Kevin Keatts: "You Want to See Young Men Have Success"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media following the Wolfpack's 97-66 win over USC Upstate Monday evening.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Keatts’ press conference. An abbreviated transcript is provided below.
Opening Statement
What a beautiful night. It’s not very often you get a chance to drop two banners. For us here at NC State, it’s been 37 years. It was beautiful. I knew those banners would look good, but they looked great. It took everything I had — I got really emotional — to keep it together because we had a game to play. It’s special. It’s why you do the job, and the job is done because you want to see young men have success. Here at NC State, when I took the job, I said we were going to win championships. I said, “Kevin Keatts is a winner.” When those banners dropped, all I could do was think about our players, the fans who’d been starving for that, the alumni, and all the former players that were right there but couldn’t get over the hump. Those banners represent everything about NC State. I’m just fortunate to be the guy behind the wheel driving the car. I want to personally thank everyone who had the opportunity to come watch the game, and I want to personally thank everybody who watched the game from home. It was a special deal, and I think that’s important. The game was great. I’m glad the game went the way it went because of the fact we dropped the banners; I didn’t want to drop two banners and just have an okay game. I’m glad the game went the way it did.
On the banner-dropping event impacting the morale of the returning players from the Final Four run...
Give credit to [Ben Middlebrooks and Breon Pass]. Ben had 10 points and 10 rebounds, his third double-double, and Breon had 14 points, a career-high. We’re going to need Breon, [Jayden Taylor], Ben, and Dennis Parker, those guys who are returning, to show everybody how we play. That’s our culture. My job is to put in plays, defensive schemes, and all that other stuff, but there’s nothing better than, on opening night, seeing two of your guys play really well. I think the other guys played really, really hard tonight. To answer the question, it had to be really emotional for those guys. It was great having Casey Morsell back. I told him that I was going to watch his feed, and if it’s not good, I’m going to tell him, “You can’t be saying, ‘Hey, they’ve got to be better defensively,’” when I told him he had to be better defensively.
On the team’s defense...
I thought we flew around. This is what I wanted with this team. We made them play a little more one-on-one basketball. They had five assists and 17 turnovers. On our end, I thought we shared the ball. We didn’t have 20 assists at all last year, so 20 assists on 38 made field goals was pretty impressive. If you want me to be picky as a coach, we fouled too much. They got to the free-throw line a lot tonight, and we’ve got to clean it up and do a better job.