Kevin Keatt’s Weekly Press Conference After Wake Forest Victory, and Before Syracuse: TRANSCRIPT

Head Coach Kevin Keatts met with the media for his weekly press conference after NC State’s win over Wake Forest on Saturday, and their upcoming game at Syracuse on Wednesday night. You can read the transcript below.

There’s a saying that when you prepare, you don’t have to get ready, and what we saw from Paul (McNeil) recently, 24 points on 60% shooting nearly. What’s been your assessment on his breakout, his first career start? Is that just a glimpse of what we have coming for this NC State basketball program?

He’s worked. He’s worked extremely hard. Typical freshman, comes in, loves the freedom that he has in college, probably having a good time off the court.

Big time scorer out of high school, but really has to adjust to how to score at the college level, a little bit more physicality, games a little bit quicker, but has stayed locked into the process and gotten better and worked hard every day. Usually at some point, a freshman will turn a corner and we started seeing that with him about two or three weeks ago in practice and the times that we put him in a game, and I’m just happy for him. He’s worked so hard and our team needed some energy and I thought he provided a lot of energy and made shots for us on Saturday.

What’s been the best way for your players to block out the noise going through the mishaps, through thick and thin, but they still have a coach that’s up to bat for them, and that’s referring to Michael O’Connell who had faced a lot of criticism recently, but you were able to back up him and he had one of the best performances of the season just a couple of days ago.

Well, in this world, it’s very easy to criticize and certainly we’re in a business and a sport that you can be criticized, but we tell our guys lock in.

Everybody in this world can be criticized. The unfortunate thing about it is that we don’t know what most people’s job is, so we don’t go to their job or we don’t tweet, and we don’t do all that other stuff. We tell our guys just lock in, trust your work, trust the folks that you’re around every day.

Don’t ever get too high when they say great things about you, like Michael had 13 assists and when people are saying how great you play, that’s reality, stay even keel and when you don’t play well, you’re going to get some criticism. I think our guys understand that. He was also a part of a team last year that lost the last four that got heavily criticized, but heavily celebrated after we cut the nets down last year.

I think he’s mature enough to understand that happens in this business.

I wanted to ask you about Dontrez Styles. 17 shot attempts the last game, 11 three-point attempts. I think those were season highs for him. Different level of aggression. Was it maybe the way Wake was defending him? What do you think led to that volume because he had a big game for you?

The first half of the Carolina game didn’t go as any of us expected, but there was a silver lining as we scored 47 points in the second half.

Our guys completely came out and didn’t like the way we played, and I thought the two guys that really, really played well in the second half were Dontrez and Paul, and its kind of carried over. They were good in practice.

They were locked in, and Dontrez is playing really good basketball for us. The games that we have won, he’s been a big part of that.

I thought he was completely locked in and focused. I think a lot of people after our loss wrote us off as a team that may lay down and may not play well. That’s not what our program’s about.

We got some guys with some pride in the locker room. We beat a really good Wake Forest team on Saturday because our guys just came out a little bit more focused and hungry than they’ve been in a long time.

Congratulations on a nice win Saturday, beating Wake. Looking ahead to the ACC tournament, kind of a two-part question. Do you like the idea that three teams, and right now could be yours, won’t be extended invitations to the ACC tournament? Kind of diverging off that, what was the rationale not to add a 16th team when it would have seemed logical to balance the bracket that way?

Someone asked me this the other day. I think it should be 80-some teams in the NCAA tournament, so, of course, I think everybody should go to the tournament that qualifies.

The decision is way above my head. I don’t know. I’ll leave that up to the decision-makers.

We just have to try to put ourselves in a situation to try to get there, but I don’t know where it came from. If it was voted by the coaches, I don’t remember ever voting for it.

So, I don’t know where it came from. But, if you said to me, I would love for everybody to have a chance because, getting in there, if that was the case last year, then there may not have been an NC State story. So, at the end of the day, I think everybody should go, but that’s above me.

