Kevin Keatts’ Postgame Press Conference After Butler Win: BULLETED

Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference after NC State’s 76-61 win over Butler last night. You can watch it here, or check out a BULLETED breakdown below.

• First of all, let’s talk about Butler a little bit.
  • Thad [Matta] has done a really good job everywhere he’s been.
  • We beat a good Butler team. They’re going to continue to grow. They’re going to continue to get better.
• We played extremely hard, and I only say that because that’s part of our culture, but we were able to do that on Day 3, and that says a lot about this team.
• Our young guys came in, played well, and gave us great minutes in Breon Pass, LJ Thomas, and Ernest Ross, and then I thought our veterans put us over the hump.
  • Dusan Mahorcic and Jack Clark were really, really good.
• We’ve been led all weekend, really all year, by Terquavion Smith and Jarkel Joiner, and when they didn’t have a huge scoring night, they found other ways to affect the game.
  • When you look at Terquavion, he had 5 assists and 1 turnover, and they all played on the defensive end.
• I’m proud of my team. It’s a great tournament. It always has been.
  • You’re fortunate if you can get out of here with one win. Two is great, and then three is over the top.
  • I’m excited about our team as we continue to grow, and we’ll continue to get better.
• I love our team. I try not to look too far head. We’re just going to continue to work.
  • My job with these guys is to get them locked into the next game.
  • I’ve learned just to lock in, be positive, and take it one game at a time, and that’s what we’ll do.
• Well, everybody’s dangerous. What sparked me was that I watched Dayton and BYU, and it was a 23-point lead, and the lead was erased.
  • We’re all playing on tired legs, and if you can find a way to get through this, one of the blessings, even though we didn’t want to lose to Kansas, one of the good things about it was that we were able to play a 10 o’clock game tonight.
  • We got a little rest. It’s a great tournament because it prepares you for ACC, and it prepares you for the conference tournament, but it’s tough because you’ve got to play 3 great teams back-to-back-to-back.
• I’m proud of Manny [Bates]. Manny’s a tremendous kid.
  • Obviously at NC State, he had some unfortunate injuries that slowed him down a little bit, but he’s a great kid and a really good basketball player.
• I love the team that we put together. We hit it really good with the transfer portal, and we got good people that have connected off the court.
  • One of the things that helped us was taking a trip to the Bahamas in August. We were able to grow as a team.
  • Every coach’s challenge when you have so many transfers is trying to figure out how to develop chemistry early.
  • We’re a little ahead of the curve. We still have a long way to go in a lot of areas, but we’ve grown over the last 2 weeks.
• You play Kansas, the defending National Champions, tough enough to win, and you don’t win the game, will there be a letdown over the next couple of days?
  • I don’t think we did. I thought we bounced back and beat 2 good teams, 2 good programs, by double-digits.
  • I learned a lot about my guys in how we respond.
  • Sometimes, it’s better to learn a lesson through a win. We learned a couple of lessons through the loss to Kansas, and we built on it.
• We also have 2 very efficient post guys.
  • When you look up their stats, they can score the ball. D.J. Burns has had a good 2 days where he was unstoppable in the post. I thought he did some really good things.
  • Late in games, I wanted to play through our post guys. We talked about getting more paint touches instead of settling for 3’s.
  • When you look at tonight, we typically take anywhere from 25 to 35 three-pointers, and we only took 15, and a lot of that was because we wanted to establish our post guys.
  • Our post guys tonight took 21 shots.
• I’m grateful he [Jack Clark] made the shot [big 3 to end scoring drought].
  • I thought the willingness to make the pass is the biggest one, because the tendency during scoring droughts is to step up and make the big shot.
  • The pass was just as good as the shot, but it was very important at the time.
  • I wouldn’t say we got tight, but we relied on our defense a little bit.
  • We got a little reckless with the basketball, but once we got our composure, we were able to make some plays.
• We conducted ourselves as professionals.
  • We can make the argument that we played hard for 3 straight nights, and that’s hard to do.
  • I love what our guys are building. They’re starting to coach each other. They’re starting to reward each other. I think that’s big.
    • It’s going to help because you know you’re capable of doing it.
  • We used our bench a little bit more tonight than we did in the 1st couple of games, and I thought those guys really came in and made a positive impact for us.
• We can have balanced scoring. I think everyone knows that we’ve got a really good set of guards, and I include Casey Morsell in that, that have led us in scoring all year long, but we’ve got some bigs that can really score the ball.
  • Our guys are really starting to understand that and get them in positions. It took a while for us to realize that, even though we love to run a lot of ball screens, we’ve got to roll this guys into the post and make sure we play off of them.
  • Also, the bigs are willing passers. You look at DJ, he made a couple of backdoor passes.
  • Dusan was very effective.
  • It’s really, really balanced when you have guard scoring and your post guys can score also.