Kevin Keatts: "Our Heart is Always on the Line"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media following the Wolfpack's 68-58 loss to Clemson Saturday afternoon.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Keatts’ press conference. An abbreviated transcript is provided below.
Opening Statement
I think there’s a couple of bright spots if you want to look for any of them. I have been asking for a little consistency from my group, and it looks like Dontrez Styles is starting to play really good basketball. He was 9-of-14 [from the floor], 6-of-8 from three, and had five rebounds. Our team is fighting. We played against a very good Clemson team. They came in 9-1 [in ACC play], and our guys are putting the work in. We have been having these four-to-five minute stretches that are really hurting us. I didn’t know who we were going to have this week. [Ben] Middlebrooks and Styles didn’t practice the last couple days because they had flu-like symptoms, same thing with Breon Pass, and right before the game Brandon [Huntley-Hatfield] decided that he couldn’t go as well. I give us credit for the way we came out and fought against a really good team with the adversity we went through. That being said, we have got to get better and figure out these stretches. Our defense has been doing a great job of carrying us through most of these games and when we get into trouble it looks like we don’t score the basketball.
On playing the top two ACC teams in the past week...
If you look at those two games, you can see we are right there. You look and see how much better we have gotten. We just didn’t win a few games that could have gone our way earlier in the season. If you win those games early and then you don’t play well when you play teams like Duke and Clemson, then people would see we have a chance. We just have to keep figuring it out and keep working, but to answer your question, when you look at those games you’ve got to hope. Looking at the big picture, which I normally don’t do, in our league it’s going to be 9 or 10 teams that have to win their league to go, so can we continue to get better and win some games down the road to help put us in that position.
On keeping the team morale up...
The way we do it is we keep playing hard and make it a habit. Our good habit is that we play hard. If we have lost any game this year, it hasn’t been because we lacked effort. I love the way our guys can be. I love players when they play hard because, at this point when you lose this many games in a row, it’s easy to say, “Man, we just don’t play hard.” But we are competing ,and that’s how we do it. That is a non-negotiable for me in my program. Somebody on that bench is going to play hard if one or two guys decide that they're not, but I haven’t seen that from anybody.