NC State basketball holds media day with new faces but same hunger after ACC championship season
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Who can forget NC State basketball's magical postseason run last year - five wins in five days in Washington, DC to win the ACC Tournament - then an improbable run to the Final Four?
Head coach Kevin Keatts said a new Final Four banner will go up at the newly named Lenovo Center. He said they are proud of what they've done but after this weekend they are moving on.
"College basketball is a one-year deal now," Keatts said Thursday as the Wolfpack held its media day at the Dail Basketball Center. "Though we're excited and pumped up about it, we have to turn the page and we've got three or four more days where we're going to celebrate what we did last year, and then we're going to move on."
Five players on the Wolfpack's current roster were part of that lore, but the rest of the players are new, and they're inspired by that success.
"Just seeing how they connected as a group late and both the DJs (DJ Burns Jr. and DJ Horne) they played great," said Dontrez Styles. "Burns, he's a great player, it was crazy just watching him play like that and Horne of course, so it was fun to watch for sure.
Styles took a circuitous route to join the Wolfpack. Keatts recruited him out of high school but he committed to rival North Carolina. After transferring to Georgetown, Styles decided to join the ACC champions in Raleigh.
Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, a transfer center from Louisville, got an up-close look at NC State last year as a member of the Cardinals.
"It was crazy, because ... some of the guys had told them they're going to be at home, just like us," Huntley-Hatfield said of the Wolfpack's ACC Tournament run. "And then every single game, it's like, are they fixing to win?"
Mike James, another transfer from Louisville, added, "They really were playing the best basketball at that time, so I gave all the credit to them. I tell them all the time, that was a great run, I want to do that again, that's what attracted me to come here."
With so many new faces, Keatts again faces the task of building chemistry, something that took essentially the entire regular season last year.
"I've got so many new pieces," Keatts said. "But I do say the five guys that are back have been great leaders for us.
