Kevin Keatts’ struggles wasted some Final Four momentum. His firing wiped out the rest
There was certainly no shortage of reasons for N.C. State to move on from Kevin Keatts, even less than a year from the beginning of that historic run to a long-awaited ACC title and even longer-awaited Final Four.
Saturday’s loss at miserable Miami, featuring yet another final-minutes collapse, was a fireable offense all by itself.
But there’s also a lack of vision to Sunday’s firing that may inflict long-term damage to N.C. State basketball and send it back to the dark ages where it was mired for so long.
This season, with a poorly built roster and all the empty seats at the Lenovo Center and the epic late-game struggles, certainly did a lot to squander the momentum of last March and April. But whatever momentum was left — and there still was a huge swath of potential transfers and recruits who remember watching the Wolfpack on CBS last spring — went out the window as well Sunday.
After decades of anticipation, N.C. State managed to squash the good feelings in less than a year. First, the Wolfpack did it on the court, and that’s on Keatts, to be sure. Then athletic director Boo Corrigan ensured Keatts wouldn’t be given a chance to pick up the pieces and sent Wolfpack basketball back to zero, at an extraordinary financial cost. One error compounds the other.
Someone dug through the couch cushions to find the $6.75 million to pay Keatts’ buyout, but with N.C. State strapped for cash — there are persistent rumors the Wolfpack won’t be able to pay the full $20 million of revenue-sharing under the House settlement next year — this probably means Dave Doeren is now football coach for life. N.C. State would have been better off saving this money to extricate itself from Doeren’s contract after this season if need be.
Certainly, Keatts made errors. His job was already hanging by the thinnest thread last year in Washington when N.C. State was trailing Louisville on the Tuesday of the ACC tournament. If you judge what happened over the next nine games as an aberration and not a breakthrough, this decision becomes not only understandable but inevitable.
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This year’s struggles were probably as much about personnel than coaching, the offseason failure to land a veteran guard who actually wanted the ball in his hands. Turns out D.J. Burns wasn’t irreplaceable; D.J. Horne was. That contributed to so many end-of-game situations that turned potential wins into guaranteed losses. Miami, a team so bad its coach retired at Christmas, finished Saturday’s game on a 10-0 run to win by two.
Freshmen Paul McNeil and Trey Parker certainly showed potential by the end of the season — not that they’re certain to achieve that potential at N.C. State now — but the Wolfpack didn’t get what it needed in the transfer portal and that proved fatal.
Only two other coaches in the modern era have been fired this quickly after a Final Four appearance, Jim Harrick and Dana Kirk, and both were mired in significant NCAA problems. The closest analogue to Keatts is John Brady, who was fired less than two years after taking LSU to the Final Four. This is, in a word, unprecedented.
Then again, so is going from winning the ACC tournament to missing it entirely. By Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency ratings, the worst season by anyone the year after a Final Four appearance was Loyola Chicago in 2019. The Ramblers finished 131st. Butler, in 2012, was 116th. Both were mid-majors who made unexpected runs. N.C. State is currently 124th. Even Miami was better than this in 2024, 94th as the worst among power-conference teams.
But Keatts also had a track record of rebuilding quickly through the portal — the famous 2024 team started five transfers, three who arrived that season — and could still leverage last year’s Final Four after this year’s disaster, so there was certainly legitimate grounds to give him one more shot, just as his overall record at N.C. State argued against.
Here’s another: Who’s really going to want this job now? A new chancellor incoming, questions about funding when the schools down the road are pouring tens of millions into their marquee programs. Even if Corrigan hits a home run with the hire, the new coach may end up underfunded and set up for two years of struggle, just in time for a new chancellor to bring in a new AD who wants a new coach. Good luck with that.
The right fit under those circumstances is probably not a young up-and-comer but an older coach with nothing to lose, willing to give it one more shot. How badly does Mike Brey want to scratch the itch? Is N.C. State willing to make Will Wade a strong-ass offer?
There’s plenty of blame to go around, but N.C. State took a once-in-a-lifetime March miracle and made sure it got nothing out of it. Some of that’s on Keatts. Some of that’s on Corrigan. The damage will outlast both of them.
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This story was originally published March 9, 2025 at 11:25 AM with the headline "Kevin Keatts’ struggles wasted some Final Four momentum. His firing wiped out the rest."