Obviously, every game of the season is going to be critical. You want to win every single one of them, but Wednesday against Syracuse, given the place where the two teams are in the standings and the fact that you have a chance to potentially jump them with them only having a few games remaining, how big is this game and how important is this game for you to try to make that ACC tournament run?

It’s a big game, and it’s a big game for several reasons.

It’s the next game on our schedule. It’s the next game after playing a really good game at home against Wake Forest. There’s great opportunities, and going down the stretch, you want to try to finish strong.

We were completely opposite last year. We didn’t finish strong, and so it’s a good game. Whether Syracuse’s record is where they’re at or our record, it will be important for us because we want to try to finish strong as we can going down the stretch, and I think our guys understand that part of it, but we want to try to build some momentum We have won two out of the last three games that we played.

We need to talk about Boston College and also Wake at home, so we want to try to build on that.

I hate to ask again, but do we have any updates on Mike James?

We don’t.

I would say at this point, it would be safe to say that we probably won’t see Mike James. I typically will evaluate him every Monday and just kind of figure out where he’s at. Obviously, it’s early in the day.

We practice here at 2.30. I’ll get a chance to see him a little bit, but I haven’t talked to him or the doctors or trainers today. He may walk in, and I may tell you later on in the week that he’s ready to go, but I wouldn’t anticipate that.

In terms of Syracuse, what do you see out of them in terms of scouting them, and what poses a threat for you guys on Wednesday?

I just think they’re good. Their record may not indicate it. Our record may not indicate it, but, you know, they do a good job.

They put a lot of pressure on your defense. They got great size. They can score inside and out.

They got some guys who are starting to play together. It’s a good team. They mix it up.

Adrian’s done a really good job of playing some man-to-man and then mixing in some of the traditional 2-3 zone that they play. They’re competing. They’ve lost a couple games similar to us. They really came down the stretch, and they came out on the other side of it. When I think of them, they got a legitimate, very legitimate wing scorer and then a really good post guy, and some supporting cast around them, and I think that makes them really good.

You’ve talked in the past about Michael O’Connell and the criticism he’s taken from his season this year. How do you think a 13-assist game over the weekend can help him build going into March?

When you’re the head coach at one of these programs, you’re going to get criticized by every fan base, and you’re going to get loved on at times, but also when you’re the point guard, similar to a quarterback position, you’re going to get criticized. I think Michael is old enough to handle that because he’s been through the highs and lows, and there’s no higher situation than it was when we won what we won, and he made the big shot against Virginia.

I just want him to continue to grow. Being criticized is one thing, but we had some open looks this year that obviously just didn’t go in, and I think a lot of times Michael would get blamed for that, but he’s probably had some games, maybe not where he was going to get 13 assists, but he could probably have had nine or 10 if we’d made some of our open shots, so I just think he stayed the course. He understands. I think he’s criticized a lot because he’s not the traditional point guard that we’ve had here, like a Jarkel Joiner, that can score the ball and pass. He’s really a point guard, and sometimes those guys don’t get the credit.

I said this on my radio show. If a running back gets 200 yards, very seldom are you going to see the lineman get any credit in the newspaper. Well, if we’re making shots, then sometimes a point guard’s doing a good job getting the ball to the right spot, and that’s kind of how I see it with him.

After re-watching the film from Saturday, what do you think specifically went well that allowed y’all to come away with the big win and that you want to carry forward in these last several games?

Well, going down the stretch, you want to have small wins, and so when you look at it, I thought that was our best complete game where we put two really good halves together, but I’ll also throw this in. If you look at the second half of the Carolina game, and then you look at Wake Forest first and second half, I thought for the first time in a long time, we had played three really good halves of basketball, and I thought we played on both ends of the floor, and we moved the ball.

Think about this, 23 assists on 29 made field goals is pretty impressive. We made 13 three-pointers, and I thought our defense was really stingy against a very good Wake Forest offensive team.