Advertisement
football Edit

Kevin Keatts reflects on past week, previews Florida State game

After a hot start in conference play in late December, NC State dropped to 2-2 in the ACC following two losses in the past week in which the Pack led late in the second half.

The road only gets tougher in the month of January for the Wolfpack, which is entering the most-challenging stretch of its schedule in the next three weeks.

NC State’s next two games will be against teams that will not have played for at least two weeks leading up to their meetings with the Wolfpack.

Florida State, which the Pack is scheduled to play in Tallahassee on Wednesday night, has not played since Dec. 29 in a 77-67 loss at Clemson.

NC State’s next scheduled opponent after the Seminoles is Georgia Tech, which is one of two ACC programs currently on a COVID-related pause. The Yellow Jackets last played Wake Forest on Jan. 3 in a 70-54 win over the Demon Deacons.

Wolfpack head coach Kevin Keatts admitted Monday in the ACC’s league-wide head coaches Zoom availability that the uncertainty of each game does impact how the team prepares for each contest.

“We have to, a lot of times, try to work on ourselves and sprinkle in enough stuff to talk about each team,” Keatts said. “I could get a call today from our doctors, from Florida State, or even Georgia Tech to say the game's not on, so you got to have a good balance of trying to make sure that you clean up the things you need to clean up and then, obviously, be prepared to play against that team you're supposed to face on Wednesday.”

NC State Wolfpack basketball Kevin Keatts
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts' squad dropped to 2-2 in ACC play after the losses last week in which his team forfeited late second-half leads. (Ethan Hyman, The News & Observer)
Advertisement

Preparing for opponents isn’t the most challenging aspect of playing a season amidst a pandemic according to the head coach, however. Due to the enhanced medical protocol this season, having a full roster in practice, even if there are no COVID-related issues, has been tougher.

“The toughest things that I've had to deal with as a coach is dealing with situations where you guys may not realize that we don't have several guys practicing ourselves,” Keatts said. “Even though you might not have COVID, we've got this thing set up pretty much if any of our guys have some type of symptom, we will hold them out of practice just to make sure we take care of everybody else.

“For example, Braxton Beverly did not practice one day heading into the Miami game because he had an injury. Then Thomas Allen, who had some symptoms but turned out to be negative, got 45 minutes of practice in two days because we were waiting for his results. What we don't take into consideration, even though it's COVID, we don't think about the natural things that would happen if it wasn't COVID. Sometimes there's flu, sometimes there's an illness, sometimes there's other stuff.

“COVID has changed the way we even enter practice, so just because our team may not report that we have a positive in COVID doesn't necessarily always equal that you have everybody in practice.”

To this point, NC State has only had one conference game impacted by COVID-19. The Pack’s scheduled conference opener at Louisville that was set to take place on Dec. 16 was postponed due to COVID-related complications inside the Cardinals program.

Keatts confirmed Monday that administrators from both schools have had a continued dialogue with the league office in an effort to find replacement dates for that game, as well as several others from around the ACC that have been impacted.

“I know a lot of people will say, ‘I know we're saying postponed but are those games going to be canceled,’” Keatts said. “That's not the way any coach or the ACC looks at it. We all are trying to find a good time if those games can be made up. We all want to make them up, we all want to play the games.”

Regarding the past two games in which the Pack forfeited late second-half leads to lose both in a stretch of five days, Keatts pointed to offensive turnovers as one prominent issue that must be addressed as his team continues conference play.

A team that prides itself in consistently winning the turnover margin by forcing several takeaways on the defensive end, the Wolfpack has now turned the ball over more than its opponent in the past three contests.

Last Monday, NC State led the country with an average turnover margin of +9.1. One week later, the Pack has dropped to No. 11 nationally with an average turnover margin of +5.8.

The issue has been evenly-spread throughout the rotation too. In the 64-59 loss to Miami Saturday, eight of the Wolfpack’s nine players that played more than one minute committed at least one turnover.

Keatts understands that some turnover problems are to be expected with three freshmen in the backcourt rotation with true freshmen Cam Hayes and Shakeel Moore playing starter-quality minutes along with redshirt freshman Dereon Seabron regularly contributing off of the bench.

To fix the situation, the head coach needs his veteran guards to take better care of the basketball, which was addressed Monday morning when Keatts individually met with most of the roster.

“It's something I normally would do anyway, but one of the things that we talked about is what we need from you and how I feel like you're playing at this moment,” Keatts said. “Giving them an opportunity to see what they thought their play looked like. A lot of times, guys see something different than you do, and we typically come together with an understanding of what we do moving forward.”

While Florida State will not have played a game in 15 days when the Wolfpack goes down to Tallahassee Wednesday, Keatts doesn’t believe the Seminoles will be impacted by the break as much as his team was when it returned from a two-week hiatus of its own in mid-December.

The head coach pointed to how much each team was able to practice during their respective breaks as the main reason why he doesn’t anticipate a lethargic Florida State team this week.

“With their situation, and I'm still finding out about their stoppage and what happened, I don't think they missed much practice time,” Keatts said on his weekly radio show recording Monday morning. “A lot of times, when we were going through it, we missed a bunch of practice time, and then we got a chance to get our team together. From what I understand, they're had most of their guys, if not all of those guys practicing. Even though they haven't played a game, they got enough pieces where they can compete against each other every day and simulate a game situation.”

Although this isn’t the same Seminoles team that won the ACC regular season last year with then-senior guard Trent Forest and freshman forward Patrick Williams, who was the No. 4 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, coming off of the bench, Florida State still has a roster that lives up to the reputation head coach Leonard Hamilton has built in recent years.

The Seminoles still feature a weathered veteran leader in the backcourt in senior guard M.J. Walker, who leads the team in scoring with 15.3 points per game.

They also have the preseason ACC Freshman of the Year and first-team All-ACC selection, freshman guard Scottie Barnes. Barnes is the second-leading scorer on the Seminoles averaging 11.1 points per game and presents a matchup issue to any team with his length in the backcourt.

“I know this is a strong comparison, but he's one of those guys in college that reminds you of a Magic Johnson-type guy,” Keatts said. “He's 6-9, and he's passing the ball, he's a freshman. He's averaging 11 points a game. He can switch off screens. He can check everybody on the floor. He can get into the pain. Doesn't shoot it great, but doesn't have to because he's good in every other aspect.”

——

• Talk about it inside The State of Basketball

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolfpacker

• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolfpacker

• Like us on Facebook

Advertisement