NC State
Keatts: Can't tell me that's not two teams you see in March
Kevin Keatts speaks to the media after am 83-79 loss to Wake Forest
At least I made it through this game. Um, you know, we, uh, what a, what a hard fought game it was and I mean, I, you know, it's a, you know, that was, to me that was an AC C tournament elimination game. Um, I, I thought both teams played extremely hard. Um I love the way DJ Horn played. I thought he was really aggressive. Um Every time that we needed a basket to answer a run, I thought he was a guy that stepped up and made some big shots for us. Um You know, we did some really good things. I thought Matt Mo was tremendous as far as rebounding the basketball, uh, to get, went back and forth. Um You know, I talked to those guys in the locker room about four minutes to go. I thought we lost the guy on the back door cut. Um I thought defensively we had a couple of breakdowns. Um, uh, we did a really good job of running them off the three point line. Uh, but you almost got to pick your pause in because I think those guys did a good job with paint touches and you know, get into the interior of our defense because we tried to make sure you obviously at the last couple of games in this building, they made 18 threes and 12 threes. And so one of the things we wanted to do was superly guard the three point line and take them away, but, um, we'll move on, we'll work. It's a great opportunity for us. Um You know, we've got plenty more opportunities in front of us. And the weird thing is it's very similar to, I think it was last year. Uh when we, I think we beat Wade two times and uh when we did it knocked us out of quad one. So it's weird how the ma um the math may work. It, it's crazy. Now, I'm gonna say this is because they won. They were 3233 maybe they'll go to 30 maybe we'll get a qual one from being at home. It's a weird deal to say that um don't want to lose any game because of that, but I know a lot of this stuff is focused around quads and everything else, but I thought my guys played extremely hard, man. I'm proud of those guys. Uh Yes. Do we need to clean up some things? Absolutely. Uh But I thought w made 12, maybe one or two more plays that we didn't and obviously took care of home court advantage. So, uh good split and um, you know, maybe we'll get a wake for and she stayed round three in the AC C tournament. Possibly. Questions. Did you or did you just ride with him? Yeah. You know, uh, we've been playing the small lineup, um, but, you know, we wanted to make sure that I was prepared to play bigger. Uh Carr has been playing so well. Uh, he started at our game where he played really good basketball and, uh, I knew we could match up and have a much better matchup, but he's starting to play well and he's our best rebounder. We like very seldom when he plays a lot of minutes. Do we get out rebounded? And he changes the dynamics of our team a little bit. Kevin. When you, when you said AC C tournament elimination game, you mean, like the one that's gonna take place in Washington DC or NCAA tournament? No, I think it's more AC C, it was a, it was a good, it was a good fought battle. Like I said, we knew coming in, this is the second game that we've had and, um, both of them obviously came down to the end and, uh, credit to both teams, both teams took care their home court advantage. Um, you know, we would love to have walked out of here with the suit, but I thought Wake made a couple of plays at the end and we didn't, I thought Carr's basket at the end was a really good basket. Um, he did a good job. We'd worked all week about taking away his left shoulder and we let him get to his left shoulder for a hook early in the game. I thought Ernest Ross did a good job of taking it away and he missed that same shot. Yeah. Have it on that, on that play on the left of the car shot the ball should go or is going to go to Hunter. So when we got 31 at that point, we didn't know. Um, you know, well, obviously, you know, um, you know, car we knew, you know, Carl could have had it, Hunter soas could have had it. You know, we didn't know we just want to be prepared and I thought, I thought we kind of got disconnected from him a little bit. They threw the ball and by the time mo got to him, he made a great hook shot to the paint. Yeah, I, I it's tough and, and I, I complained the entire time because Wake had played the entire half with four fouls and then they gave their fifth and it's hard now to be able to score the basketball with the fouls to give. Um, we gave the ball to DJ burns when I think it was 7979 they did a good job, didn't think he particularly had it like that. And so what we wanted to do is kind of get Mo and uh basically the two guys who I thought played the best game Mo and DJ Horn into some type of ball screen, but obviously they stayed with him. Uh, they could be aggressive because of the, the fact that they had fouls to give if they needed to and they made him take a tough shot. Yeah, I, you know, we had just, you know, if you think about the game at Notre Dame, we win him the game the, the time before and he scored and then he scored again. I thought, um, you know, I, I wanted to go to the hot hand. The hot hand was 31 points, uh, similar to what we were saying, hey, was we gonna go to a hunter. So, but I wanted to go to the hot hand. He'd made every big basket that we made that we took and I knew we would live with it, but I knew it was gonna be tough to get any shot off. Uh, anytime we would get into a scoring range, they were gonna foul because they had fouls to give. They did a good job of trying to be aggressive on Mike to get the, I think it was maybe the fifth foul at that point going for a steal. It sounds like we're talking about the quad one and different things like that. You're not worried about just kind of running out of time to build a Res. No. I don't, I don't, you know, I don't think it's ever, I think we still got because we have, what is it? Seven games left? Ok. I think we still have quad one opportunities and, um, you know, I want you to think about this and that's just, just not for us. So I honestly think Wake's playing well and they deserve to be an NCAA team. Well, we beat them once and it's, uh, you know, a one possession game at the end. So if you look at the numbers and you look at our numbers, maybe they don't say that. Um, but I will remind you, you know, a few years back, we were 32 in the net and we didn't go and teams that were 70 went. And so I still think we have a lot of uh opportunity. I hate getting up here talking about numbers. I know everything is about numbers, but I hate talking about numbers. But at the end of the day, if you're watching that game on TV, and you're saying, man, look at those two teams, you can't tell me that that's not two teams that you could say you could see playing in March, you know, God, he's playing well. Um, this, this four game stretch that he's had has been really, really good. I mean, really, really good. And, um, you know, he's starting to become a guy who we can rely on and, uh, you know, he's playing with a chip on his shoulder and he's playing really aggressive basketball at times. He saved us because there were times when they came down and made some plays and, you know, he just, he just rose up and made a couple of plays himself. We ran a few plays for him. We can get him shots in the corner and I thought he did a good job. We don't like lovers, but here's one for seven days between games. Do you like what you guys did tonight? How you build off of it too much time? Would you prefer to get back if they had a chance? I mean, you know, it's one of those things, if you won the game, you, you want to play. Um, but we got some things that we can now, you know, we're going to take a day or two off and then we got some things that we can work on, uh getting better and, and, and really what it is for us. You know, I think a couple breakdowns defensively late in the game kind of cost us what we got. You know, we gave up a three, we gave up a backdoor cut, we fell asleep on a couple of things. So we clean up those things, each of our games. You look at, you, look at a few of our games other than Virginia at home when we won by a pretty good margin and Syracuse on the road, every game that we played has become a possession game and we gotta, we gotta limit those mistakes. So I thought our guys, I thought our guys did a great job offensively executing, doing some things down the stretch, but I thought we lost them a couple of times, back doors and everything else. All the plays that both teams had coming out of time outs. I mean, there was a lot of prime outs for it. Did you just kind of feel that it was building to where it would be a one possession game because of how evenly matched the two. I, I thought it was gonna be a great game. I knew coming in it was a great game. It was a war at our place and, um, you know, I, I knew when the two teams got, you know, in each other's face early, it was gonna be a fight again and, and that's what it was, that's what it was and it came down to the end. And, um, as I said, you know, we give those guys credit. They made one more play than we did and, and they ended up winning the game. Thank you, Reggie. Do. Ok?