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NC State Basketball

Kevin Keatts: "We Found A Way To Win"

February 28, 2021
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Getting to the finish line was a big of an adventure, but NC State men’s basketball topped Pitt 65-62 at PNC Arena Sunday. The Wolfpack has now won four straight since a blowout loss to Duke in this building on Feb. 13, and is up to 12-9 on the season and 8-8 in ACC play with two games left. 

The Pack also had more fans than it’s had in the building all year, with some students in the stands following the passing of relaxed COVID restrictions from North Carolina governor Roy Cooper last week. 

Head coach Kevin Keatts spoke to the media following the victory, here’s a full breakdown of everything he had to say: 

Opening statement

What a good, grind-it-out game. I told our guys that you’re going to have to figure out how to win every entire game. Some games you’ll be up big, some games you might be down. That was a great, great game for us because it was a back-and-forth, not back and forth, but we got a pretty good, sizeable lead, and then obviously they fought back. When you look at our guys, I think I’m proud of the fact that I think this team is getting better defensively. When you’re holding a team under 40%, or I think these guys for the night were under 35%, there’s a lot of good things you can build on for that. 

If I had to give an MVP for the game, I thought it was Braxton Beverly, who came in and obviously made some big shots. We’ve talked a lot about how well our freshmen have grown up, but it was our upperclassmen that carried us tonight. It was Braxton, [Jericole Hellems], [Manny Bates] and [D.J. Funderburk]. So we did some good things. We’re going to build on it. I like the fact that we’ve won three road games in a row and then four total games in a row. That’s a good sign for us at the end of February.

How much of a lift did having fans in the building give you guys? 

I thought it was great. I’ve walked into that arena for four years now. I get the weirdest feeling when I walk out there. Right now, the media room is the locker room. So when I walk by and I look going into the media room, I’m like, ‘This is weird.’ I say it every time. For the first time, I was going out there to talk to my team, I looked out there and I heard the cheerleaders. I saw the students. It was a good thing. So I’m happy about it. I thought it was a great lift for us. It was good to see some folks back in the seats.

How important is it heading into tournament play to find different ways to win games? 

We wouldn’t have won this game a month ago. Every team that you play in this league is going to present a different problem. I thought those guys did a good job of fighting. They got a lot of second-chance opportunities. They played with some toughness. Similar, when you switch a couple players, you switch how you play, and they became more ‘Hey, I’ve got to get on the offensive glass and do some different stuff.’ It was good to see our guys figure out a way to win. Figure out how to make some shots at the end. Figure out how to not turn the ball over. This is the second or third game that we’ve played a game and didn’t have a lot of turnovers. 

I thought some of our guys went to the line and finished some shots. We made shots when we needed to. I thought the MVP of our team collectively was the way we played on the defensive end. We did a great job on [Justin Champagnie]. He’s a guy who’s caused a lot of problems for a lot of folks. He’s averaging 18 points a game, and we were able to hold him to 4 for 14. That’s tough, because he’s been playing well all year long. 

What’s your message to your team when the shots aren’t falling? 

Keep defending. A lot of times is when you’re younger, and that’s what happened to our younger guys today, you define how you’re playing with whether your shot goes in. Older guys just say ‘Keep defending, you’ve got to defend. If you’re not scoring, they’re not scoring.’ That’s one of the things we talked about at halftime. At halftime, they only had 21 points. You could see the frustration on a couple of our guys’ faces, because we only had 31 but we were up 10. And we defended. 

You were able to get Ebenezer Dowuona six minutes in the first half. What did you see from his performance? 

I thought he was great. I’m going to give James Johnson and Roy Roberson [credit], they’ve done a lot of work with EB over the last couple weeks. He hasn’t practiced well. He’s been a freshman. He’s been up and down. What he did today was impressive. He had no idea that his name was going to be called. If we were wearing warmups, he probably wouldn’t have had his jersey on because he didn’t think he was going to play. But when he came in the game, the six-minute span that he played, we didn’t get hurt. He actually played well. He made a basket. He played good defense. He rotated. So I like what he brought to the table. That’ll make him feel good. 

Usually Jaylon Gibson would get those minutes. Jaylon was battling a little bit of, his back was bothering him, so we decided not to play him today. 

When you look at the rebounding, they had 20 offensive rebounds to just seven for you. Is there one that concerns you more? 

It can’t happen again. We found a way to win. One of the things I always look at on the stat sheet is how many more shots do we get than the other team? They took 11 more shots because they got 20 offensive rebounds. So we talked about, ‘Hey, we won. Here’s the great, positive things, here’s what we’ve got to clean up. You can’t give up 20 offensive rebounds.’ They did a tremendous job. They rebounded, and  a lot of those game from [Bates and Funderburk] rotating over and other guys getting rebounds where our guards didn’t get inside. So the rebounding, I’m going to blame on our guards. We’ve got to do a good job of raking down. I don’t like when Manny Bates has six blocks in a game. To me, that means we’re getting beat off the dribble too much. So if he has six, that means he’d alter 10. 

How important has Braxton Beverly been? 

He’s been great. It’s made our job as coaches a little bit easier. Those guys, [Beverly], [Bates], [Funderburk] and [Hellems], they’re always pulling these guys to the side. When we get on them, or we praise them in practices, they’re always, ‘Hey man, don’t worry about it. This is what you’ve got to do to get better.’ So he’s grown in a lot of ways. Whenever he stops playing basketball, you could see Braxton Beverly probably could get into coaching somewhere. He’s been great for us. There’s probably not another kid in this program that’s been criticized as much as Braxton Beverly, and at the end of the day, he’s still fighting for us.

Why have your teams always found success against Pittsburgh?

I couldn’t answer that. Jeff [Capel] is doing a really good job with that program. He’s been dealt a crazy hand. I’m not inside the program, so I don’t know about those couple guys that have left the program. At the end of the day, I don’t have an answer to that. Maybe we’ve just been fortunate. It’s been great games, and those games could have gone either way. 7

What’s been the biggest difference in the last month?

I think confidence. I think believing that you can win those games. Our confidence was shaken a month ago. We didn’t know where we were at. These guys were all over the map, obviously, when we had our situation with [Devon Daniels]. We were trying to find our identity. We didn’t have an identity. We had to kind of refocus in the middle of the year. That was late January. I say that because I don’t think we would have closed the game the right way. We would have found a way to lose the game, and now this bunch is finding ways to win games. 











 

 
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