Kevin Keatts: Pack's Youth Showing Late In Games

NC State head coach Kevin Keatts discussed his team's closing issues, updated the status of Greg Gantt, and much more on the recent ACC teleconference.

Looking back at this last game against Florida State, I know there's been a lot of discussion about the end of the game, just wanted to get your thoughts after you had a chance to look back at everything and how the game ended and how things went down the stretch.
Well, which one? Are we talking about the missed free throw, and obviously there was a foul at the end of the game, obviously would've like to see that be a play on and have a chance for our guys to come down and be able to try to make a play.

I think one of the things you're probably asking about is the timeout.

If you look at the timeout, I called the timeout, probably close towards half court and everybody stopped. And of course just like football, when you call the timeout the guy is instructed to go kick the field goal, so Seabron kept going, everybody from Florida State stopped, and he makes the layup. There were three guys back, one guy on his hip. I had one timeout left; if I don't call the timeout and they crash into somebody, it would've been a big discussion about, "Hey man, he should have called a timeout and ran a play." It was a instinctive thing, he didn't have a clear path. It wasn't actually a fastbreak.

The other thing is, when we were at the Purdue game, almost a month ago, we had the basketball and I listened to my player and he kind of said, "Hey, let me have it." I let him have it, and we didn't get a good shot there. I felt like I could have called a timeout and drew up something to run a play.

So, would do it again with the numbers, not an issue for us. Like I said, when you look at it, it was  one of those things that he was dribbling so fast and then each Florida State defender, when they saw the timeout called, they just stopped, and he had a great layup. So it was a non-issue to us, we'll move on.

Looking back at it, even Jericole felt really bad once we did draw something up and as they double-teamed Seabron, thinking back and looking... him and I had a long conversation. If he would've just did what he did two plays previous, throw the ball right back down to the block and step in, he may have had an open shot. Now that doesn't mean he would win the game, that doesn't mean that he lost the game. But looking back at it, obviously, we could have made a different play at it.

I asked you a little while back about the status of Greg Gantt; wanted to see if there's any update on that. I know you said possibly mid-January, don't know if you're going to get him back at all, but where do things stand with him in terms of his health?
Yeah, he's had one practice where we threw him into practice for probably 10 minutes, and he was really out of shape. I thought he did some really good things, I thought he played like a guy who hadn't played basketball in a long time, but he does bring energy.

I don't know, after he had that practice, he had to take off the next day because he was so sore. So it's going to take a little bit of time. I don't have a timeframe for him. I'm hopeful that he will play at some point this season, but there's a great chance that he won't.

Obviously the Manny Bates injury really impacted your team this season, but what do you need to see from the other guys in order, maybe, to get back to the level of play that you showed against Purdue?
Yeah. In respects to our other players on our team, our other young posts, they're doing everything that they can. They're fighting, they're clawing, but obviously you just don't replace a guy like Manny Bates right in the season, and we miss him so much.

When I look around and I'm watching college basketball and scouting, it's really frustrating because you see every program in the country where they have someone who they can throw the ball into inside and really score.

Our guys will be good players, but Ebe Dowuona or Jaylon Gibson, and even our freshman, Ernest Ross... we looked at Ebe and we looked at Jaylon as guys that would play as juniors and play eight minutes a game maybe to back up Manny Bates [this season], and we don't have him.

It changes us, and we don't have a guy who has developed offensively. I know we talked about that all summer long on, how he's gotten better offensively. He's actually, was stepping out shooting threes, and he was scoring over each shoulder. But when you look at our defense, that's probably our biggest struggle this year because he completely changes everything. Even the shots that he doesn’t block, he alters.

That being said, I need a little bit more production from our post guys. You look at the game against Florida State, between the two of those young bigs, they played 40 minutes and they didn't have a shot attempt. It's not necessarily where we have to throw the ball into them, but I want them to play hard enough where they get a tip in, where they get an offensive rebound, where they get to the free throw line, and we have to have someone to be able to score inside.

Right now, our best offense for paint touches is our driving from our guards, and it's really more Seabron than anyone else.

