Keatts: "It's a really good team that we're going to play against"

NC State men’s basketball will look to bounce back from Tuesday’s loss against Syracuse with a home tilt with Duke Saturday. 

Head coach Kevin Keatts spoke with the media Friday to break down the matchup, here’s a full breakdown of everything he had to say: 

Going up against Duke tomorrow, the two programs have had their struggles, but how significant is this game for your team? 

It’s an important game for us for several reasons. Since I’ve been here, we’ve always talked about trying to go on winning streaks, and we just obviously lost our last game. But more importantly, it’s another home game for us. It’s an opportunity to take a step forward in the ACC in this crazy year. And so the game is important for us no matter who we were playing. But it is a great opportunity for our guys. It’s another opportunity for our young guys to have a chance to play. 

And then the other big thing is just to have the game to be played. I’m always nervous about all of these games up until tip off. When you look at it, I think Carolina and Miami were set to play a game last weekend or a few days ago, and two hours before the game, there wasn’t any game. I just want the game to happen. We’re blessed to be able to play any game that we can play, but we need to play the game because obviously I want our guys to be able to continue to play. 

What have you seen from Duke’s personnel? 

They’re talented. They’re probably one of the most talented teams in our league when you look at the fact that [Matthew Hurt] is playing tremendous basketball as a sophomore, he’s as tough a matchup in our league that there is, because sometimes they play him at the five, sometimes they play him at the four. He causes problems at both positions, because at the five he can drag your five out and he can shoot 3s. Then obviously at the four, he can post up a smaller guy. So he presents a lot of problems for you. But their freshmen are as talented as any group in the country. 

Unfortunately, and I’m sure coach K would probably say the same thing, what’s probably hurt them more than anything is really not having a nonconference where those guys can get a little bit more experience. And obviously they would be a little bit different or have a different record, probably, if they would have had that, similar to us. The big difference in us is that just losing Devon Daniels kind of changed our whole roster right away. But they’re talented. They do a good job. They can get out and run. They can make 3s. They’ve got personnel that can drive the basketball to the hole, they’ve got good size, they can shoot the basketball. So it’s a really good team that we’re going to play against. 

Both teams have had issues closing out games. They’ve lost a lot of close games, you guys have lost a lot of close games. Have you seen anything similar between the two teams relative to that? 

I just think at the end, when you add one or two young guys to the mix, I think it causes some problems. For those guys, they’ve been mostly young guys except for Matthew Hurt and Wednel Moore, and Wendel wasn’t playing well early. He’s playing great now. I think when you have so many young guys and the ball’s in different peoples’ hands, I think it makes a big, huge difference. You look at both of us, in the last year or two, we both had the same point guards who typically had the ball in their hand and could make plays. Now, it’s shared between different people. I think that makes a huge difference. 

Do you feel like you’re closer to figuring things out without Devon Daniels?

That’s a million-dollar question. I’ll answer it in a couple ways. The identity of our team has shifted. We have become more of trying to get the ball inside as much as we can. There’s no secret that right now the strength of our team is coming from our power forward and center position when you talk about [Jericole Hellems], [D.J. Funderburk] and [Manny Bates]. 

It’s different, and it’s weird because we played three of those games against teams with a unique defense: Syracuse twice, and then Virginia who runs a great pack line. So am I further along trying to figure out our situation? Probably not, because of the group of guys that we’ve played in the last four games. 

But I have seen some improvement in some guys. I’ve seen what we’ve asked for and I know we talk about this all the time after the call, is just getting consistent guard play from someone. We’ve kind of had it in different folks, but we haven’t had it where two or three of those guys have played great on one given night. When you look at Shakeel Moore, he obviously had the really good game against Boston College and then we got something from Thomas Allen who hadn’t played well, and he played a good game. If I can get one more of those guys to be a little bit more consistent, I think a guy like Braxton Beverly has kind of given us everything that he can on both ends of the floor. 

But if I can get one more consistent scorer, and that guy doesn’t have to have 15 points a night, just somebody around 10 points a game, and obviously one guy to get a hot hand, it makes our team better. We knew coming into this season that Devon Daniels was going to even give us coming into the season, anywhere from 14-20 points a game. We just knew that. And now you don’t have any built-in guys that can get you those points. So we’ve got to do it by committee.

