Keatts: "We Love Wolfpack Nation"

NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media today to discuss the Penn State win and the upcoming game against No. 8 Auburn.    

Obviously you had Wisconsin, Penn State, and Vanderbilt, but this feels like a real test. What do you see in them?
I think they all are real tests.

When you look at us, as we have played our schedule, we've only got tougher. This will be our fourth Power Five team, and I’m excited about it.

When you go back to the Penn State game, I thought it was a great game for us. A neutral court game, same thing you could say about the Vanderbilt game.

This will be a great test, but I will say another great opportunity for us. I think talking to Craig and Fred, probably the highest-ranked team to come to PNC, non-conference, since 2011, and I think it was Syracuse at No. 1 when they were in the Big East.

We’re excited about it. 

They're playing great basketball, and Bruce has done a tremendous job with his team. They go 10-deep, they pressure, they shoot a lot of three’s, they are athletic.

It’s a really good basketball team.  He has Final Four talent on that team.

Where do you feel this team is in terms of chemistry?
You asked me at the right time because our guys played extremely well on the road.

We knew Penn State was a very good defensive team and in order to win the game I wanted the game to be in the 80s or up into the 90s, but our chemistry has got a lot better.

I think guys are starting to figure it out, which is good for us. The guys who we need to score the basketball are scoring the basketball, the guys who we need to be role players are starting to understand that.

So I like where we are headed into the Auburn game.

Will Markell be back in the lineup or is that more of a shoulder thing?
It’s more of me continuing to build a program.

Around here, there is no such thing of being late. It was probably three or four days prior to when we needed him to be on time and he was late, so obviously somebody else's opportunity.

I don't know about lineups. We've got a couple of days for everybody to do the right thing and whoever is doing the right thing and playing the best basketball will be in the lineup on Wednesday.

More on Braxton Beverly’s game.
He’s fine. I was never worried about him.  I know he was a guy that was going to make some big shots for us, and I’m excited about what he's doing.

I like where he's at right now.

How will Wyatt and DJ be against the taller players from Auburn?
There’s been a lot of talk about our spot and how it's going to be moving forward.  I don't lose sleep over a center spot.  When I look at it, I combine them as one player, and I think they had 21 points. I don't know how many rebounds they had together, but they're fine. They're getting better.

The guy who has really helped them more than anybody is Sacha [Killeya-Jones]. He's done a tremendous job in practice simulating some of the best players. It's been tough on them because he doesn't take it easy on them in practice.

They're getting better because they playing against him every day.

How will Wednesday prepare you for the ACC?
I think all of our non conference... I was just going over with my staff and you look at the ACC and when you look at it, our schedule was a little bit easier starting off, but everybody ends up playing three or four Power Five teams. 

For us, we just played them a little bit later on.

This game is just like the rest of them. I said that about the Vanderbilt game and I said that when we played in Wisconsin. I thought Wisconsin was a tremendous game that we led for the majority of.  That was a great test for the ACC, and this will be the same.

Is benching a player a part of telling these guys you’re serious?
It's part of our culture.

I'm focused on our guys doing the right thing on and off the court, but accountability is part of our culture. 

I've got 10 guys that I feel comfortable with, but if I had six guys I felt comfortable and I had to play with four at times, I would do the same thing.

This is not a situation where I want one or two big years, I want to build for the future. I think it's important that everybody in our program understand that accountability is one of the major things and if you don't do the right thing... starting for these kids is everything.

I don't care who starts, it’s more about who finishes, but you have to do the right thing.

The messages will continue to be sent. If you see a guy that's not in the lineup, it may be because he does something wrong, but it could be the other guy is playing good, also.

How do you measure if a guy is playing hard?
That’s a great question. 

It burns me up when guys don’t compete.  You can miss ten shots in a row, but if you are competing, fighting... playing hard on the defensive end, that’s what I want us to hang our hat on.  I want us to punch the clock everytime we show up for a game.

These ten games, I’d say our guys competed and played extremely hard. If you don’t play hard, someone else will get your minutes. 

That’s important to me.

More on Auburn...
They are really good. The last game I watched was the Dayton game and I’ll go back and watch a little of UAB because it’s a different game.

They jumped all over Dayton... as I look at this team, it’s hard to say there are many teams in the country as good or who plays as hard as Auburn. It’s a good opportunity for us.

More on his contract situation...
Contracts are something that you work on a long time ago. It just happened to get announced and approved a couple of days ago.

It's always something that was always in the work. It just needed to be approved by the higher ups.

I’m very humble and very grateful for the opportunity.  Chancellor Woodson and coach Yow have given us the opportunity and the Board of Trustees, Board of Governors.

This is a tremendous place. It feels like home already even though we've only been here a year and a few games.  We love Wolfpack Nation, and I’m excited about the future of NC State basketball.