Kevin Keatts Press Conference After Mount Olive: BULLETED

NC State’s Men’s Basketball team beat Mount Olive 113-73 yesterday in their lone exhibition game. You can watch Head Coach Kevin Keatts Press Conference after the game here, or read a bulleted breakdown below.

• Did some really good things out here. Like where we’re at right now.
• Wanted to see some improvement from our scrimmage game, and I thought I did.
• Came out both halves very solid. Played extremely hard on both ends.
• Told the guys in the locker room this would be our last dress rehearsal before we open the season with Georgia Tech.
  • Huge game for not just us but our entire conference.
• Our veteran guards, all 3 of those guys played a tremendous game.
  • Controlled the game.
  • Got to the free throw line.
  • Made shots.
  • If I can get 3 of 4 of those guys, Braxton Beverly being 1, playing well every night, then we have a chance to win every game.

Manny Bates…

• Man, I’m just happy.
• Kid went through so much.
• For him to be able to get out on the floor for the 1st time in PNC…I thought the crowd was tremendous.
• You don’t respect Manny Bates until he’s behind you, and you make a mistake.
  • He kind of wipes out your mistake.
• He deserves to play. Excited about him.
• If he can stay healthy, he’ll be one of the better players that plays at his position.
• He started off a little slow in our closed scrimmage.
  • 1st time playing in 2 years.
• He looked for his offense a little bit today, which he hadn’t done that in a couple of days or so.
• 1 of the nicest kids you’re going to meet.
• A little emotional for me just to have the opportunity to watch him play.

Points off Turnovers…

• If you look at the stats sheet from our 2 scrimmages, we forced 26 turnovers, and that’s important for us to be really good.
• We play up-tempo and try to get in the passing lanes.
• Thought our guys did a great job in the scrimmage.
  • We had 47 deflections and I didn’t get the total in the end tonight, but at halftime we had 23.

Injuries…

• Nobody seriously injured. Some guys were a little banged-up and a little sore.
• Obviously I need them on November 5th, as opposed to tonight where we took a little break and got some guys out.
• Braxton Beverly…nothing is wrong with his knee, just got a little bruise on it…so he played a couple minutes.
• Same thing with Danny Dixon. Little bruise on foot.
• Dereon Seabron turned his ankle pretty bad 3 days ago in practice. X-rays were negative
  • He should be fine. Don’t have a time table for how long he will be out.

Jericole Hellems not coming back into game… 

• Wanted to make sure he was okay.
• Coming into the game, he had bumped his shoulder against somebody.
• If anyone were to sneeze wrong, I wasn’t going to let him play in the game.
• I think he is going to be fine.

C.J. Bryce at PG…

• I can see him playing some point guard.
• 2 or 3 guys I feel comfortable with when Markell isn’t in the game.
• C.J. Bryce, Braxton Beverly (has done it in some bigger wins) and I think Dereon Seabron can also fill that role.
• What’s funny about C.J. is he’s a smart kid, and he knows the guys that have played that position have led us in scoring for a few years.
• He came to me the other day and asked if he could play the 4-guard.
  • In recruiting him, if I had told him he would play the 4, he never would have played for me.
  • He is smart enough to know that Torin Dorn’s position got a lot of shots, and he wanted to fill the role.
• I can play him 1-4.
• We played him a lot tonight because we wanted to see how he handles the basketball.

Markell Johnson…

• Locked in today and that is great to see.
• When Markell plays 40 minutes, he is 1 of the best guards in the country, but he needs to stay consistent.
• He has accepted a different role as a leader this year, and we are hoping to get that every game this year.
• He is vocal off the court.
  • You should hear him in the locker room sometimes.

Opening with an ACC opponent…

• Opening with an ACC game is tough.
• Accepted the game because everyone in our conference is doing it.
• Excited about the game because it gets to launch the ACC Network for basketball.
• I don’t think you will get any coach in our league to be overjoyed about playing those openers.

Veteran Backcourt…

• It’s great.
• When you are in college basketball, the best thing is to be old and stay old.
• Excited to have veteran players at the guard position.

Offensive Lull in final 8 minutes…