Speaking of Seabron, obviously he's been so impactful for you this year. Did you see that coming? Did you have a feeling he was going to take it up another notch this season?
Mark, he had some great games. He had at least two great games last year where he showed glimpses of being a really good player, I think it was at Wake Forest and at Notre Dame, and he played extremely well.

What he's done, I don't know that there's anybody in the country or anybody that I've coached that has embraced who he is more than him. He's a paint-touch guy, he gets to the rim, he offensive rebounds, he's elite in transition, and I think that's what's working for him. We're glad that he's playing well.

He's a guy that benefited from, obviously, Devon Daniels' injury last year because he was able to get inserted into the startig lineup and he's playing great basketball because of that. So we're hoping that the same thing will happen with these guys because of Manny Bates being out.

I wanted to ask you about Terquavion; obviously he's been on a really good scoring streak for you here. Do you guys track shots in terms of how efficient he is off the catch? Seems like he's really good as a catch and shoot 3-point guy.
Yeah, we do, James. I don't have those numbers for you, but I'll get with Craig and get them to you if we can, but he is, man, I don't know that there's another guy that I've ever coached that's as confident as this kid.

You talking about a freshman, and I want you to think about this against Florida State, I think he missed his first three 3-pointers that he took.  Then he goes on to make seven of them. He is playing at a high level. Outside of Seabron, him and Jericole have probably been our most consistent guys, and you typically don't get that in a freshman.

I looked around our league, in our league, Duke's playing a few freshmen, they were all McDonald's all Americans, and I think Florida State starts one young man in Butler, and then Notre Dame just inserted one. But we've got one of the elite freshmen in the league that's playing a lot of minutes and he's talented. He doesn't know that he isn’t supposed to be good, and I think that's what makes him special. He's a guy that can miss five shots in a row and think he's going to make the next 10.

But yes, he's become a really good catch-and-shoot guy. We've talked with him about shot selection and making sure he takes the right shots, and I think he's starting to get it.

And do you think pairing him with Thomas Allen more will give you some of that floor spacing that you really like in your offense?
Yeah, and our offense hasn't been a problem. You look at our three ACC games, especially last two, I think we scored 83 and 81. Those guys with Thomas Allen and those positions will rotate a little bit, but I do think it opens up a lot because they both have the ability to make shots.

Obviously in all the ACC games, your guys come out the gates playing well, and even late in the second half had leads, but obviously late in the game, something happens and the other teams come out on top. What's changing in that last five minutes? Is the youth of your team just showing late in the game? And is there anything you've seen being with your guys and learning from those situations from game to game?
Yeah. I think it's experience, Jonas. You haven't been there. If you haven't been there before, in the ACC I guarantee you, when you look back at the end of the year, there are going to be probably 20 games that are decided by two or three possessions. You either have experienced guys who have been there before and know how to close out games, or you have some inexperienced guys who don't.

So I think one of the biggest things is when it gets down to the end, it's when our youth really shows. That's the things that we have to obviously get them better at, and the only way you get them better at it, you put them in situations and practice and doing game situations to obviously improve in those areas.

A lot of people don't want to hear this, we'll be better later on for it, but right now you have to go through it when you're so young. You look at our team, the lineup that had been consistent was Cam Hayes, who's a sophomore, who played through an abbreviated pandemic year, same thing with Seabron. Ebe Dowuona, you might as well call a freshman because he didn't play, and then you got Terquavion, who's a legitimate freshman, and then Jericole.

We really don't have a lot of experienced guys on our roster to be able to close out games, and the way you do it is we just got to keep practicing. We do a lot of film, we show them a lot of different stuff that they have to work on and hopefully we'll get better at it, but there's no substitution for experience, I don't care what you say, especially initially, and a lot of teams, most of the teams that we are going to play against is, average age is around 21 years old with the guys who play; that's not the fact for us.

It's been different things that's happened at the end of games, but as you watch film, is there one mistake guys are making less, something you guys have improved on, just from experience?
Yeah. I just think we haven't finished the possession. When you look at it defensively, and what I mean by that is we haven't finished defensive possession, we haven't finished with a rebound, we haven't finished with a 50/50 ball, and if you clean up... we tell our guys in most of those games, there are 10 plays that either are going to go your way or the other team's way, and right now we're losing about six or seven of those. If we can cut those down, those one-possession games may end in a different result.