VIDEO: Kevin Keatt’s Press Conference After NC State Beat BC 89-80 (BULLETED)

Wolfpack head coach Kevin Keatts spoke with the media in his postgame press conference after NC State beat Boston College 89-80 on Wednesday night. The video is BELOW, and a bulleted breakdown is UNDERNEATH.

• The game actually ended the way I told our guys it would. What another great ACC game.
  • I told our guys that going into every game from this point on, we have a small margin for error and every game could possibly come down to the last second.
  • Surely, I didn’t expect overtime.
• I thought we played great to finish the second half and started the half well.
  • During the middle, we hit a spurt where we didn’t score the ball.
  • Then Ky Bowman got going, and before you knew it, we were down.
  • Give our guys credit– we fought our way through. I am proud that we took care of it at home. This was a good win for us. We get to live another day and move on.
  • I thought our guys finished the game and I was excited about the way that we finished.
  • I thought we took a big step forward.
• In the overtime period, we wanted our guys to come out aggressive.
  • We actually switched what we were running. I know to the naked eye it looks like they are running a 3-2 zone.
  • But every time we swung it, they would switch to man-to-man principles.
  • Instead of running our zone stuff, we went to our man-to-man stuff.
  • We were able to find CJ Bryce going backdoor.
• I thought Devon Daniels was tremendous, especially in the overtime period.
  • He almost won the game at the end of regulation.
  • He did a great job on the defensive end.
  • He is understanding how he can help his team.
  • When you look at his five steals, you have to talk about that.
  • He also scored the basketball for us.
• I am getting these guys to play for NC State.
  • When you have so many guys come from different programs, it takes a while for guys to understand their role.
  • I know that’s crazy since we only have four more regular season games.
• That’s the first time I have been excited to hear an official say that he is part of the court. That was good. I was glad that it happened.
• Torin Dorn wasn’t playing great, but he had five offensive rebounds.
• CJ Bryce made some great plays down the stretch.
• Markell Johnson was able to sacrifice some minutes to allow some other guys to come in and play.
• We talked about it. Steffon Mitchell for the last two years.
  • I don’t know why, but he kills us on the offensive glass.
  • I think we focused in at timeouts about how to find a body to block him out, and you certainly have to have some guys on him.
  • We did that at the end of the game.
• I thought they beat us on the offensive end early on.
  • I think at halftime they had 11 offensive rebounds, and we were able to hold them to four (2nd half).
  • I thought our guys came back and competed on the offensive glass.
• It’s our conditioning (on being prepared for OT).
  • We start in the summer, and I don’t think our guys were fatigued.
  • I thought we had a run in us and we just played.
• We’re third or fourth in the conference in scoring, and our transition offense hasn’t kicked in.
  • If you look at tonight, we had 24 fast breakpoints.
  • If you go back to a lot of our games, we haven’t gotten out and transitioned much.
  • Reason being, I don’t think we’ve done a great job defensive rebounding.
  • Offensively, we’re one of the best in the country as far as offensive rebounding.
  • Because of our size we haven’t rebounded well defensively, because instead of hitting people, we just try and out-jump people.
  • Basically, we couldn’t get rebounds and they got offensive rebounds.
• The last 4 or 5 games, other than Duke, if you go back and look, we’ve won the free throw battle. Tonight, I went into this game saying we had to win the free throw battle.
  • Two things I’ve focused on is trying to win the rebound battle and trying to win the free throw battle. I thought we did both.