All NC State basketball has left is the future. There’s nothing left to lose. It’s all lost
It’s all but over now for N.C. State. After so many years perched precariously on the NCAA tournament bubble, the Wolfpack slid almost all the way off the ACC tournament bubble Wednesday night.
After that blowout loss to North Carolina in Chapel Hill, one flattered by the 97-73 final score, it’s hard to see N.C. State getting the three wins it would need — at the minimum — to qualify for the ACC tournament over its final five games. Not impossible, but just a hair short of impossible.
You can thank Randy Woodson for that. If the N.C. State chancellor hadn’t flipped his deciding vote on expansion, bloating the ACC to 18 teams while the basketball tournament remained at 15, the Wolfpack would still be gearing up for another miracle Tuesday-to-Saturday run in Charlotte instead of contemplating one of the most precipitous falls in college basketball history: From Final Four to out of the postseason entirely.
Nobody does self-inflicted wounds like N.C. State.
.JPG "RAL_021925-NCSU-UNC-KLM-14 (1).JPG")
The autopsy has been ongoing for months now — Kevin Keatts’ failure to land a volume scorer to replace D.J. Horne, a transfer-portal whiff on Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, Mike James’ season-long injury, the persistent and inexcusable final-possession chaos — but after that thumping at the hands of the flawed-in-their-own-way Tar Heels, it will take precedence over the actual basketball that remains.
The worst next-year performance by a Final Four team, as measured by Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency ratings over the past 30 seasons, is Loyola-Chicago in 2019. The Ramblers fell to 131st. N.C. State, on Thursday morning, was 116th after falling 19 spots in 18 days. Another March approaches with history within reach!
The Wolfpack’s descent from pinnacle of the college basketball world to basement-adjacent in the worst ACC in recorded human history recalls the travails of its cohabitant at the Lenovo Center a generation ago. The Carolina Hurricanes went on an unlikely, underdog run to the Stanley Cup finals in 2002 and even won the first game in Detroit. If that triple-overtime Game 3 had gone the other way… But it didn’t, and nothing went right for the Hurricanes after that, for an entire year.
Beset by injuries and betrayed by players who would never again approach their level of playoff performance (Jaroslav Svoboda, Bates Battaglia, etc.), the Hurricanes plummeted all the way to 30th of 30 in the NHL. By February, Erik Cole and Rod Brind’Amour were done for the year and playoff hero Arturs Irbe had cleared waivers, was sent to the minors and was playing goal in Lowell, Mass. — arguably a worse fate than dead last in the NHL standings. They even lost the draft lottery (but still ended up with Eric Staal).
That run in the 2002 playoffs may have saved a franchise that was struggling to put down roots in the Triangle, galvanizing a fan base into existence. Then the Hurricanes turned around and squandered all of that hard-won momentum.
There are a lot of parallels to N.C. State there, with the release that came from finally winning an ACC title (for the first time since 1987) and finally getting back to the Final Four (for the first time since 1983). Wolfpack fans had suffered for decades, and Hurricanes fans had suffered for days, but they rode the same roller-coaster, seeing the view from atop only to crash to the bottom.
Three years later, after a major labor disruption, a few of those Hurricanes players were part of the team that won the Stanley Cup in 2006. The timeframe is accelerated with the shorter careers of college players, and the impending ramifications of the House settlement will certainly be a major labor disruption in college sports, so perhaps next year’s Wolfpack emulates its Hurricanes brethren in 2006 and takes the great leap forward its predecessors could not.
In today’s era of college basketball, it’s not unrealistic. Look at Louisville, which went from embarrassment to at-large worthy practically overnight. (To echo the furious emails to athletic directors from frustrated boosters at 10 different ACC schools.) Admittedly, it’s a tough sell. But it’s better than living in this reality.
In service of that, as the Wolfpack’s viable paths to Charlotte dwindle to nothing, it’s long past time to shift focus to next year. Assuming N.C. State can retain raw-but-talented freshmen Trey Parker and Paul McNeil, there’s no reason why Keatts shouldn’t be playing them at least 30 minutes a night. They’ve had some obvious and not unexpected growing pains, but let them learn the hard way now, when it doesn’t matter, instead of next season, when it might.
Arguably, both should have been playing a lot more during the nine-game losing streak than they were, but N.C. State has nothing to lose now. It’s all lost. The future is all Keatts and N.C. State have left.
Never miss a Luke DeCock column. Sign up at www.newsobserver.com/newsletters to have them delivered directly to your email inbox as soon as they post.
Luke DeCock’s Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 12:25 PM with the headline "All NC State basketball has left is the future. There’s nothing left to lose. It’s all lost."
