Kevin Keatts’ Postgame Press Conference After NC State’s Win Over FSU

NC State head coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference after the Wolfpack defeated FSU yesterday. The transcript is below.

For us, it means a little bit more. We had dropped three games against three really good teams. We were at home.

Obviously, it’s the first ACC game early in December. I thought our guys came out and responded, and answered the bell. I thought we were resilient.

Towards the end, we got down five with about three minutes to go in regulation, and we fought back. I thought we did some really good things.

We didn’t particularly shoot it well from the free throw line, but I thought Marcus Hill in overtime made four big free throws.

I thought Dontrez Styles was tremendous in the second half. He made play after play.

We got connected. This team needed an early win together. We hadn’t had one, this particular group. We needed a nice win together, and we got one.

Florida State’s good. I realized after the game they had won 14 straight overtime games, and we were able to break that today.

I didn’t know that. But it’s good.

How would you describe Dontrez Styles’ impact in the second half?

He was good the second half of the Texas game. What I’ve asked these guys is give me some consistency. I want guys to be consistent.

The toughest thing for a coach is to come into a game and not know what you’re getting from a player, so we wanted consistency. He’s had a good couple days of practice, and I thought he was huge tonight.

He made plays after plays.

What were you guys able to do both offensively and defensively after Ewin followed out?

They’re so tough. Look, you’ve covered us and Florida State for so long.

They switch one through five, and it’s tough, and they really take your post guys out. Ewin, I thought he did a tremendous job. He was scoring the basketball. He was rebounding the basketball.

I thought when he fouled out of the game, they lost a little bit of their rebounding and scoring inside, and they became more of a perimeter team.

Knowing Watkins would het his shots, but shutting everyone else down from the perimiter.

I like that philosophy, but I didn’t. He got to the line way too much. He’s strong. He’s physical.

We talked about taking his right-hand drives. We talked about being second off the floor.

We went for his pump fake. Dontrez holds him at the end of the game. The guy makes his free throws.

But he’s as tough a matchup as you’re going to see in this league, because he can play inside out. We really wanted to go into the game and make sure we didn’t let him score in both ways.

We’ve done a great job on our early season in defending the three-point line. I think we might even be number one in the country defending the three-point line, and we didn’t want to give it to him both ways, so we did a good job there.

Going even with Florida State in rebounding despite having one of the tallest teams in the league?

I was concerned. Even Ewin, their last game against LSU, he had 11 offensive rebounds himself.

So we talked about that. The two things that I didn’t like is we didn’t do a good job our last game in transition, and we didn’t do a good job blocking out. We made an effort tonight that we were going to hit somebody and not give up 14, 15 offensive rebounds.

It means a lot. It means we’re growing.

Breon Pass and Dontrez Styles hitting shots to beat the shot clock.

What do you mean? We designed those plays. No, I thought they were huge. I mean, Breon’s two in the first half, I thought were really good.

And Dontrez beat the clock.

You know, we can shoot the basketball. I said to you guys, obviously we haven’t shot it great as a team, but we do have some guys that can make some shots.

I thought both of those guys made great shots at the end of the shot clock.

Dontrez Styles improving since the trip to San Diego

I didn’t even know we took him to San Diego. Did he go to San Diego? Was he there? No, he worked hard. Players, man, don’t like to look bad.

Him or Marcus, let’s talk about Marcus, too. Both of those guys in San Diego, they were three for 12. And both of those guys in the last two games have been really good for us.

Message to the team at the Media Timeout when FSU was up 5

I wanted us to stay solid. I thought we did some bonehead stuff. We switched out and we didn’t switch to the inside. We gave up some easy baskets. The great thing about when you’ve got a new bunch, is they are a new bunch, and so it’s like you can learn a lot of things.

We needed a win where we made some mistakes, but we came back, and that way we can grow. I think this is the biggest thing that could have happened for us, because we’ve had more adversity than we’ve had success, and just winning this game will really help us.

Difference in losing to Texas and winning this game

Yeah, I think we made plays. If you go back to the Texas game, we gave up six offensive rebounds in the last six minutes of the game.

We made plays. We got stops when we needed to have stops, and that’s the thin line between it. We made our free throws down the stretch, even though before Marcus made his, we made a couple of them.

The little things that impact the game is defending, making free throws, and blocking out, and I thought we handled that much better than we did against Texas.

Whether it was related to Styles or Hill going to the bench, is Brandon Huntley-Hatfield the next one that needs to be inspired after coming off the bench today?

It wasn’t an inspiration thing. We have a major standard in this program, and Brandon, unfortunately, was a little late to practice yesterday, and we just don’t care who you are.

You’ve got to punch the clock. So that wasn’t a message. It was kind of he was late.

Ben Middlebrooks taking charge

I thought it was great. Some of you guys are plus-minus guys. I’m really not, but I’m going to be one today.

Ben was +25, and you look at the stat sheet, and you’ll say, ‘man, he only scored four points and only had four rebounds.’ But the things he did on the court were really good. He did a lot of good things.

I thought he did a good job on the defensive end, and what a great charge he took.

Inspiring Dontrez after his foul led to Overtime

Yeah, I wanted him to play. We ran a play at the end of the game, and I thought he did a great job of ripping and driving it, and I thought he had some contact.

Obviously, there wasn’t. He was down on himself because he fouled at the end of the game, and then obviously didn’t go to the free throw line.

I was like, ‘all right, I’m going to give you a chance to make up for it.’ And he drove it. I thought he made a good play.

He just didn’t go in.