Kevin Keatt’s Postgame Press Conference After Coastal Carolina: TRANSCRIPT

NC State Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference after NC State’s 82-70 win over Coastal Carolina tonight. Below is the transcript.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a game where one guy makes the only threes in the game. It’s crazy. So I guess we could classify both teams as a good defensive, three-point defensive team.

Loved the way our guys came out in the second half with energy. I thought we did a good job. When we lost Michael to a second foul and him only playing four minutes in the first, it kind of changed us a little bit.

We didn’t finish the half like I wanted to. Obviously, he’s one of the guys that studies us and gets us in the right stuff, but I thought we did some good things.

I thought JT (Jayden Taylor) played extremely well. I was very excited at what I saw from Trey Parker. I thought he was very aggressive and I think we’re getting better.

We want to build on that second half. I like some of the things I’ve seen. Coastal is a team that loves the controlled tempo and they want to play the game in the 50s and 60s and we came in wanting to play fast and make them play fast.

I thought we did a good job on the defensive end. Once again, forcing 19 turnovers.

As an offense, do you guys feel like you need Jayden to kind of be the guy in a way? Is that kind of emerging and evolving as we speak?

No, I don’t.

I think we’re gonna have a group that on any given night, you might have Marcus Hill with 18, you might have Brandon (Huntley-Hatfield) with 18, you might have someone else, but I think JT played well tonight and the other night, but I don’t think this group needs him to have the DJ Horne role. I think we got a lot of guys that are all going to be anywhere from 12 to 15 points a game just depending on the night and the opponent.

Free throw line…

I got everybody in, I think it was yesterday, on their own to shoot 100 free throws. We’re a much better free throw shooting team than what we’ve shown and tonight we made 28 and missed seven, but I thought we did a better job at the free throw line, especially Brandon. Brandon and JT. Brandon’s going to get a lot of fouls.

He’s very good inside and going 9 for 10 from an interior player is really good.

How long do you think it’s going to take to get up to speed defensively?

Yeah, I hope it doesn’t take to the first game against Louisville in the ACC tournament, but it’s a work in progress. I love the way we are.

The thing about this group, they’re competing every day in practice. We’re getting better every day. The thing that we didn’t know is, we got so many different guys from different places and we’re starting to understand scouting reports.

We’re getting better at that and I think once we get better at that and learning how to play hard consistently, all of our team, all of my teams play hard, but consistently playing hard on both ends of the floor, I think our depth will show more.

Trey Parker

He’s gotten better. He was an energy guy and every game I go into the game saying who’s going to be my energy guy and I thought Trey was great, but he’s had great practices.

It’s weird with this group, you can look at how they practice, more than any group that I’ve ever had, and determine how they’re going to play on game day. We don’t have DJ Horne. He could have a bad practice, but he was such a natural scorer that he could come out and just score whether he practiced well or not. These guys, we all have to have good practices in order for it to translate over to the games.

You see eight rebounds at halftime (2 offensive). Is that a major thing in halftime?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

The first thing I go to is the board and figure out how many deflections we had. We had 11. I don’t like that because we talk about getting 40 deflections, that would be 20 in a half. And so activity and rebounding, and I told Trey and those guys, you’ve got to impact the game by rebounding the basketball and do different things.

I love our first three minutes of the second half. I love our first five minutes of the first half. Just in between, we got to continue to get consistent in every way.

JT had four turnovers pretty early. Is he going to have to run?

He’s gonna have to come to my office. We’re gonna have some meetings and talk about that.

Oh my goodness, he had four, five turnovers with no assists? Yeah, he’s probably got to run. I agree with you. I’ll tell him that you said that.

But, no, I, we won’t run, but I’ve got to show him his turnovers and see where they’re coming from and get him better in that area, because he’s much better than turning the ball over nine times in two games.

I think offensively, we’ve been really good in the three games. If you look at it, we’ve scored around 80 some points or more in every game, which is a little surprising for this group early on.

The other thing I’ll point out is this group has really passed the ball well. We’ve had games of 18 and 22 assists, and tonight we had 11. We’re starting to understand how to get people the ball.

I jumped on our guards a little bit, but I thought Brandon got two or three three-second calls because we didn’t throw him the ball initially, and he was posting hard. If you got a post guy that’s posting, you’ve got to do a good job of giving him the ball. I didn’t think we got him the ball early, but I like what I see from my guys offensively right now.

We’ve got to get a little bit more stingy on the defensive end. I say that, but we’re still forcing a lot of turnovers. We’re winning the turnover battle every game.

I like that part of it. I just want us to be a little bit more consistent in some areas.

Any update on Mike James?

I don’t have a clear update.

I would say two and a half, three weeks. You know, I look forward to getting him out there. He’s a 6’5″ strong wing that’s played a lot of basketball, and we’re missing him, and you just don’t realize this.

Dennis Parker’s not a hundred percent. He’s coming back from those two ankle injuries. Ish (Diouf), this was his first game playing. So we got some more pieces that we’ve got to add to our group.

What do you think the offensive identity of this team is? 

I think we’re a driving team.

Look at the last game, we had 47, 48 points in the paint, and then we had 42 tonight. Brandon is very comfortable with his back to the basket, so we’re throwing the ball into him, and we’re cutting off him, and we’re playing it.

I think JT and Marcus Hill are doing a good job of getting paint touches, and so is Mike (O’Connell). Mike’s getting in there, and he’s spraying the ball out. It’s too early to get a clear understanding of what our identity is, but it looks like that we could be a good paint touch team at times.

Colgate, a team that’s been college champions in their league the past two years, has been in the tournament the past two years. Is there any thought to shortening the rotation?

No, right now I look over there, and I see a lot of guys who are equal, and right now I’m rewarding how hard you compete in practice, because once again, with this group, I’m noticing from our exhibition to our scrimmage to the three games, whatever happens in practice is translating to what’s on the floor right now.