Kevin Keatts: "We Had Our Chances"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media after the Wolfpack's 78-73 road loss at No. 18 Florida State.
Opening Statement...
Have to give Florida State credit, thought they did a great job taking care of home court advantage. I thought we had our chances, especially late in the second half. We cut the lead, and it seemed like every time we cut the lead they did a great job making a big play, whether it was an offensive rebound or getting a steal.
I thought the second half was the big difference in the game. I thought they got to the free throw line a lot more than we did in the second half, and obviously some of the 50/50 plays.
Only dressing nine players, how did you have to adjust your offensive and defensive strategy with the lack of players?
It’s different for us, not too much on the offensive end, but defensively because we like to rotate guys in. Typically, we have the five guys that start the game and we like to have a backup in each position. So really it has us a man short.
On expecting Florida State to foul on the last three-point lead [76-73]?
I thought they fouled and we didn’t know, and I had to go back and look at it, we got a stop on DJ Funderburk’s fifth foul, I don’t know what happened there. On the late whistle I thought we were going to the other end, but he ran in and called a foul, but I haven’t watched the tape yet.
On DJ Funderburk’s play today and his maturation:
He’s gotten batter, and we needed that for this team. He’s a guy that can certainly score inside, but also outside. I think his rebounding was great, giving us 18, I think that will be big for us moving forward.
On Torin Dorn, Markell Johnson, and Braxton Beverly...
I thought Torin, Markell and Braxton were very aggressive in the second half. At halftime all three of those guys had a combined 5 points, and I thought they played up. We played our hardest, we had our chances, we just had a few 50/50 balls that we didn’t get.
On Trent Forrest starting to take over in the second half and making key shots. What makes him so hard to guard?
He (Trent Forrest) tough because he gets in the paint. Give Trent a lot of credit, he knows who he is. He doesn’t try to do anything outside of his game. And then you have a point guard whose content with running offense and then scoring when he has to, then you have a good thing going.
On challenging at the basket a lot:
I thought we drove because we were able to get paint touches. They do a great job denying wings, and a lot of the time you have one on one drives. I thought in the first half we didn’t do a great job of finishing. We made certain shots, where we talked about guys going off two feet making strong moves.
How challenging is it preparing for a team with great length and depth like Florida State has?
I think the biggest challenge when preparing for Florida State is not so much the length, we know that they’re long. We’ve played against long teams, maybe not as long as those guys, but because they play 11 guys you have to concentrate on personnel opposed to a team.
We talk about which guys are shooters, which guys are drivers, because a lot of guys aren’t playing a lot of minutes, other than Kabengele, you don’t have a lot of guys scoring points. So a team like this is tough. Send them to us because on any given night, you don’t know who can lead in scoring.
As aggressive as you guys played defensively, if a game is called tight, is this effect what you guys want to do?
Yes, absolutely. A couple of calls, I told my guards you have to adjust to the way they call it. Sometimes it depends, some games they allow you to play a little bit more. I think I heard Florida State fans say, “let us play a little bit.” I was for that.