Keatts On Facing Purdue: "It's A Great Opportunity"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media to preview the upcoming matchup against No. 1 Purdue.
On if he’d rather Purdue still be undefeated when they play NC State...
I don’t know. Regardless of if they won or lost, it’s still a really good basketball team and they’re as talented of a team as I’ve seen this year. Last night, I was up late last night and early this morning watching a lot of film on those guys.
Man, they’re a special team. When you look at them, they’re almost two deep at every position. The two centers, both of them could average 20 points per game if they played on separate teams. And then we don’t have to talk about Edey and how special he is, and the great shooters that they have all around.
Give Rutgers credit, I thought that was a great win at home. They did a tremendous job and they beat a really good basketball team, probably the best one that I’ve seen in this early season so far.
On telling his team that any team can lose on any given night...
With transfers and just the way basketball is today, I feel like [there’s] more parity than there’s ever been since I’ve been coaching. When you look around, just our league and every league in the country, nothing is guaranteed. I know you go into every game and there’s projections about which team’s supposed to win and which team’s supposed to lose, but at the end of the day it’s been quite different this year.
I’m sure there’s been upsets in the past, but this year it feels to me that on any given night if you’re not ready to play and the other team is more ready to play than you, then you can lose the game or obviously be in a situation where you win it.
On how much of a challenge Purdue’s rebounding presents...
It would be a big challenge [even] if Manny [Bates] was playing. Unfortunately we know he’s not. We’ve got young bigs in Ebe [Dowuona], Jaylon [Gibson] and Ernest [Ross], and they’ve got their hands full.
But more importantly, I think our guards have to do a great job, in this game in particular, of helping rebound. It’s got to be a team effort, opposing those two guys, because those guys are gonna have their hands full just trying to keep those two bigs centers off the glass.
So I think it’s got to be a tremendous team effort from everyone. I’m gonna ask everyone to give me a couple more rebounds in this game because we’re gonna need it.
On how important it is for the perimeter players to provide full-court pressure...
It’s important for a couple of reasons. They do such a great job when they can come down and run their offense. And certainly if you can do anything to disrupt their offense, it’ll help you, but it’s the way we play. We’re a pressing team and we want to speed people up or make them take quick shots, or force them into some tough turnovers and those types of things. So for us it’s two different things.
When Purdue can run their offense, which they’re really good at, I don’t know if anybody has stopped them from running their offense, they’re at their best. So if we can just do anything to try to disrupt them a little bit, it will certainly help us.
On the status of Casey Morsell and Greg Gantt...
Greg’s probably, we’re looking at if maybe he’s gonna return, it’s probably gonna be somewhere probably mid to late January if he is returning. And I’m not saying that’s gonna happen, we’ll look at him and evaluate him at that time. That being said, he’s getting into practice some more, he’s getting reps. We haven’t put him into contact, but he is getting in and doing some stuff with our team.
Casey will be another game-time decision. I hope he’s available. We put him through warmups and I thought he looked decent at times during warmups, and then I think he came down a little funny on [his ankle], which meant he wasn’t actually ready to play, and so we held him out of the game. Hopefully with a couple days of rest and not playing last night, hopefully he’s ready for Sunday.
On how important Terquavion Smith and Cam Hayes will be in Morsell’s absence...
With Casey out, it makes us incredibly young.
I’m looking at our starting lineup for the last two games, and you’re starting Cam Hayes as a sophomore, you’re starting Dereon Seabron, a sophomore, and I consider Ebe Dowuona to be a freshman, so you’ve got Ebe who I think is a freshman, and Terquavion. This wasn’t the idea coming into the season.
With Casey out, it makes us incredibly young and puts a lot of pressure on the young guys. Terquavion is playing well, but as a young guy you’re gonna make certain mistakes. And as a coach, we have to live with some of those.
But I need a couple veteran guards to be in the lineup and to be able to play to help us win games, one being Casey. And then hopefully to be able to get something out of Thomas Allen to play better. I thought Cam last night had one of his worst games as far as shooting the basketball, and hopefully he doesn’t have many more awful games like that. I think he’ll be better, we’ll get back in the gym and work on some stuff. For whatever reason, his shot just wouldn’t go.
On how important it is to play a big nonconference game against a Power 5 opponent...
I think it’s important. I’m excited that we get the opportunity. I don’t know, since I’ve been here, you can go back and look at it, if I’ve ever had a chance to play the No. 1 team. I know we’ve played Arizona when they were [No.] 2 and Duke home here when they were [No.] 2, but I don’t know that we’ve played the No. 1 team.
I’m excited. It’s a really good team, it’s a great opportunity but a huge challenge for us. Especially in the areas where they’re really strong and obviously with Manny being out, it’s one of the areas where we’re getting better at but we’re still not where we need to be.
I’m excited about the opportunity, I look forward to it. Our guys, I think they’ll be excited. I’m going to practice here in about 30 or 40 minutes and I don’t know how much we’ll do. We’ll do a lot of film work and be able to talk to them about going over some sets, some more personnel stuff today.
On what he saw from Rutgers beating Purdue that he can use...
I thought Rutgers was extremely physical. That was one of the most physical games that I’ve watched. I don’t know, some of that comes down to how the referees were calling the game. It was a great game, it was a great home court environment.
You could tell that the fans and the student body were excited about playing a No. 1 Purdue game, especially with it being a conference game. But I don’t know if there’s anything I can take from it. Rutgers is a little different than us, we don’t play the same. But that being said, what a great win for Steve Pikiell and his group.
On if he thinks he can press like he’d want to due to the limited depth...
I would love to. A lot of that is gonna come down to how our guys are. If we get a guy like Casey Morsell back, we’ll be able to play more guards. Early in our season, we’ve been extremely guard heavy, which is great, but when you don’t have as many guards to put out there, it kind of changes how you press and how much you can press and how hard you go on the press.
But certainly, Purdue won’t be afraid of our press. They’re a good veteran team, they know how to play, they’ve got really good guards but that’s something we do and we’ll try to play the way that we play.