National media pundits, the social media burner accounts and your lame uncle all have a lot to say about NC State men’s basketball head coach Kevin Keatts firing. After all, how could NC State fire its head coach after he guided it to its first ACC Championship since 1987 and its first final four appearance since 1983?
Keatts led a team that made it through some of the toughest in-game situations in the sport — winning five games in five days for the ACC title, taking down March Madness darlings Jack Gohlke and Oakland in overtime and beating a UNC-Chapel Hill team that already beat the Pack twice in the regular season.
Does Keatts not get any credit for all this? For bringing a conference championship back to Raleigh, which had not been seen in any revenue sport since the ‘90s?
Not according to Athletic Director Boo Corrigan.
When NC State entered the ACC Tournament last year, it seemed like Keatts needed to win the whole thing to keep his job. Well, he did just that, securing an automatic contract extension and raise, and seemingly guaranteed job security. All he had to do was tread water to prolong his tenure. Instead, he sank — all the way to the bottom of the ACC with a 12-19 record that included no road wins, along with being one of the three teams that missed the ACC Tournament.
Great coaches get the most out of their players — something that Keatts couldn’t achieve during his tenure, outside of the storied nine-game stretch last year. Throughout the 2023-24 regular season, the pieces were there but never seemed to fit together. Some of the same players that helped take down Duke, UNC and Marquette in high pressure elimination games during last year’s NCAA Tournament, finished with a losing record in ACC play before the miracle run to the Final Four.
That’s a coaching issue.
This season, there was a lack of talent. Another responsibility of the coach. Keatts even admitted so in a press conference after NC State’s loss to Duke on Jan. 27.
“We don’t have a superstar,” Keatts said. “We’ve got a bunch of really good players that obviously need each other to play well, and so we don’t have that closer in every game.”
In previous years, the talent was there but the Pack couldn’t get out of its own way. The standard for Keatts was mediocrity. But this is not why Keatts was fired. Just look at the situation with the football team, where mediocrity has not only been tolerated, but celebrated.
Keatts had to go because he blew his chance to elevate NC State back to a permanently competitive team in the ACC. With increased attention and momentum after becoming ‘America’s team’ and increased financial investment, Keatts could have parlayed his success into something more substantial and less fluke-like.
Instead, everything he gained, besides a huge stack of cash and a ring, was washed away with the team’s performance this season.
NC State’s run embodied everything that is great about college basketball — an underdog with its back against the wall, defeating an arch rival to take home its first conference championship in decades, with a coach that was on his last straw.
A cast full of journeymen and rejects at a basketball program that was sputtering, at best, came together and toppled giants with five-stars and incomparable cash flow.
Corrigan firing Keatts proved that it was all just a fluke. The school had no idea how Keatts got to the Final Four, and no confidence that he could ever find his way back. But that is what made it so special for fans. Nobody saw it coming, making victory that much sweeter.
Keatts gave fans a taste of what NC State basketball could be, even if he couldn’t sustain it. And now the hope is someone else can turn that fleeting, chaotic magic into something real.
