Kevin Keatts: "This Was A Good Win For Us"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media after the Wolfpack's 89-80 overtime win over Boston College.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the press conference.
Opening Statement...
“The game actually ended the way I told our guys it would. What another great ACC game. I told our guys that going into every game from this point on, we have a small margin for error and every game could possibly come down to the last second. Surely, I didn’t expect overtime.
I thought we played great to finish the second half and started the half well. During the middle, we hit a spurt where we didn’t score the ball. Then Ky Bowman got going, and before you knew it, we were down. Give our guys credit-- we fought our way through. I am proud that we took care of it at home. This was a good win for us. We get to live another day and move on.”
On overtime play...
“In the overtime period, we wanted our guys to come out aggressive. We actually switched what we were running. I know to the naked eye it looks like we are running a 3-2 zone, which they matched up. But every time we swung it, they would switch to man-to-man principles.
Instead of running our zone stuff, we went to our man-to-man stuff. We were able to find CJ Bryce going backdoor. I thought Devon Daniels was tremendous, especially in the overtime period. He almost won the game at the end of regulation. He did a great job on the defensive end. I thought our guys finished the game and I was excited about the way that we finished.”
On Devon Daniels...
“I am getting these guys to play for NC State. When you have so many guys come from different programs, it takes a while for guys to understand their role. I know that’s crazy since we only have four more regular season games. He is understanding how he can help his team. That being said, I thought he was great defensively. When you look at his five steals, you have to talk about that. He also scored the basketball for us. We have talked a lot about everybody having to sacrifice a little bit of their offense to help our team win.”
On official in the way in regulation...
“That’s the first time I have been excited to hear an official say that he is part of the court. That was good. I was glad that it happened. I am proud of these guys. When you look at our stat sheet and see how all of our guys played, I could point to a lot of guys that did good things.
Torin Dorn wasn’t playing great but he had five offensive rebounds. CJ Bryce made some great plays down the stretch. Markell Johnson was able to sacrifice some minutes to allow some other guys to come in and play. I thought we took a big step forward.”
On defensive rebounding...
“We talked about it. Steffon Mitchell for the last two years-- I don’t know why, but he kills us on the offensive glass. I thought he really competed and we challenged some guys at the end. I think we focused in at timeouts about how to find a body to block him out, and you certainly have to some guys on him. We did that at the end of the game.
“You’re right, I thought they beat us on the offensive end early on. I think at halftime they had 11 offensive rebounds, and we were able to hold them to four. I thought our guys came back and competed on the offensive glass.”
On being built for overtime...
“It’s our conditioning. We start in the summer, and I don’t think our guys were fatigued. I thought we had a run in us and we just played. I think it’s our conditioning. Personal opinion.”
On transition offense...
“We stopped rebounding the basketball. We’re third or fourth in the conference in scoring, and our transition offense hasn’t kicked in. If you look at tonight, we had 24 fast breakpoints. If you go back to a lot of our games, we haven’t gotten out and transitioned much. Reason being because I don’t think we’ve done a great job defensive rebounding.
Offensively, we’re one of the best in the country as far as offensive rebounding. Because of our size we haven’t rebounded well defensively because instead of hitting people, we just try and outjump people. Basically, we couldn’t get rebounds and they got offensive rebounds.
On free throws...
“The last four or five games, other than Duke, if you go back and look, we’ve won the free throw battle. We’ve talked about it. Tonight, I went into this game saying we had to win the free throw battle. Two things I’ve focused on is trying to win the rebound battle and trying to win the free throw battle. I thought we did both.”