Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference after NC State’s 97-66 win over USC Upstate tonight. You can watch the video ABOVE, and read the transcript BELOW.
What a beautiful night. It’s not very often that you get a chance to drop two banners. And for us here at NC State, it’s been 37 years, and man, it was beautiful. I knew that those banners would look good, but they look great.
And man, I’ll tell you what, it took everything I had and I got really emotional, but I knew I had to keep it together. Because we had a game to play, but man, it’s special. It’s kind of like ‘why do you do the job?’ And the job is done because you want to see young men have success. And here at NC State, we talked about when I took the job, we’re going win championships.
And I said, Kevin Keatts’ is a winner. And when those banners dropped, man, I feel all I can do is think about our players, and our fan base had been starving for that.
The alumni, all of the former players that were just right there and just couldn’t get over the hump. And so those banners represent everything about NC State and represent everything about me. I’m just fortunate to be the guy that was behind the wheels driving the car.
I want to personally thank everyone that had the opportunity to come watch the game. And I want to personally thank everybody that watched the game from home. It was a special deal, and I think that’s important.
The game was great. I mean, I’m glad the game went the way it went because of the fact that we dropped the banners, and I didn’t want to hang two banners and just have an okay game. And so, I’m glad the game turned out the way it did.
You talk about your emotion, but on the other side, how much do you think that it helped the players that were here last year? In particular, Breon (Pass) and Ben Middlebrooks, it really seemed like they had a lot of juice to them.
Yeah, I mean, give credit to both of those guys. Ben with 10 points and 10 rebounds. I think it’s his third career double-double, and Breon Pass with 14 points.
We’re gonna need Breon, JT (Jayden Taylor), Ben, Dennis Parker, those guys who are returning to kind of show everybody how we play. That’s our culture. My job is to try to put in plays and defensive schemes and all that other stuff.
But it’s nothing better than on opening night when two of your guys really play well, and I think the other guys played really, really hard tonight. But to answer your question, I mean, it had to be emotional for those guys. It was great having Casey Morsell back.
I told him I’m gonna go watch his feed now. And if it’s not good, I’m gonna tell him you can’t be saying, ‘hey, you gotta be better defensively.’ When I told him he had to be better defensively also.
Speaking of defense coach, what was your assessment on your team tonight? Defensively, a lot of times you ran a four-on-one, 94-feet pressure. What was your assessment on those?
Well, I thought we flew around. This is what I wanted with this team, and there’s a great start to it.
Obviously, we made them play a little bit more one-on-one basketball. They had five assists and 17 turnovers. On our end, I thought we shared the ball.
Those 20 assists is more than we’ve had. We didn’t get 20 since last year at all. And so 20 assists on 38 made field goals was pretty impressive.
But I thought we did some good things. We obviously, if you want me to be picky as a coach, we fouled too much. Not all the way, all the time, just wink, wink.
But I thought they got to the free throw line a lot tonight, and we’ve got to clean that up. We’ve got to do a better job with that.
Talk a little bit about Breon, but not only did he have a career high, he doubled his career high. What have you seen this offseason to get you confident that he’s ready to have a bigger role for the team?
He’s been right there in practice. He’s getting better. I think the mere fact that he’s been practicing against some really good players, and Breon’s been very patient.
And he’s probably been our best ambassador in that program. When recruits come on campus, he does a great job with it. When you think about NC State basketball, that guy represents it the right way.
He’ll graduate from NC State, which is very rare for a guy this day and age to start here and finish here. And so I’m happy because his hard work paid off, and I hope he continues to get better. And I like what I saw from him tonight.
Y’all had, I think, what, 11 turnovers and eight were in the first half. Was there anything specific that you said at halftime that kind of made that change?
Yeah, stop turning the ball over. Pretty simple.
I mean, we stopped turning it over. And this team’s gotta do a better job taking care of the ball. We didn’t in our exhibition or our scrimmage.
I would like every game to be ten or less. Because of how fast we play, there are going to be some turnovers. But I thought tonight in the second half, we did a great job.
I wanted this team to put together two halves. We hadn’t put together two halves in our scrimmage and exhibition. And those three practices were really good leading up to this game.
I said to you guys, I didn’t wanna win the exhibition by 40. I don’t think that would have helped us. The way we played the second half really gave us a chance to go back and work on some things and get better at it.
Coach, you talked about how emotional it was for the returning players last season. But guys like Dontrez Styles, Marcus Hill, Brandon Huntley-Hatfield talked about how seeing the banners unveiled was what made it easier for them this season. What did you see in their minds?
Well, I thought they all were good.
It’s always tough when you play your first game. You’re gonna have first game jitters there. They’re into a new program, but I thought everybody was solid.
This was a game that I thought everybody contributed in a very positive way. Did all of our shots go down? No, but I thought we did some good things. And to see Brandon, we’ve gotta do a better job of getting Brandon the ball inside.
I thought we missed some opportunities there. But those guys are both capable scorers, but they’re really good passers. They’re willing passers.
Even when they double-team, they would find the right guy.
What did you like from Marcus (Hill)? It seemed like he was able to get to the rim pretty good.
Yeah, I was glad to get him going.
He was pressing a little bit, and I thought he picked and chose his moments and did a good job and got to the rim. And I like his numbers. He was very efficient tonight.
7 for 10, 2 assists, 14 points. I thought that was really good.
Did the absence of Ismael (Diouf) kind of simplify the front court a little bit for you?
No, not really. I knew we were gonna play. I knew that we were gonna play a smaller team that really was gonna roll out four guards, and I knew I was gonna play Ben or Brandon at the five, and that’s it.
