes. All of the games that we played were really close and we knew we should have won most of those games. But Texas Tech is different. I mean, we haven't played them. They are well coached they can score inside out. They play with a certain physicality. So I kinda gotta trick them and tell them I think it's somebody else. Maybe we point out that it's another team in our league and they're very similar to that.

It's one of those things where when you get to postseason you gotta be perfect because it doesn't take -- sometimes it's a five minute stretch, sometimes it's a ten minute stretch, sometimes it's as easy as missing baskets and you can go home. So hopefully that experience of winning those five games will help us as we move forward.

Coach, I was just talking with Mo in the locker room about how he's managing Ramadan and everything through the tournaments. What does it say about his commitment both to his religion and to you guys in his resilience that he is managing two pretty high emotional things at the same time.
I mean, it shows his maturity at a high level. At my age, I couldn't do it. And he's doing it. Obviously his faith is very special to him and obviously the same thing can be said about his team and teammates and he's handling it like a champion and playing well and understanding what he has to do and my hat goes off to him for that.

And when you see the late tip time, are you like thank goodness, we don't have to worry about the gel packets everything in the middle of the game?
The late tip time is great for Mo and our entire team. Like when I'm sitting there for Selection Sunday, and you know your name is going to be called because you get an automatic berth because we won the ACC. But I'll tell you what, I was asking for a Friday or I was asking for a late start on Thursday, and the Lord answered my prayers for that.

I'd say a couple weeks ago lot of people probably wouldn't have assumed that your team would be here in this position now. Do you kind of find that the guys sort of have a chip on their shoulder because of that or maybe even like a freedom in being here when a lot of people assumed that they wouldn't have been?
Yeah, I don't think our guys listen to what other people thought. And we kind of kept it in our locker room. And chip on their shoulder, possibly. But I don't think it's because people didn't think we could make it here. Like, it never crossed our mind in the locker room. We have always stayed as a close-knit group. And we knew -- you know, think about this. We went one game from going 500 in our league. We were right there. I think what really threw people off is that we had a really strong back end of our schedule, Florida State on the road. Here, Pittsburgh on the road, and then you got Carolina, Duke on Saturday-Sunday. And it threw everybody off because they're like, man, they're a good team. They also think nobody ever factored in that in our league we had the third toughest conference schedule. So we were battle tested going into that. But I think our guys just knew that some of the games that we lost we could have won.

What was the scouting aspect like for you for looking at Texas Tech because they've been playing without their big guy for a while. He might be back and they kind of changed how they do things without him. What did you look for in terms of getting ready for this game?
Are you telling me he's back? No. I think when you get to this situation to a tournament you prepare for everyone. And you have to at times prepare for two different situations. Doesn't change the fact how good those guards are, and how well they've been playing defensively and everything else.

But when you get to a tournament situation and it's one and done if you don't take care of business, you have to prepare for every situation and you've gotta prepare for every young person playing. And that's what we did. We locked in and, man, he's really good. He made some talented -- but to their credit, they're really good with or without him also.

Kevin, we just talked with Cal and Greg Kampe and they were both advocates to not expand the NCAA Tournament. What are your thoughts on that, especially as a team that, without an automatic berth, you may not be sitting here today?
Well, I totally disagree with them, and not just because I just want to disagree with them. I think there should be some expansion.

I just think it's too many student-athletes that do not get the opportunity to play in postseason. When you look at football, they don't have that issue. You can make a bowl game in under 500 now, and the experience of -- you know, we talk about the student-athlete experience, and the only thing that really, in my opinion, that has not changed is expanding the tournament.

And I don't have a number. I don't know what that should be. But I do think we should give more schools opportunities to be able to get in the tournament. All of our conferences, all of our Power 5 conferences are going to 17, 18 teams. And so when you think about that now, like let's say us for the ACC, which I think is really not fair, we're getting 5 out of 15. If we get 7 out of 18, it's not a pretty number.

And so in my opinion, when I was at Mid Major, I thought I should have an opportunity. I was at UNCW, we had won 28 games, and if I didn't win that championship game, no matter what I did, I wouldn't have the opportunity to play in the tournament. So somehow we gotta figure it out, and I'm not saying you gotta load it up with High Major teams. I'm saying that more student-athletes, in my opinion, should have the opportunity to play in the best postseason tournament in college.

With the postseason experience, are you surprised, then, that there are a number of teams that are declining NIT invites that were not invited to the NCAA Tournament? Is that just having any kind of postseason experience matter or is it specifically NCAA Tournament postseason experience?
And I know this is going to sound funny. I think it's a trickle down for what happens in football, and I think we're finally getting it in basketball. You go to bowl games, and if they're not in the playoffs, I mean how many teams show up at a bowl game without most of their good players? I think what happens in basketball now, and I hope it's not a trend, but now everybody's eager. If you don't make the Big Dance, and because you can transfer right away, most people are saying I'm going to get into the portal so I can figure out what my new opportunity is. So I think it's -- I think we're getting a little bit of what football has had and not playing in the biggest bowl games, and because of the transfer portal, people are jumping in right away.

Coach, you could arguably say that DJ Burns was a very underrated big and we all got to see him shine in that ACC tournament. How has that been watching him take his game to new heights and people starting to recognize the player that he really is?
Well, just to see how much he's gotten a lot better in a lot of areas. He could always score the basketball. Defensively we've had a lot of work to do, and I think he's gotten better in that area. He's starting to rebound the basketball.

But since he's gotten to NC State, the one thing that he's become, and his numbers really reflect that this year, is he's become a really elite passer. And we run a lot of stuff through him because he demands a lot of double teams and everything to be able to pass the ball out.

But he's also a prideful young man. He didn't make First Team, Second Team, Third Team Or Honorable Mention in our league, and that's nothing -- because when people don't make it, you always say who should come off the list? I think there are some really good players that made it, but he didn't, and I think that bothered him a little bit and I think it helped him throughout the ACC tournament, obviously being the MVP.

Coach every year, every team is different. What makes this specific group special?
 I think this group is different because we can do it in different ways. We have the ability to score inside. We have the ability for those guards to really play well. You know, on any given night one of these guys can lead us in scoring. It happened at least four times in the ACC tournament.

Last year was a really good team. Our team was really good. But we had to go as Terquavion Smith and Jarkel Joiner went. And if those two guys didn't play well we wasn't going to win. We can have games now where one of our best players might not have their greatest game but somebody else can lead us.

So having your NCAA Tournament game in Pittsburgh in an ACC city obviously you didn't play in this arena, but you played in this city just a couple weeks ago, do you sort of think that familiarity is going to help you guys?
No, only if we played in the arena. The way our guys travel, and I can't remember -- I do remember. Pittsburgh was a late Saturday night game. And we got in and then after the game, we got out. Sometimes these guys don't even know what city they're in. But if we were playing a game at Pittsburgh I think we'd have an advantage, but it's better than last year. We had to travel to the West Coast, and obviously it didn't work well for us. Our conditioning wasn't good because of the altitude and everything else.

Kevin, I asked the players this earlier. What do you think this team is doing best right now?
Well, I think one thing we're doing really, really good is that we've been locked in to the scouting reports and understanding our jobs. And we talk about a lot of times, do your job and do it at a high level. And we're starting to complement each other both offensively and defensively, kind of knowing where we should be and finding the right person at times and all of this stuff is end of the year maturity things, like things that we -- our ball screen coverage wasn't very good at some points in the early season. And you could tell because we've had so many transfers, that now we're starting to click and we're clicking at the right time.