Kevin Keatts’ Postgame Press Conference After NC State’s Loss in Chapel Hill: TRANSCRIPT

Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his postgame press conference after NC State’s 73-97 loss to UNC tonight. Below is the TRANSCRIPT.

Very, very disappointed in that first half. And obviously, without taking away from what Carolina did, I thought Carolina played really well on their home floor. We got beat to a lot of 50-50 basketballs.

When you look at the first half, we gave up seven threes in the first half. We turned the ball over nine times in the first half. So what we did, we dug such a huge hole, it was hard to come back.

I thought our guys, the guys that we played in the second half, I thought they fought, obviously, but when you give up 54 points and you dig yourself in such a big hole, it’s really hard to come back, especially on somebody’s floor. Gotta build on it. It’s hard to win a game when a team plays so well in the first half, and then we’re battling back.

Obviously, I thought our guys, if you wanna look at some bright spots, I thought Paul McNeil came in and played well. I thought Jayden (Taylor) and Dontrez (Styles) did a great job. We scored 47 points in the second half and fought, but we were so deeply behind that it took a long time to even try to get back in it.

It did seem like there was a lot of good shots that were good looks. They just rattled out. Do you think that kind of hurt some of the confidence?

Yeah, you guys have followed us.

It’s a little frustrating. We’re getting good shots. I mean, the people that follow us have said, ‘man, you gotta get good shots.’

Unfortunately for us, some nights they don’t go in. And when they don’t, it’s so much pressure on our defense. When we started tonight, for the first time in a long time, when we started missing shots, I think it really affected us on the defensive end.

Unfortunately, I’m not gonna take away from Carolina, because I thought they played really well in the first half, but a lot of that is we were not ourselves. You guys know this, we take care of the basketball in this program, and we had 9.

You said after Virginia Tech that you weren’t embarrassed by the loss. How do you feel after, specifically that first half?

I don’t use words like embarrassing. They played better than us.

They made more shots than us. They got more rebounds than us. They won the game, but it was probably won in the first half.

I thought our guys really, really battled in the second half, but we had such a deep hole that we had to climb out of it. Are we proud of the way we played in the first half? Absolutely not. We’re not embarrassed, we’re not proud about how we played.

Obviously, we wish we could have played better, but we didn’t.

Your defense was calling a calling card for most of the year. In the last three games, you’ve given up 90 points in two of them. What has changed?

I think when you look at it and give credit, I think one of them being who we played. Louisville can really score the basketball. I think one of the common themes in those games is we’re giving up threes and transition baskets, and that’s what we have been really good at early.

If you take away those, teams don’t really score a lot on our base half court defense. I think our transition and our giving up threes is the reason why they’re scoring 90 points.

You’ve played here quite a few times. Was the atmosphere, given the snow game, them just opening it up the entire place, any different than a normal game here?

No, I just think they played well. Atmospheres is only as good as the team plays. I think when they played well, obviously they got involved, but I mean, it’s hard for me to say the atmosphere is better when the top bowl, because the weather, wasn’t filled.

I think the energy in the building was good because of the way they played in the first half.

This might be the worst that the guys have felt after a loss this season. As the leader of this program, how are you going to get them back on track?

I’m glad they feel that way, because I do.

In our program, we have shared responsibility. You’re never going to see me walk into a press conference and blame it on the players, if anything, I’ll take the blame myself, but I’m glad they feel that way because, obviously, that means we’ve got to go back to work and figure it out.

When you got five regular season games, you have to take one at a time, but I don’t want guys to, after a game, feel great, even if it’s a two-point game. There’s some things that we can do better, and the things that we’re going to get better, and we’ll get better, we’ll work on it.

What do you think has been the biggest disconnect for you guys this year, and does that come from NIL funding?

It’s 1,000 things, maybe not 1,000, but if you look at it, this team doesn’t have any superstars. We got really good players, and I love my players.

But in fairness, there’s no Jarkel Joiner, Terquavion Smith, DJ Horne or DJ Burns. What I mean by that is guys that can go on and average 17, 18 points a game. We have a bunch of really good players, which I knew from the start, and I love them.

I think they’re all really good people, and they’re fighting their butts off. The disconnect is when we don’t play together with this particular group, because we don’t have that one or two guys that can take a game over. So when we’re not on the same page, and we don’t play good basketball together, then we really struggle.

Hence, when we start playing together, we’re a really good basketball team.

Does NIL have something to do with it?

Absolutely. I mean, all you gotta do is take a look at the top five teams in the league and somehow find their numbers, and it’ll tell you a story, but I’m not going to make excuses about that, because obviously, in our program we fight hard. We compete, but the biggest difference is this group, this version of NC State, we have to play together to be really good.

I don’t know where you were before the season, but now that you’re playing through it, do you favor putting all 18 teams in the ACC tournament? Or do you like that there’s a fight to even get in?

It’s not my call. I mean, I don’t know.

I guess the easy answer is I could say yes, and here’s why I could say yes, because I also believe that there should be more than 68 teams in the NCAA tournament. So the answer is yes, but that’s not my call.

Has it put pressure on the team at some point to try to get into that?

No, because I’ve always felt that with my guys, it’s a moment thing. You can’t move on unless you win the game that’s in front of you, and you have to just continue to prepare for the next team, and whatever happens, happens. So just keep playing and see what the numbers look like at that time, but I don’t think when you’re losing, it’s hard to put added pressure on a team that’s losing. It’s not like it’s going to motivate them all. We’ve got to stay in the moment, locked in, and understand we got the next opportunity in front of us.

Do you worry that you’ve lost momentum from last year’s tournament run at all?

Momentum in which way, when you say that, which part? Because it’s several different ways.

Am I concerned that we were on the top of the mountain?

Just as a program in general.

I don’t think so as a program, because we play hard, but also the landscape has changed around us.

What I mean by that, if you went to the Final Four, you won the ACC, you could get any player, not any player, but most of the players you wanted because of that, but when you add the NIL part to it, none of that matters, because you can flip a team just like that.

So the disappointment is, ‘hey, we didn’t have NIL like it was, like it is now.’ Hell, we might have a different group of guys because of the fact that they’re coming just because they want an education, they want a chance to play at NC State, they want to play in our style, but now it’s not about that, it’s what can you provide financially? I get it, trust me, this is not a rant to say I’m against NIL, but that has to match your winning in order for you to get there.