Keatts: 'I Didn’t Think We Played Particularly Smart'
CHAPEL HILL -- Death, taxes, the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
About the only thing more predictable than those three certainties is a Roy Williams -coached North Carolina basketball team finding a way to beat NC State. Even with a team that had lost seven in a row since taking down the Wolfpack the first time the rivals met a month ago.
It happened again on Tuesday at Smith Center.
This time it was 85-79 in a game that was nearly a carbon copy of that earlier game at PNC Arena.
UNC has now won five straight in the series and 31 out of 35 games since Williams became the Tar Heels' coach in 2003. This one was especially damaging, because it likely shoved the Wolfpack back onto the wrong side of the NCAA tournament bubble with only three regular season games remaining.
Here's what State coach Kevin Keatts had to say about it in his postgame press conference:
"I told my guys after the game that we played extremely hard tonight. The unfortunate thing was we came up on the short end of the stick. Give Carolina credit. I thought they finished the game much better than we did. They’ve been in a couple of games, to be exact, four out of their last six, which could have gone either way. They lost by two points, and then the other game was a five- or six-point game.
"I thought we did a lot of good things. I didn’t think we played particularly smart. We turned the ball over at key spots in the game that I didn’t like. For example, I thought at halftime we should have gotten the last shot. We had two turnovers under 30 seconds, which certainly didn't help us because all of the momentum was with Carolina when they went into the half. There was one possession that I thought defined the game -- a free-throw blockout and then they got four rebounds in a row that certainly I wasn’t happy with that. I’m proud of the way my guys competed.
"I’m proud of the way they fought. We’ve got to do a better job of playing a lot smarter. For the second or third time in a row, I’ve had key players on the bench with fouls in the first half and it kind of changes us because we don’t have a lot of depth. We’ve got to do a better job of not fouling, obviously learn from this and move on."
For the second time in as many games against the Tar Heels, State had no answers for UNC big man Garrison Brooks. The 6-foot-9 junior has compiled 55 points and 20 rebounds against the Wolfpack this season, including 30 and nine on Tuesday. Surprisingly, Keatts said he thought his team did a better job of defending him this time:
"I know you’re going to look at the score and say he had 30 and nine. I thought our guys did a better job, considering 14 of his points came from the free throw line. I thought we did a really good job on (fellow big Armando) Bacot, preventing his offensive rebounding. But don’t take away from (Brooks') performance. He was good and certainly was much better than I anticipated after sitting out the Louisville game after being sick.
"I thought he played well. I thought we did a better job with him. Obviously the score won’t reflect that, but a lot of those were from the free throw line. I think we gave him six or eight free throws at the end and to give him credit, he made them
Keatts was asked about that one defining possession he mentioned earlier and how frustating it was to him, since on Monday, he had specifically pointed out a similar play in the first UNC game as something his team had to prevent in the rematch:
"It’s very disappointing because I’ve said this all along, my guys competed. I mean, we played. But we didn’t do all the right stuff at the right time and that’s deflating a little bit because of the fact that we knew coming in how good of a rebounding team they are. They did a good job. They beat us on the glass again. That one possession was very frustrating to me."
Another player that hurt State again was grad transfer Christian Keeling, a player Keatts tried to recruit last offseason:
"Yeah, he’s a great player. He was a really good scorer in the Big South (at Charleston Southern). He gave them a tremendous lift. He was 7 for 9. He got to his pullup. He made more threes than he normally does, he was 2 for 4 from three."
The Wolfpack jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first four minutes of the game. It was similar to the 7-0 start it had in the first meeting with UNC and the 10-0 start it had at Virginia Tech. In all of those games, State eventually lost its momentum and the game. Keatts was asked if he had an answer for what that keeps happening:
"I wish I knew that. We got off to a great start. Maybe I should get down 10-0 and see if we can figure it out. I don't know. We played well early. Obviously the other team, they're at home and they’re going to make runs. I’m a coach that always feels like early leads never hold up, anyway. Basketball is a game of runs. We started off hot. We made shots. At times, the way we started the game, the way we shot the ball early, I think affected us towards the end of the first half because we settled for those shots we made early instead of driving the basketball."
Keatts was asked about a play in which Devon Daniels let up, thinking he'd heard a whistle, allowing Cole Anthony to get an uncontested dunk. An annoucement was made after that play warning the crowd now to use a whistle:
Devon Daniels thought he heard a whistle, and he stopped. They got a break. Obviously we can’t get it back.
Keatts was then asked if it was frustrating to not "take care of business against teams that State fans expect their team to beat at this point in the program." Keatts was clearly not happy about either the wording of the question or the premise behind it:
"To your question, not frustrating at all when it’s phrased that way. Listen, this is still North Carolina. They still have McDonald’s All-Americans. They’re still a great program. They’re not dead. They won on their home court and our guys played well and we've got a lot of basketball left in us.
"I play for the guys that's in that locker room. Those are the guys who compete. I play for NC State. If anybody doesn’t like it, that’s their problem. We'll figure that out. We compete for us. Unfortunately we lost the game tonight. It’s not going to define us. We’ve got plenty of basketball to go. I like where my team is right now. We’ll bounce back, we'll move on. But in that situation, with your question, I don’t know how to answer that any other way than that we have a team that’s fighting and we lost the game. That's it."
Keatts addressed his use of Pat Andree, who saw only four minutes of action in his first playing time in four games because of an injured ankle:
"I went into the game not knowing if I was going to play him a lot. Because of foul trouble, we played Jericole Hellems a lot, and I needed a guy to get in. I probably wouldn’t have played him if we hadn’t gotten in foul trouble, but I needed him. I thought he came in for his four minutes and did a good job for us."
Finally, Keatts was asked if he told the team to concentrate on driving the ball to the basket more in the second half after taking too many perimeter jumpers in the first:
"We decided to drive. When we got in there, I think our guys got a little discouraged. We drove in the first half, and we got bumped a couple times. I told them that they can’t rely on their outside shot. We started to drive the basketball and we got to the free throw line a little bit in the second half."
