Kevin Keatts: "We'll Be Fine"

NC State head coach Kevin Keatts answered questions from the Wolfpack's radio crew following the Wolfpack's 83-78 loss to No. 16 Memphis.

How proud were you of Jericole Hellems?
I was proud of the fact that he fought. I thought he made some winning plays.  He made some shots, got in there and got some rebounds.

That's what it's about. I talked about how much we'll fight.

We didn't have everybody clicking offensively. C.J. didn't have a great game offensively. When you look at Braxton Beverly, he didn't have a great game, nor Devon Daniels.

For us to be in a position to win the game, we're going to be fine.

A couple of times late Markell Johnson got a switch with a big.  Do you want him to attack the big there?
Absolutely.  I give our players a lot of freedom to make plays, and Markell is probably our best guy off the dribble that can make plays or create for himself.  In those situations, we say if you can drive the big, drive him and we'll get some help and some kicks.

But he felt it, and I'm not going to question him.  If the shot goes in, it's a different situation.

With two seconds left you called a timeout. What was your message to the team?
We talked about how we'll be in these situations again, and I'm proud of how we fought in the second half.  It's unfortunate we came up short, but if we can learn from this, we'll be fine.  

There are some things we have to clean up as a team. With us only playing eight guys, we have to keep guys out of foul trouble.

There is a lesson to be learned out of everything.  You hope you can learn a lesson through winning, but you can learn it through losing too.

You have to figure out where do you go from here? After we dropped the Tech game we went on a five-game winning streak, and certainly I'm big on winning streaks so we want to try to do more.