Kevin Keatts: "Our Guys Did A Tremendous Job"

NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media after the Wolfpack's 68-63 road win at Virginia Tech.    

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.

Opening Statement...
What a great road win for our team. When you look at our previous three ACC games, we’ve been right there to win those games, but we haven’t been able to close those games.

I thought this was our best defensive effort.  Our guys did a tremendous job. You could tell our guys were sick of losing games at the end and we found a way to win. We took a punch and then we punched back.

I’m proud of those guys in the locker room.  They caught a lot of flack over the last couple of weeks. I don’t think they deserved it because we played hard and were in every game,  Just t get the final result I thought it was a great thing for our young guys.

Dereon said the team took on a word, relentless. Can you talk about how they took that to heart late in the game?
I read something from [S&C coach] Pat Murphy, and I don’t know where it came from, but talking about teams taking on a word. The moral of it is everybody talks about winning a championship. Everybody talks about winning an ACC championship, a national championship, but there’s not one common word that each team has. 

So, after film last night, I told our guys, ‘here’s what I want you to do. I want you to come up with a word that you’re going to go by for the rest of the year. When things are good, I want you to say that word to yourself. When things are bad, I want you to say that word to yourself.’ 

Those guys, to their credit, they came up with relentless. And honestly tonight I thought they were relentless.We refused to lose the game, and that was important. 

Will you adopt a new word for each game or stick with relentless?
When we’re winning, we’ll stick with the same thing that we’re doing. Relentless is our word right now. 

You haven’t frequently doubled the post this year and you did it a lot tonight. How do you feel like you did with that?
I think it’s a work in progress. I thought for our first time out, we did a decent job. I think it took them out a little bit of a rhythm. As you guys know, we don’t have Manny Bates, so we had to figure out a way to stop people from really hurting us inside. We kind of mixed it up late in the game, we changed a little bit on them.

But I thought for the first time out, we did a decent job. We’ve got to get better at it if we continue. I thought we gave up a couple easy three’s early, but what happened is once we started doubling the post, I don’t think their post guys were as aggressive as they’ve been in the previous games that we watched on tape. 

Two big baskets late from Ernest and Ebe... how big was that production?
I thought it was huge.

We told them about it. Those guys, I talked with, at the time it was [Dowuona] and Jaylon [Gibson], who played 40 minutes against Florida State and it was zeros all across. I told them, ‘I’m not asking you to score, but I need you to play hard and make hustle plays.’ Those two guys made two winning plays down the stretch to help us win that game. 

You had an 18-2 point run from Dereon, Jericole, and Terquavion. How big were those three guys?
I thought those guys were really good. All three of them made great plays, but I don’t want to leave out a guy like Cam Hayes, who I thought made a big jump shot. I thought Terquavion and Cam both made a great defensive play when they were posted up and both got their hands on the basketball. 

Those three guys have carried us the entire year. All three of those guys stepped up in critical moments of the game and made huge plays for us. We needed it. We were able to loosen them up a little bit and get DB into the paint.  I thought we finished around the rim.

Even the couple mistakes where they called charges on him, I thought he made the right play. He gave us great looks in the corner.