Kevin Keatts’ Postgame Press Conference After NC State’s Loss at Stanford: TRANSCRIPT

Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference after NC State lost 73-74 at Stanford tonight. You can read the transcript below.

I thought our guys really, out of all the games that we’ve played lately, I thought this was a game that we really played together. When you look at it, we’ve been trying to get three or four guys on the same page on the same night. This was a night that we had Dontrez (Styles) and Marcus (Hill), who scored the ball, and also Trey Parker had an unbelievable game. I thought Ish (Diouf) has had a good week in the two games that he’s played.

Give Stanford credit. I thought they made a couple extra plays down the stretch.

Free throws, we missed a couple free throws, we missed a couple assignments, and then obviously the game. Last play, we were trying to get Dontrez off a curl cut. I told Marcus if he saw an opening to drive it, and Trey did a good job getting to the corner and got a great look.

I thought he got fouled, to be quite honest with you, and if you look at it, I think the referee raised his hand to call the foul and never blew the whistle. Go back and look at it, which is very disappointing.

Can you just talk about late in the game, there’s a lot of timeouts, stoppages in play. What are you telling the guys trying to win the game?

Well, just when you’re up, just stay solid. When we were down, they were making their free throws, so we just wanted to play really solid defense without fouling and trusting our defense.

I thought a couple times we fouled, but we didn’t have to. I thought our press was very effective, we sped them up a little bit. We had our opportunities, I thought we did a good job, and that’s what you want on the road.

You wanna have the opportunity to make a shot, and Trey had a great look. I mean, he really did, and we just said, ‘hey, stay patient.’ I thought we got key offensive rebounds where we needed to. We drove the ball.

We did some good things, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have the opportunity to come out of here with a win, but it was a good basketball match.

It’s the second game in the last few weeks where Trey’s given you a really big spark off the bench in a hostile environment. How big is that for his confidence, and how big is that for you guys as a team to know that you can potentially go to him in this situation?

Yeah, he’s playing well, and I’m happy that we have been able to.

He’s starting to develop. He’s starting to understand how to play, and he’s had some big games. I mean, you think about it, and most of them, really, the big ones have come on the road at Duke, and here at Stanford, where both teams have won a lot of games. I like what I’m seeing with him.

I think this may have been, and I’ll check with Craig. I think this might be the most minutes that he’s played in, 27, but I thought he did a really good job. Not only did he score the ball, I thought he ran our team, and that was something that we needed also.

What was it like for Michael O’Connell to be back in his old stomping grounds?

I’m sure it was exciting for Michael. I mean, this place will always be special to him.

You think about great education, unbelievable young man. Graduated from here in three years, and that doesn’t happen at Stanford. So I’m sure his emotions are all over the place.

Talk about what has he brought to your program these last couple of years.

Well, he’s just a calming force. Michael does a good job. He’s, when you think about point guards, that’s what he is.

A guy that’s really looking to run your team, opposed to looking to score for himself. He’s had some good games for us in this uniform. Obviously, he helped us win an ACC championship last year.

Second straight frustrating game for Ben Middlebrooks in this one. Your thoughts on what happened there, and then also the way that Ish kind of rebounded there.

Yeah, we gotta get more. He’s gotta play better. As a guy who’s a Senior, and all of the pressure’s not on him, but we need more from Ben in this situation, especially when you don’t have Brandon (Huntley-Hatfield).

The bright spot was, I thought, Ish did a hell of a job the last couple of days filling in and played a major role. He’s actually played more minutes than Ben, because Ben has been in foul trouble for the last couple of games.

Going into the game, you guys obviously were challenged with the tough task of guarding Raynaud. Can you just talk about how you planned on trying to defend that?

We were looking at two or three different ways. We watched the Wake Forest game, and he brought the ball up the floor. So we were prepared to put our four man on him that can guard him a little bit.

Maybe switch him on the perimeter, and then obviously when he rolled to the basket, have our bigs guard him. So we planned a couple ways, big on big, having a four guard him at times, because his skills are so good on the perimeter, and his ability to shoot the three, that’s one thing I thought we did a really good job not giving him pick and pop threes.

He’s really good at that part of it. But he’s a tough matchup. He made some great shots. He’s talented. He rebounded the basketball.

When they needed a basket at the end of the game, you knew who they were going to.

You put Marcus on the ball there at the end of the game in that situation. How comfortable were you in that situation? As you talked about, not the play you necessarily drew up, but he makes a great play off of that. How much more confidence does that give you with him on the ball moving forward?

Yeah, it was three different elements to it. We knew we were gonna bring Dontrez off of a stagger screen. What we told Marcus is, ‘if you got an opening, we got about four seconds to drive the ball.’

Obviously, he’s more of a driver, and we told Trey, ‘if you can, space out,’ and it just worked out, and I give Marcus a lot of credit because we’ve been in those situations. JT (Jayden Taylor), I thought, had forced a couple shots at the end, and Marcus trusted Trey to make the right play. Marcus didn’t have a play on the ball. They helped.

He did a good job, and he kicked it to Trey, and I thought Trey got a good look. I’m bothered, I really am. I really think he got fouled as I look at it at the end.

And I’m telling you, if you go look at it, the referee puts his hand up.

It seemed like before that timeout call that you were comfortable letting them kind of run a play out of that after the initial timeout. What led to you calling that timeout and trying to draw out a play?

Yeah, I wanted to try to get the ball into the right people’s hand.

We felt like we needed something. The one thing that Stanford had done late is went to a 1-3-1. So we wanted to give them a couple plays if they went zone, and did something if they went man to man.

I don’t think we could have got a better look. I mean, it’s a great look. We weren’t going to get an inside basket because they’re so big.

So we had to drive and make something happen, and I thought they did a good job looking at it. I was trying to get Trey to a spot where he can raise up and make a shot, but I’ll live with Trey’s shot all day long, especially the way he shot the ball today.

I’m just curious, what did you see in the final bucket that they scored? I gotta go back and look at it.

I mean, I thought he drove it and we played good defense, and it’s weird because I thought he jumped off the wrong leg, and I may be wrong on that and he made a good shot.

I mean, he made a tough shot there.

Right after the game, Dontrez, before he left the court, really kind of hanging his head. Obviously for the Seniors, what are you seeing from the guys as far as their fight and as far as the mood in the locker room afterwards too?

Well, we haven’t been on the winning end of a lot of these games, and I don’t know that any team would be still fighting the way we are. We came to Stanford to win the game today, and I thought we played good enough to win.

Certainly it didn’t go our way, one point game. I’m proud of our guys. We’re not a moral victory program, but no one can say that we’re not fighting, and it would be easy to say, ‘hey, back end of the California trip, and you’re playing against a good team on home floor, did not play as well,’ and it was completely opposite in that.

I thought we laid it all on the line here tonight. I even said to these guys, ‘if we play like this, we’ll find some wins as we go forward.’ Because it’s probably the best we played collectively offensively.

(PP)