KEATTS: "We've Got To Get Tougher"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media following the Wolfpack's 75-65 loss to North Carolina Monday evening.
NOTE: Click the video in the player above to watch Keatts’ press conference.
“I thought Garrison Brooks was tremendous tonight. If you look at his stat line, he had 25 points, 11 rebounds, 6 of those being offensive rebounds; he completely kicked our butt. Add in the fact that Armando Bacot played well. Between the two of them they had 36 points and 22 rebounds. We knew coming into the game we had to do a better job on Brandon Robinson, especially because he was coming off a hot game with 29 points. We lost the game with mental and physical toughness inside the paint. We missed out on too many offensive rebounds and free throw boxouts. When we made our run with 10 minutes left in the game and went 5-for-6, we just couldn’t get stops when we needed to. That was a big difference in the game. We have to give Carolina credit, but we have got to get tougher. Some of my better players are not playing very good basketball and not shooting the ball well. We have got to get in the gym and get better on that. If you look at us from the three-point line, we went 4-20, with guys going 0-1, 0-3, 0-4, and 0-5. That is not a good formula for us to be successful, regardless of who we are playing. We have got to get better, which I will take as a coach. We are halfway through our season being 5-5 in the ACC. We have 10 games left and we have to figure it out pretty quickly.”
“[Manny Bates] is not 100% healthy and ready to play. He did a great job on the defensive end with five blocks, but he can’t go long stretches. We wanted to bring him off the bench and play him for only 12 minutes. When Jericole Hellems got in foul trouble, we had to end up playing him 16 to 17 minutes. Hopefully in the next couple of days, he will get his conditioning back and be more ready to play against Louisville. Right now, he wasn’t ready to go anymore than 15 or 16 minutes.”
“I think [C.J. Bryce] just needs to get in the gym and see the ball go in the basket. I have coached him for three years now and I don’t think he has ever had a stretch where he has gone 0-12. I didn’t think he was aggressive at all at Georgia Tech and passed up on a lot of shots. Tonight I thought he came out very aggressive, but his shots just didn’t go down. I am going to stick with him. But we have to figure it out because C.J. is a big part of who we are. We have become so reliant on him, so when you take out his 15 to 16 points, we are a completely different team.”
“Going into the half, we missed the free throw blockout. They had Danny Dixon, we had D.J. Funderburk in, and that changed the game. We were down four because we missed the free throw blockout. We need to get back to doing the little things, and I will take full responsibility. Those two guys inside really kicked are butt. As I told the guys inside the locker room, we have get better real quick because these post guys from Louisville are just as good as the guys we played against tonight.”
“I’m not going to say it’s deflating, but we have to get better, and we need everyone back on the floor and everyone healthy and on the same page, and obviously we aren’t there. When you have so many guys that miss for whatever reason, C.J. Bryce missed a lot of games, Manny Bates has missed some games, and we don’t have guys playing right. We aren’t clicking on all cylinders and you would hope that you would be since we’re almost into February, but our issue is our issue. We’ve had some guys out. For this first time ever, I’ve had a couple of guys out with concussions and all that other stuff. It’s part of the game which I understand, and these aren’t excuses, but in order for us to get better I need to get everyone back on the same page and everyone playing good basketball. We have two guys playing good basketball right now. D.J. Funderburk is one of them, Markell Johnson has his moments, and Devon Daniels played well tonight. We don’t have three or four of them though which we need in order to be successful.”
“We made shots at Virginia. When you get into those situations where looking at the Virginia game, Jericole Hellems made a big three, Markell Johnson made a big three, and C.J. Bryce made a big pull up. We have to figure out, when those shots don’t go down, how do we win the game off of a big rebound or a big stop. Virginia was a great win for us but we can’t live on that game. We need to move forward. Our shots aren’t going down and we don’t have guys making great shots. That’s what we need to get better at, that’s what I need to help them at, that’s what we all as a staff and as a program have to get better at. We didn’t finish the Georgia Tech game and this game we had our chances. Everything we thought would happen was happening up to that point and we had that stretch with our run we couldn’t get stops. We couldn’t get an extra rebound. We broke down and a lot of that was mental fatigue.”
“We have to take one game at a time. There’s a lot of basketball to be played and a lot of teams that can determine our fate whether we win or lose those games. We play some really good teams at home at PNC Arena and some guys on the road. We need to fix our issues like mental and physical toughness if we want to win those games. That’s what it’ll come down to. On any given night, any team in this league can beat you but you can beat anyone as well. We have some things we need to clean up. We’ll take tomorrow off, I told everyone to look themselves in the mirror and we’ll come back on Wednesday and get to work and get better.”