Kevin Keatts Postgame Press Conference After NC State’s Loss to Clemson

NC State Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference after the Wolfpack’s 58-68 loss to Clemson today. You can read the transcript BELOW.

I think there’s a couple of bright spots if you want to look for any of them. I’ve been asking for a little consistency from my group and it looks like Dontrez Styles is starting to play really good basketball. 9 for 14, 6 for 8 from 3…5 rebounds…and our team’s fighting.

We played against a very good Clemson team. Coming in 9-1 and our guys are putting the work in. We have these 4 or 5 minute stretches that I feel are really, really hurting us.

I didn’t know who we were going to have this week. Ben (Middlebrooks) and Dontrez didn’t practice the last couple of days because they had flu-like symptoms. Same thing with Breon Pass.

Then right before the game, Brandon (Huntley-Hatfield) decided that he couldn’t go. So I give our guys kind of a moral victory, but I give us credit for the way we came on and fought against a really good team under the adversity that we went through.

That being said, we’ve just got to get better. We got to figure out these stretches. Our defense is still doing a great job of carrying us through most of these games.

Obviously, it looks like when we get in trouble, we don’t score the basketball.

Duke and Clemson are two of the top teams in the standings. You feel like you’re miles away from them, or how close do you feel like you are to those two teams?

If you look at those two games, you look at them and you say, ‘Man, we have gotten better.’ We just didn’t win a few games that could have went the other way earlier.

If you win those games earlier and you don’t play well against Duke and Clemson, now you’re saying, ‘Wow, man, they got a chance.’ That being said, we have been in every game because our heart’s always on the line. Our guys show up every night.

Sometimes it comes down to maybe the other team has a few more better players than we do. We just got to keep figuring it out and keep plugging. But to your question, it’s a great question.

When you look at those games, you got to hope. We talked about looking at the big picture, which I normally don’t do. In our league there’s going to be 9-10 teams that have to at some point win their league to go, because we’re just not getting many in there.

Can we continue to get better? Can we win some games down the road to put us up in that position?

Kind of keep the morale up, but when the losses start to stack, it’s hard not to do that.

Well, I think the way we’ll do it is we keep playing hard as a habit. If you want to say what’s our good habit, our good habit is we play hard.

If we’ve lost any game this year, it wasn’t because of our lack of effort. I love the way our guys compete, and I told them at the end of the game, ‘I love you for how hard you play,’ because at this point when you’ve dropped the amount of games in a row, it’s easy, to your question to say, ‘man, we just don’t play hard.’ We’re competing, and that’s how we’re going to do it. That’s non-negotiable for me in my program. Somebody on that bench is going to play hard if one or two guys decide that they’re not, and I haven’t seen that from anybody.

I’m not normally a big plus-minus guy, but when you have Ben without Brandon, do you have to give him a little talk on how important he is to stay on the floor?

Yeah, I do. It’s tough because it’s so much pressure. Some of that comes down to who you’re playing against. I mean, we’re playing against the biggest front court probably in the ACC. They knew that there was no Brandon also, so they’re going to make an effort to get the ball inside and try to get him in foul trouble.

We talked about it, but he’s so aggressive. The reason why he’s blocking shots, you don’t want to kind of take that part away from him because he’s aggressive on each one.

But we have talked about, ‘hey, you got to stay in the game, especially under these circumstances without Brandon, and obviously then you to Ish (Diouf) who is kind of more of a 4-5 than a 5 anyway.

Kevin, besides Dontrez with 24, how much do you think Paul (McNeil) and Trey (Parker) helped out once again?

I think they’re doing well. There are stretches where they’re really good, then there are stretches where they’re freshmen, and that’s not their fault. They’re freshmen. When you look at those two and even Bryce (Heard), they have some great moments.

Paul came in and had great moments, then I thought he got tired. I thought he took a couple tough ones at that time.

And so it’s a balancing act with these younger dudes, how to get them experience and continue to play. They can keep you in games, as Trey did at Duke. I thought Trey was great at Duke.

But, they have some moments where…you just got to get some veteran guys in there to play. I love what they’re doing. I love that they’re starting to earn minutes because of the way they’re showing up every day early, working, staying late, getting better.

So they’re catching up, and it’s starting to show on the floor for them. When it comes to a freshman, you can’t count on freshmen. They’re young. So a lot of this is up to me and our upperclassmen to get the thing right and then let the freshmen contribute.

Speaking of Clemson’s size in the front court, what does it say about your team that y’all were able to outdo them?

We emphasized that coming into this game, that we had to win that battle.

I’ll tell you, it was tough because, in practice at times our fours and fives were Bryce and Dennis Parker Jr. because we didn’t have those guys in. So we really concentrated on ‘you’ve got to hit them before they hit you.’

It’s a win in that area, in that category, because we have gotten out-rebounded. Things that we wanted to work on is our rebounding, transition defense, and also guarding the ball a little bit better one-on-one. So in that area, that’s a win for us.

When you’re facing an elite offensive guard like Chase Hunter, how do you game plan for that kind of player?

He’s good. You look at his numbers and how he affected the game, 20 points.

He was very efficient, 6 for 12, 2 for 5, got to the free throw line. We talked about how he’s staying on his right hand. I thought down the stretch when they needed a play, Chase Hunter was really good.

I thought he made a couple plays down the stretch, and he’s an all-conference guy. Probably a first-team all-conference guy, who has been in the league for a long time.

But we game planned against him. One of the things we talked about is ‘can we take away the leading scorer. Don’t let the best player be the best player.’

He was good tonight. I thought we did a good job with Schieffelin, who has been really good. But I thought Chase Hunter was…it’s weird because he’s one of those guys you pick up the stat sheet and you don’t realize he had 20 points, and he did.

You talk a lot about how the veterans are impacting Trey Parker and Paul McNeil. Can you talk a little bit about Michael O’Connell’s game? He had three points, two assists, and three rebounds in 28 minutes.

You know, Michael’s never been a scorer. Even if you go back to last year, he had those moments at the end of the year where he scored the basketball for us. I think that was – I don’t want to say that’s a tease for us, but that was an addition to what we already had.

He makes us run. He’s one of the reasons that we have been a low turnover team throughout the year. So he has a value.

He has a need on the team, but if we’re looking for him to score, then we have to go to the bench and get somebody else, and that’s why we’re – Trey is starting to play more minutes because he provides a little bit more scoring than Michael does.

Do you see this as maybe a good time to get on that plane and go to California?

I think it’s a great time, and we talked about that. I mean that in a good way. I want us to get away and just get back to hanging as a team.

We’re going to play two really good teams on their home floor, but it’s not so much about that. It’s ‘hey, let’s get away, clear our minds a little bit, see can we figure it out and move forward.’

You guys are covering us. We got all the fight in the world. We just – we struggle offensively at times to get us over the hump to win the games, and we’ll figure it out. I don’t know when, but we’ll figure it out.