Here’s NC State basketball’s key to making third straight NCAA Tourney under Kevin Keatts

Posted by Admin October 2, 2024 Basketball

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RALEIGH — During N.C. State basketball’s preseason media day in September, there was a whiteboard on a sideline of the practice court inside the Dail Basketball Center.

The board featured a grid with writing in six blocks, three to chart wins and three to chart losses for the Wolfpack. Two of those squares centered around defense:

Win: Deflection, block, steal, charge
Loss: Blow by, missed blockout, poor talk

Earlier that Thursday morning, eighth-year coach Kevin Keatts split the 2024-25 team into two groups and put them through a defensive workout for an hour.

“I won’t say which team, because one team just got their butt kicked this morning, and it was defensively. We pressed the entire hour,” Keatts said.

Jayden Taylor and Ben Middlebrooks, two veteran returners and two of the Wolfpack’s best defenders, love those days.

“On defensive days, we get after it,” Taylor said. “The press, it’s first to three stops. You gotta run if you don’t (win). It gets rough. It gets competitive.”

Middlebrooks agreed: “A tough one. We pride ourselves on being a defensive team. We move, we get after it.”

The non-stop, break-neck pace ended with one team securing a 3-1 series win.

“A lot of guys were on the ground after that one, standing in the locker room like, ‘What did we just do?’” Middlebrooks said.

On this particular morning, Middlebrooks and Taylor were the ones getting in some extra conditioning after ending up on the wrong side of the scoreboard.

“It just shows you, you’re not gonna come in here and think it’s gonna be an easy day for you,” Taylor said.

“You gotta come in mentally locked in every day. We have good players on this team. Everybody can play, so any given day, anybody can have a day.”

NC State basketball’s Kevin Keatts highlights importance of ‘defensive chemistry’ for Wolfpack

Breaking down his current squad, which includes eight newcomers around key returners Michael O’Connell, Jayden Taylor and Ben Middlebrooks, Kevin Keatts sees a group that’s ahead of the curve in one area.

“You can just see guys understanding where to be on the court. It’s weird, because we talk about so much of offensive chemistry to win games,” Keatts said.

“I think one of our biggest strengths, at the end of the year (last season), our defensive chemistry was so good. That’s what we’re starting to develop a little bit earlier with this group. This group is a little further along defensively than the other group.”

NC State basketball’s full schedule for 2024-25 season

Relying on its defensive prowess, that “other group” reeled off nine elimination victories in a row to win the ACC Tournament and advance to the Final Four.

N.C. State’s average defensive efficiency was 110th across the first six years under Keatts, according to KenPom.com, before the Wolfpack finished 38th last season to set a new mark.

According to Bart Torvik’s analytics, N.C. State was in the green zone of adjusted defensive efficiency in five of its first 31 games last season. The Wolfpack had six such efforts in its final 10 games of the season, with three of its best defensive performances coming in its final three games of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

With DJ Horne and Casey Morsell no longer roaming the perimeter, and a DJ Burns-sized hole to fill in the middle, the Wolfpack will have a different look this season. But, perhaps, Keatts’ latest group will be able to play faster and create more turnovers.

Prior to winning 26 games last season, the Wolfpack’s most wins under Keatts was 24 victories in the 2018-19 season.

A weak nonconference schedule likely led to N.C. State being on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble that year, but the Wolfpack was a Keatts-era best 28th in turnover rate (21.6%). N.C. State has been top 50 at creating turnovers once in the last five seasons.

With improved lineup versatility and what Keatts believes can be a “faster” team, N.C. State appears positioned to create more opportunities with its pressure this season.

“This is a great bunch,” Keatts said. “For the first time in my career here, we’ve got a bunch of self-starters. … Those guys live in the gym.”

If the Wolfpack can maintain the defensive magic it found down the stretch in March, N.C. State should be well positioned for a third straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since securing four bids in a row from 2012-15 under Mark Gottfried.

Staff writer Rodd Baxley can be reached at rbaxley@fayobserver.com or @RoddBaxley on X/Twitter.