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NC State Basketball

Kevin Keatts: "If We Keep Fighting, It'll Turn Around For Us"

January 1, 2022
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NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media following the Wolfpack's 83-81 loss to Florida State Saturday evening.

NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Keatts’ press conference.


Opening Statement

Happy New Year everybody. My team is playing incredibly hard. The hard thing about it is when you’ve got some young pieces and you don’t win the game, it doesn’t feel like that for those guys in the locker room. I feel bad for those players that are playing extremely well. We’ve gotten better from three or four games ago. We’ve gotten better from November to now. We’re doing some really good stuff on the basketball floor. I thought in this game, if we could have back 10 possessions – 10 possessions where we maybe gave up a loose ball, where we maybe didn’t get back in transition, maybe turned the ball over, maybe didn’t get a 50-50 basketball – I think we’d have a chance to win the game. It’s a good team. That’s where we have to get over the hump. One of those things that I’ve talked about is cutting those 10 possessions down where we could have gotten better at. Cut those down to three or four, and we would put ourselves in a better position to win the game. I’m proud of my guys. I know it doesn’t appear that way, but we’re a good basketball team. We’re getting better. Some younger guys are getting better. Right now it’s so tough on our guards because we don’t have anybody where we can throw it inside and get a basket. A lot of the stuff is either a paint touch off a drive or a jump shot. That’s where we are right now, and we’ve got to continue to develop guys. 

On Dereon Seabron saying he thought he had a chance to score before the timeout and on why he called the timeout...

Yeah, Dereon should say that. That’s Dereon. We called a timeout at halfcourt. There were three defenders back. We had one timeout left. In the Purdue game, I didn’t call it and it was an unfavorable result towards the end of regulation. When we called it, every Florida State guy saw us call the timeout and so everybody just stopped because we called it. Hindsight looking back, I would have done the same thing because I want to run something to try to get him or someone a shot. That didn’t lose us the game. It’s like one of those things in football where you call a timeout and the guy kicks the field goal and everybody says ‘oh, the field goal was good.’ If we don’t call the timeout, it’s probably a turnover because he was going to drive into three or four guys. 

On what happened on the inbound play after the timeout...

We ran something to get Dereon the ball into a ball screen, and they doubled him. Jericole [Hellems] just for whatever reason, obviously we turned it over. Looking back at it, I wish he would have looked just straight to his left because Terquavion [Smith] was at the block and could have popped out and gotten an easy basket. We’re making younger mistakes that hopefully in the next week or two it’s not the same mistakes. But as I tell everybody, those two possessions didn’t lose us the game. You go back to, I don’t know how we ended up holding a guy on the free-throw line when we get him to miss, but it was called. Unfortunately we don’t even get a chance at the end to even try to win the game or try to tie the game up.

On the message to the team after these five losses...

Just keep fighting. I’ll be honest with you, there’s nobody in this program more disappointed than me. I’m disappointed. But I’m not disappointed in my guys. I’m not disappointed at all. I’m not disappointed in their fight. I’m not disappointed in the way they compete. I’m disappointed because we’re not getting the results that this team would like to have or deserves. My message is keep fighting because if we keep fighting, it’ll turn around for us. When it turns around, it’s going to be great. But right now, it sucks. It’s not good. It doesn’t feel good. But at the end of the day if you’re watching us and you don’t think that we’re getting better or playing hard, then something is wrong with you. Because it’s not our guys. Our guys are fighting. I tell guys that in today’s world when things don’t work out, we all have to find somebody to blame. Don’t blame my players. If you want to blame somebody, blame me. I’m big enough to handle that. I’m ok with that. But don’t blame my players. 

On if there’s any adjustments he can make to help this team rebound better

We’re trying. We’re a great offensive rebounding team. But we’re not a physical team. We’re not hitting people. I think we lead the league in offensive rebounds. I think we’re one of the best in the country in offensive rebounds. On the defensive end, we’re just not hitting people. Which we will work on, and we are continuing to work on. We got beat to some 50-50 basketballs and that probably cost us the game. 

On how tough it is to have just two players doing the bulk of the scoring

It is, but those guys played great. When you look at it, the numbers are incredible. 32 points, seven assists, five rebounds for Seabron, 7 for 11 from the free throw line. And then you get Terquavion who had another very effective game. But the other guys didn’t try to miss, they just didn’t make shots. We got good shots. I thought we had a great game plan at the end of the day. I’m disappointed because it just didn’t work out in our favor. At the end of the day we played so doggone hard, and it just didn’t work. It can be deflating to a basketball team. We won’t stop. We’ll continue to fight. Our guys have been very positive. If I’m Seabron because I had 32 points, I think I can score from half court. When you go back and look at it, there’s a bunch of people in front of him. 

On Thomas Allen’s start and first-half performance

I don’t know if it was his best [half]. If you look at how he played at Miami, I thought he was good against Miami also. The reason why he got the start, Cam [Hayes] didn’t lose the spot, but Cam hasn’t been playing great. I wanted to let Cam see the game to start the game, see the beginning of the game and then come in. That doesn’t mean that Cam Hayes is not gonna be our starter anymore, I just wanted to look at something else. When you’ve lost a few games in a row, you have to make some type of change, and the change was I wanted to see what a different lineup looks like. And we saw it, it’s a very effective lineup, but it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be the one we play for the rest of the year. What’s happening with our program is typically I have eight or nine guys and we’re able to rotate and have different starting lineups. Nobody has competed at a high level, and so even through the games we’ve lost, we’ve still had the same lineup because those four or five guys were the best five. But with the emergence of Thomas Allen, it’s helped us now. He’s become different, he’s playing better and he’s playing with a lot of confidence. So it changes and I wanted to reward him for the way he’s playing. He didn’t shoot a great percentage, but when you look at it, he was 3 for 6 from the 3-point line, which was important for us.

 
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