Kevin Keatts’ Postgame Press Conference After NC State’s Loss to UNC: TRANSCRIPT

It’s a good game, it’s a great game. Two teams that really like to score the basketball and it turned out to be a really good defensive game. I thought we were completely locked in.

Let me get this out of the way. I’m a little disappointed at the end of the game that they didn’t at least review it. I mean, we’ve had probably three or four goaltendings in the game and I thought before the referees would run off the floor that they would review it. So that’s my disappointment.

Our crowd was tremendous, especially knowing that we were going to have some ice and snow. I thought everybody really showed up.

It’s a great game. You look back at the last two possessions, theirs offensively. We went and obviously both of our big and our guard gravitated to their guard and Washington was underneath the basket and they made a really good play.

Then at the end of the game, we were running our push action and they did a good job of icing us, pushing us to his left. I thought JT (Jayden Taylor) really got a good look off of it. But we will build, we’ll get better from it.

It’s a good game. Like I’m not going to take it away from Carolina because I’m disappointed in the last shot that we didn’t get a chance to see. So we’ll move on, we’ll get better from it, we’ll learn from it.

What was the plan on the last play? Were you just going for the best shot possible?

Oh, no, we were running our push action where we were trying to get a ball screen into a roll replace. Cadeau did a really good job pushing Michael (O’Connell) to his left and not letting him get to the ball screen.

Obviously once we got off the ball screen, we moved it into a ghost and JT had a great drive and obviously it didn’t go down.

From a defensive standpoint, playing against Carolina’s #1 ACC scoring offense team, was it your goal to kind of turn them into a half-court offense and keep them out of transition?

Well, I thought we did a good job. Now, I will say this, I didn’t like the transition baskets we gave up.

We still gave up 16, so you probably got the number one and number two transition teams in the league. Between us and two of them, we go back and forth. I think if we cut those transition baskets out, obviously it’s maybe a different outcome.

If you say, Coach, be picky about one thing, I didn’t like the way we gave them some easy transition baskets.

Marcus Hill had 20 points, six offensive rebounds. What did you see in him tonight?

You know, he’s playing. He’s buying in. We got buy-in and he’s starting to play. He’s starting to understand what we’re looking for and he’s playing with a little toughness.

Certainly when you play with toughness and you play with grit, the ball certainly scores for you, and that’s what he’s doing for us.

What did you expect out of Washington coming in? Did they give a better effort than you were anticipating?

No, I think their bigs have gotten better at their role. I know a lot of people, because of the fact that guys don’t score as much with their back to the baskets, people don’t think that those guys are valuable anymore.

He did a great job of short rolling and making the right play. Defensively he’s gotten better. So I think it helps their team that he’s taken off and gotten a lot better in the program.

Speaking of bigs, how much did it set you guys back that you were minus an important one today?

It’s tough. I would be lying to you if I told you it wasn’t. A little frustrating because we’ve got two really good bigs and we were out 1 being at UVA.

Then obviously you get this game here and you can play the what-if game. But it’s tough. I’m not going to take away from, I thought Ish (Diouf) came in and did a good job for us, but we’ve been going with a two-headed monster at the five and we didn’t have that.

You talked a lot at the beginning of the season about how Michael didn’t want to shoot a whole lot. I think you saw a lot more confidence from him today. What else were you seeing?

Michael’s a good complementary player and he’s smart. What I mean by that is he determines if he needs to score this game, or if he needs to be a facilitator. He’s one of those guys who will go into the game and figure out what does the team need from me on a given night, and he’ll do that. He knows how to play. He’s doing a good job.

He catches a lot of flack because he’s not your traditional scoring point guard, but it means a lot to our program.

What was UNC doing most of the second half to slow Michael down?

I don’t think it was what they were doing the second half. I thought both teams got great shots. I thought we played better in the second half ourselves. The one thing we didn’t have at halftime, I think we had two transition baskets.

We talked about that we needed to get better at rebounding the ball so we can get out and run. I thought once we got on the run, we got some easy baskets. That game was a tough, hard-nosed, half-court battle.

When you look at it, probably you’d say the difference in the game is 16 fast break points versus 10. Everything else is pretty even. Obviously, they made up a few more threes.

I thought Ian Jackson did a great job making shots tonight from the right corner.

A follow-up to that, do we have any updates on Mike James? Then what is Brandon Huntley-Hatfield having to do?

I don’t. Brandon fell. I don’t have any updates on Mike. Brandon fell and didn’t feel like he could go today. Obviously, the little things added up.

Six turnovers that led to those fast break points. Does it sometimes help that the players can see how close they are in terms of what is needed for every possession?

We don’t take moral victories in this program, but we had some turnovers that they were live ball turnovers that cost – they gave them some easy baskets, and we got to be better at that.

The one thing that we didn’t do that we’ve done pretty much the entire season is I didn’t think we moved the ball and shared the ball as much as we did. We came out of this game with seven assists, and most of those came in the second half. They didn’t come in the first.

This season you’ve talked quite a bit about some slow starts in previous games.

No, we just worked on it. We’ve done more four-minute segments in practice starting the game at halftime, down four or five, those type of things.

We’ve tried to create moments to put us in a situation so we don’t start in a deficit all the time.

Carolina could have ran away in the second half after coming out at halftime and hitting a couple of threes. Did you like the fight from your team? Did you see a reflection of yourself from your team in responding?

That’s a compliment to me if you think so because, we’re not going to lay down.

If we lose a game by a lot of points, it’s because a team made shots, but you’re never going look in their heart and say we ain’t ready to play. I don’t coach that way, and I don’t recruit guys that way.

What do you think was the reason why the team shot bad?

I think they missed shots.

Nothing specific?

Missed shots. I think we missed shots.

You did a good job of slowing down the Ian Jackson in the first half. He kind of got loose in that second half. What’s your plan on stopping those high-volume shooters in the future?

I just thought Ian had great looks and made them. Part of Ian’s shots, you’ve got to give credit to Washington. I thought he did a great job with short rolling, and a lot of times bigs are not great passers, and he made some really good plays on that part of it to get them the ball.

You think about this now, let me make sure before I say this. We go into every game trying to take away one or two of their top scorers. We did our job.

R.J. Davis is one of the best scorers in the country, and he had 11 points, so we did a good job. We came up two possessions a little bit short. What I mean by that is defensively they made the one play at the end, and then offensively we didn’t – we couldn’t score at the end or whatever happened or whatever needed to be reviewed.