I’m not here to look a gift horse in the mouth and I will certainly take last year for what it was—a really fun couple of weeks that extended Kevin Keatts’ coaching tenure by at least one year, and probably two.
Keatts had that ACC tourney moment and that NCAA run to help turn around both his image and his legacy at NC State but has managed to do neither, either out of disinterest or stubbornness. He bought himself time with that run that he had nothing to do with, and he knows that much, but what’s disappointing is how he’s squandering it.
Keatts is not a forward thinker, but neither was the person who hired him, so you can see the initial problem.
This team ranks at a glacial 271st in pace, and nobody on it can shoot. This is not a 21st-century basketball team. All of Keatts’ nonstop and stubborn problems come to roost here—not just the lack of shooting, but the passing interest in the press, the lip service about rebounding, which is kind of essential for a team theoretically committed to the press, and the inevitable whoops-you-caught-me disposition of any full-court-press grifter.
We knew about these holdups, but this team was at least supposed to be bearable. The next time we’re doing the coach planning thing, I would like for someone to pick a guy who likes three-pointers. That’s all. That’s my only requirement. Let’s stop living in 1977.