NC State Basketball

Kevin Keatts’ Postgame Press Conference After The Citadel: BULLETED

Published

6 years ago

December 23, 2019

Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference yesterday after NC State beat The Citadel 83-63 to improve to 9-3 on the year. You can watch it here, or check out a bulleted breakdown below.

It was good to have Coach Les Robinson back in the building.
- He has done so much for this program and this team. It certainly was good to have him here.
I thought our guys did some really good things.
- Excellent job in the first half defending.
We knew if they made 3’s it would be a tough night for us.
- I wasn’t particularly happy that they made 14 threes, but they had to take 45 shots to get them.
I was happy to get everybody in the game.
- Especially Chase Graham and Max Farthing work especially hard, and the opportunity to get them the chance to play before Christmas meant a lot to me.
It was good to have Danny Dixon back.
- Danny has worked hard. His foot injury has hampered him from playing a little bit, but he deserves to play.
Always the toughest game to play right before you go home for Christmas because you just don’t know where their minds are at.
I think Braxton Beverly has a bruise.
- Don’t have anything other than that.
- Hope he will be fine for Appalachian State on the 29th.
Markell Johnson did take the Auburn loss personally, and he took the loss home, and that was good to see.
- It was good to see him take that loss hard, and I thought it was good to see him respond today, especially under these circumstances.
- I want our guys to feel a little bad about it when they drop a game.
I thought Jericole Hellems was good.
- His condition is not what it needs to be.
- He still isn’t the guy who was playing well before the injury obviously.
- He needs some rest, but he also needs some reps.
- He’s still a little bit out of sync.
- It was good to see him make 13. I didn’t think he had 13.
This is the smallest team we’re probably going to play, but I had to get Danny Dixon into the game.
- It helped that D.J. Funderburk is dying to play the 4. I was able to sub Danny and D.J. in and it made a lot of sense, so I was happy.

I don’t have a reason for C.J. Bryce not starting. I just did it.
- At the end of the day, what I’m trying to get these guys to understand is that I have 8 guys, and I want them all to consider themselves as starters, and I rotate them in.
- My message to them is, ‘Do you want to start the game or finish the game?’
- Most kids will say they want to start the game, so I rotate them in.
- In this particular game I wanted to get Devon Daniels in.