KEATTS: "It Was A Great Team Win"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media following the Wolfpack's 77-73 win over Pitt Saturday afternoon.
NOTE: Click the video in the player above to watch Keatts’ press conference.
“I’ll make this quick because I know it’s a Saturday, and it’s 2:40, so I know a lot of you guys have dinner dates tonight. I thought it was a great team win for us for several reasons. I loved the way Manny Bates played. I thought his play when Markell Johnson hit him diving down the lane and he finished with his left hand was one of biggest plays of the game. When you look at him, he had 13 points, 10 rebounds, and five blocks. We found a way to win a game when we were not playing very good basketball. I thought the last five or six minutes were when we started to play. I can always be an NC State fan right now and say the 12 o’clock start was the reason we woke up at about 1:30 and started playing well, but I’ll leave that to one of you guys to write that up. I’m excited. It’s a great win. We’d lost two games in a row, and to come back and get another good home win was very good for us.”
“Yeah, you’re right. He played well. I didn’t realize [Jericole Hellems] was 6-for-6 [on the floor] and 2-for-2 from three. It was big. I was yelling at him because he gave up a three in the corner on the other end, and I guess he shoved it in my face and knocked the three down on this end. But Cole was good. He’s been great. His energy has been really good. He’s had a couple of good days in practice, and I was glad he made those shots.”
“Well, you’re going to have to watch ‘Wolfpack Hustle’ tonight to figure out what I said. I cannot repeat it in front of the media. I just told them we had to play. There’s a lot on the line. I thought, at that point, they were playing at a lot more energy than we were playing. We needed to get big stops. We needed to get big rebounds. I thought we were playing tight for a while. That’s why it’s always dangerous when you talk to a team about how important a game is because everybody in that locker room can’t handle that. I thought our guys loosened up and finished the game, and we made free throws down the stretch.”
“I think we’re getting better physically. Pat [Andree] is still not there where I want him to be, but he’s available if we need him. We have to do a better job with our ball security. If you look at us, I think we’ve been careless with the basketball lately, and it’s the time of year where you look around college basketball, and nobody’s shooting the ball well because it’s been a long year. I think every team has been going at it since summer school, and most teams don’t have legs. We’ve got to figure out how to drive the basketball a little bit more and not settle for threes. I thought the game changed around when we stopped settling for threes.”
“I know you guys love my conversations I have to have with Manny before he goes to the free-throw line. It’s just a calming effect. Listen, that kid played really good basketball. I want you to think about one thing: he’s a freshman. He’s gotten better, and if he starts scoring the ball offensively, then he can be a really good basketball player for NC State. We all know him as a very good defensive player, but that play was also huge for us. He rebounded the basketball. He was everywhere. Every time they drove, they were looking for him because he was trying to block all of their shots.”
“It’s good. I didn’t think Markell, C.J. Bryce, and Devon Daniels played well at all offensively, but it’s great when you’ve got a sophomore in Jericole Hellems, a freshman in Manny Bates, and then some other guys that can contribute every now and then. I thought C.J. and Devon Daniels were tremendous on the defensive end. They were able to take out some of their better players, but you need that this time of year. It’s not going to be your day or night every game, and that’s why we’re trying to make sure that everybody understands that we stay together. We need to win as a team.”
“What was up with that? They were 3-for-4, right? We scouted those guys; they were coming in shooting about 27 to 28 percent from three, and a lot of it was the way we played them. We short-closed everybody, and they raised up and made shots. Luckily in the second half, they didn’t, and our guys got a little antsy because, on the scouting report, we told them we’re not running anybody off the line except for one of their guys. When they started making shots, we started running them off the line, and they got some pull-ups and some drives to the basket. I don’t know what it was. They shot well. They shot the ball better than we thought coming in.”
“It’s tough. I think we’ve had three Saturday-Monday turnarounds, and those are the toughest ones. It’s a good team on their home floor, and they’re really good. They’re one of the best teams in the country. In the NCAA [Tournament], they can be either a one or two seed. Obviously, it’s a big challenge for us. It really is. I’ll get a chance to watch them play today, but I may not. I think I’ll go recruiting today for a couple of hours. It’s a big turnaround, it’s a quick turnaround, and it’s a very good team that we’re playing.”
“That’s tough because I don’t know that, and I’m trying to figure that out. I’m like the dad or mom that has a teenage son that you don’t want to have that tough conversation with because you’re like, ‘Should I have the conversation now? Should I wait?’ It’s tough. I always tiptoe around it. Do I tell them how important it is, or do I say ‘It’s not important; it’s just another game, but we need to win it'? There’s a fine line trying to figure out when to tell them. I did a couple of days ago because I was mad at them. I said, ‘This game is important. We’ve got to have it.’ I thought it worked against me because, at halftime, I was questioning myself whether I should have told them that. It’s hard to tell.”
“I was wondering why [Bates] took that jump shot though. I was really mad at that. He did two things that I get a chance to coach him about. He took that jump shot, and then he got a great rebound, but instead of kicking it out at the end of the game, he tried to go up, and he lost it. That’s what freshmen do. What I told him: ‘You’ve got a big rebound. You’ve got to know the time and score. You’ve got to make sure that you pass that ball out.’ He’s going to be a good player for us. Our coaches have done a tremendous job, especially James Johnson and Roy Roberson, on helping develop him. If he gets confidence on the offensive end, he can be really dangerous.”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to have a conversation about it. I have no idea why he did that. Actually, I do: because he’s young. That’s what young guys do."