I just knew that I was gonna have to do that. And it also gave us a chance, playing guys like Bryce Heard, getting him extra minutes, playing him as a small ball guard. I thought he did a really good job in that area too.
What was Ismael’s issue?
So Ismael will not play on Friday either. Because of the team that he was on, somehow the NCAA decided that he was gonna serve a two-game suspension. After Friday, he will be fully cleared to play, but he won’t be available Friday either.
Coach, a month ago you were talking about how your freshmen would all get the opportunity to see playing time. Trey had a couple of lobs to Bryce. We saw Paul McNeil hit that step back three late in the game. What else did you see from them, and how did the rotation go?
Well, I’m glad that they got to see the ball go in. And I got three really good freshmen. And obviously, I gotta be patient with them.
They gotta be patient with themselves. And I think the fan base has gotta be patient with them. They all three are gonna show glimpses of being a really good players in this uniform, but for Paul, we needed him to see the ball go in.
Paul’s a big time shooter, but when you add that he’s added 15 pounds, he’s playing in a different system. He’s playing faster. Now he’s gotta adjust to the way we play and make those shots now.
And so it was good for him to make some shots.
Is this a team that you want to have some alpha scorers like you did last year with Horne and Burns, or is it just more of a depth team? How do you think it’s gonna play?
Yeah, I don’t see that. I think it’s more of a depth team.
I think on any given night, you can look at the box score. Like if you look at tonight, it was Marcus and Breon Pass, they both had 14. I think on any given night, anybody’s gonna lead us in scoring.
I don’t know that we’re gonna have DJ Burns and DJ Horne. Now, I will say this to you, neither one of them were DJ Burns and DJ Horne at the beginning of the year. It took a little time, and they got better.
It was good to see. I’ve asked Michael (O’Connell) to score the ball a little bit more. He’s so hyped that he got six assists.
I was like, ‘dude, you gotta shoot it a little bit more,’ and he decided to shoot the ball, so it’s good. He’s the only guy in my career I’ve ever had to say, shoot the basketball. You’re gonna remember him for it.
Yeah, I mean, I’m in it. You guys know this, it’s like, ‘hey, this was game one for me, too.’ So I got a lot out of it, too.
I got better. I did lose my voice. My trainer was bringing me cough drops, and I was looking at them like, well, I didn’t have the ability to yell at the referees enough because I lost my voice.
Not having a go-to scorer like you said, how important is it going to be to score in transition like you guys did tonight, having four guards out there and two bigs that can run the floor like Ben and Brandon?
Yeah, I wouldn’t say that I don’t have a go-to scorer. I just think that go-to scorer’s gonna be every game who has a hot hand. There was a stretch when Marcus was playing well, and we said, let’s get him the ball.
So I think it’s going to be more of a field than anything. We’re a really good transition team when we run. Sometimes we don’t run all the time, and we gotta continue to get better at it.
But we ran tonight, and that was good.
You’re a coach that’s dealt with losing your leading score from the year before, year after year. What have you learned from that that you’re able to use this year?
Yeah, don’t say year after year, just say the truth.
I lost my leading score every year that I’ve been here. I don’t know what in the world is going on with this transfer portal, and now they won’t graduate. No, we do a great job assisting coaches and developing guys.
And we’ve always done that, and we want to continue to do that. I love developing players. You guys know me, I get motivated when people talk trash about my guys and how good they are or not.
And at the end of the year, wink, wink, Michael is our hero now. He got the loudest, loudest claps when he ran out. I remember everybody telling me, ‘can he play here?’ And was he good enough? And ‘is he a Kevin Keatts guard?’ Pretty damn good now, ain’t he?
Coach, there was a sequence like a four and a half time where Heard grabbed the defender, and you slapped the floor, and you gave him a teaching moment. How are your players able to kind of take that criticism to heart?
Well, I think those guys know I have their best interests at heart.
I just don’t yell to yell. And these are teaching opportunities, and with him, he’s a sponge. He’s probably a little bit more advanced as our freshman as far as knowing basketball a little bit more.
And he knew he made a mistake right at the end. Obviously, he bumped the guy, that one was a foul at that time, yeah.
Ben seemed to be playing with the same energy he did in that first round game against Texas Tech. He had a stretch where he had a block, a long two, and then he stole it inbound and got another layup immediately after. What do you see in him, and how important is he gonna be with the absence of Burns?
Well, I got after him after the exhibition game. And here’s what happens, and this is nothing because of the exhibition game.
But I like having individual meetings going into the season. And so we had our individual meetings, and I lit him up, because I just didn’t think he played as hard, I was like, ‘who are you? You’re a hard playing dude.’ And I’m telling you, boy, I thought he was Dennis Rodman in practice the next day.
I mean, he rebounded everything, and I wanted to reward him. Him and Brandon are really good, and it was obvious we were raising the banners tonight, and I wanted to play the guys who helped us win those banners. So I started him and started Brandon in the second half.
But Ben’s going to be good, and then those guys, as they grow, they will be able to play together at some point, just depending on the team. But I like what Ben brought to the table. He was the Ben Middlebrooks that we’ve always wanted and needed.
And he just plays with a lot of energy. I looked at Levi (Watkins) and Larry Dixon, ‘like if you guys don’t, I’m gonna fire you guys if you don’t get that spin move out of his game,’ because I mean, he spinned one time against Lees-McCrae, and I’m telling you, I don’t know what the hell he did. So he will never be on Dancing with the Stars, like DJ Burns, we said that. Ben’s never getting on that show.
