Kevin Keatts has been the NC State head men’s basketball coach for eight years, and I feel like I have a pretty good read on the man: jovial, sure; energetic and relatable, absolutely. But he is also relentlessly stubborn, a man who sets out with a certain strategy during the offseason that is both as aimless as it is shopworn, and who will talk you into its success. He is a good recruiter for a reason.
Kevin’s great strength is his energy—there is no question that this filters down to his team, which plays hard every night, and that’s something that NC State needs. But Kevin is also a terrible stick in the mud of basketball progress, a man from another era, and this makes him the worst conceivable fit you could find for a low budget program like NC State.
(*NCAAT appearance)
Keatts is a player’s coach, and he’s a guy who undeniably favors guards. Does he know what makes a good guard in today’s game? If he does, you’d never know it by his recruiting. That says a lot, doesn’t it? Dr. Guard over here presiding over the Brick Parade in Year Eight.
He also hates playing anyone with two fouls in the first half, like this is a spreadable cancer. There’s nobody who has this particular brand of concession on lockdown like Kevin Keatts, who’ll happily lose a game in the first half because nobody remembers that later.
But with some extra money heading into this year to, y’know, avoid the bricks, he went and bought a bunch of bricks. Threw a bunch of money into a furnace. And that’s really the heart of it, right? Kevin Keatts had the chance to take last year, say “well that was a freebie,” and use that extra money to rebuild and remake his tenure—to recognize that that team was pretty bad, actually, and didn’t work most of the time.
I’d feel angry about what he did instead, but he’s the one who has to be there every day.