Kevin Keatts: "Our Week Was Well Spent"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media following the Wolfpack's 89-63 win over Rider Sunday evening.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Keatts’ press conference. An abbreviated transcript is provided below.
Opening Statement
You never know how you’re going to end up playing after having a week off, certainly we worked on a lot of things and took two days off after the Kansas game. We got in there on Tuesday and Wednesday and worked on us. We took Thursday off and turned our attention to Rider on Friday and Saturday. What we want to do is clean up things. I didn’t think in the Kansas game we played together enough. I thought we had moments. I didn’t think we got off to a good start, obviously being down 15-0, but tonight we did and the second half we did. I thought we grew in a lot of ways. When you look at it, what I think this team has to do. I don’t know that we’re gonna have 21 assists on 29 made field goals all the time, but we have to play off each other and I thought we really did a good job tonight. Moving the basketball and playing off each other defensively we got back into the right places. I thought we were out of place and sometimes a week helps you, sometimes you can be a little bit rusty, but I thought our week was well spent.
On Marcus Hill’s growth since arriving at NC State and his game tonight...
He’s growing and the next stage of it is – because he makes shots behind the three point line – the next stage is feeling confident making those shots. I think the biggest thing with Marcus is he fought for this team. He had to score with his ability to get paint touches. I think he had six assists tonight. And so the ball, you always reward it when you make the right play. I think that’s where his growth is. All of those guys, we’ve tried that this week to define certain roles and make a good pass, but if somebody else got a better pass, they got a great shot, so make sure we pass the ball. And I think that’s where he’s growing at.
On Michael O’Connell in games going forward...
I just say to him, “Man, just play. I mean, just have fun. Like, this is your last year. You can start counting down the games and stop worrying about everything.” He never said this, but you don’t have to carry the load because the team won the ACC tournament and went to the Final Four last year. You’ve just got to play. He’s such a great kid, so I don’t know if that’s what he was thinking, but just go play and have fun. He looked like the Michael that we’ve all grown to love, he did some really good things tonight.
On separation early in the game and the emphasis it had...
We wanted to establish ourselves defensively. I’ve talked about this, sometimes you can come out flat, but that doesn’t mean that you have to give up a basket because you’re not scoring and we really emphasize that. The one thing that we did this week that we’ve done differently is we played a bunch of small games. We played a bunch of four minute games and put them in situations where you're up 10, down 10. We wanted to do that instead of drills. I think sometimes as coaches we can over-drill and in drills you know where you’re supposed to be. But when you’re playing in a game, guys are in different places and I thought it paid off for us. We’re better and I thought we got better in some areas.