What’s your evaluation of the season D.J. Funderburk has had so far? 

I think he’s having a great year. I really do. I think he’s improved in a lot of areas. And I get to see it from a different standpoint from you guys. His leadership has been the best I’ve ever seen from him. He’s that voice in the locker room. He’s scoring the basketball for us. I thought he was playing really good basketball for us at the end of the year. A couple areas where he hasn’t obviously been as good, is he’s still one of top offensive rebounders in our league, but he hasn’t rebounded at an elite level like he was at the end of the year. As far as what we need him to score the basketball, I think he’s been effective. 

He’s not a liability guarding guys on the perimeter as he typically was, because when he switch one through four, I know inside that he’s going to be OK, but he’s now had to switch off on smaller guards, and at times, even though he can move his feet, those guys were blowing by him. So if you see him in the light that I see him, he’s probably the happiest he’s ever been. He’s very upbeat, and even though we’ve lost more games than we have in the past with him, he’s been a positive influence for us. So I have to give him credit because I’ve been one of the guys that have been really tough on him, but the way he’s handled himself through this stretch has been incredible.

Do you coach a team that’s struggling a little bit differently? 

It’s a great balance that you have to have. I lost the guy that I could get on the most. He would respond. So one of the biggest things with coaching as it changes from three years ago or even four or five years ago: One shoe doesn’t fit them all. And so with this group, especially when you have some younger guys, you have to figure out how to motivate them. Some guys are easily motivated by just tapping them, bringing them over, putting your arms on them, telling them what they need to do better. Some guys, you have to jump on and really get after them a little bit. 

With Devon Daniels, the older guys, Braxton Beverly, when I think of those guys, I think of those guys as ‘Old school players.’ They respond by you jumping on them. The newer generation of younger kids, you have to really sit down with them and most of them are visual learners. Most of them, you have to take on the floor and show them where they’re making mistakes. So I’ve given a dose of everything, trying to get a good balance of making sure that we stay consistent to what we’ve done in the past to be successful, and then also understanding that I’ve got a new group of younger guys. 

I went from a Markell Johnson, C.J. Bryce, Devon Daniels, and throw Braxton in there to guys who just respond by coaches really getting excited and getting on them, to a bunch of guys that are 17, 18, 19 years old that really you’ve got to sit down and teach them, they all came from different programs, some really good programs. But in order for them to pick up your system, you’ve got to be more of a teacher than anything right now.

What’s the conversation like of asking guys to make sure they’re being safe, and how tough is it to tell guys they can’t celebrate and enjoy a big win the way they normally would? 

My answer to this question will have zero to do with Carolina, because I’m not into that program and I don’t know what was said and what was not said about what those guys did. What I will tell you is it is so tough to be a college student right now. What do you expect them to do? And I know we’re going to say, ‘Yeah, well you expect them to do all of the right stuff and not be around other people.’ I’m sure [Roy Williams], just like myself, and I’ll go back to, I’ll give you an example about the Super Bowl. I instructed them that there will be no Super Bowl parties. You couldn’t be involved with the Super Bowl. 

Same thing when we won the Carolina game here on Dec. 22, and we talk about obviously trying to celebrate among ourselves. But it’s hard, man. I mean, think about your coaches or your parents telling you something that you shouldn’t have done and you probably went out and did it. You want to know the big difference in when I was growing up and these guys growing up now? There were no camera phones. So we probably did some of the same things that these kids are doing, and they’re being kids and having a good time, but unfortunately, that phone that we have can change the narrative of anything real quick. 

So I’ve asked my guys to just do the right thing and the right thing is to just try to protect us in our bubble. But honestly, because of NCAA rules, I’m not around them. After they leave practice and we have them, I don’t know what they’re doing at night time. I trust that they’re doing the right thing, but there’s no way to know that they’re not. So I’m not judging Carolina’s situation. I don’t know the whole story, so it wouldn’t be fair for me. I can only tell you what we try to do. I’m not saying that it’s working or not, because after we beat Carolina here, those guys could have went and had a big-time party and maybe the video just didn’t get released.