Kevin Keatts continues self-reflection, wants to become better coach at NC State

If you attended NC State as a freshman during the 2018-19 school year and graduated in 2022, then you never saw your school participate in an NCAA Tournament game. Thankfully, Kevin Keatts righted the ship in 2023 and returned NC State to the Big Dance for the first time in five years. Even still, the Wolfpack barely snuck in as an 11-seed and battled on the bubble for much of the year.

In all, ’23 is considered a success, especially compared to recent seasons. But for Coach Keatts, his self-evaluation process hasn’t changed despite having a drastically better season this year as compared to last. At his summer press conference recently, Keatts explained that process.

“Yeah but, you know, that doesn’t change my self-reflection. I do the same thing every year and kind of get away and see how I can improve as a coach and also how we can improve the program. And so I’ve done some of that and we’ll continue to do that.”

Keatts continued, saying that he likes where the program is headed.

“We are on track, I like I like our group. You know, we stubbed our toe for whatever reason it may be. We can look at bad luck, we can look at injuries, we can call it just lost games. whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, I think I got a good job of getting things back the direction that we wanted to be.”

As an ACC school, a 23-12 record and 12-8 mark in conference play are very solid figures, per Keatts: “We don’t take for granted winning — 23 games is really good — going 12-8 in any league is really good and we want more of that.”

Keatts was then asked about the long-term trajectory of the program and how he sees the team growing from year to year. His answer:

“Well I just I want us to continue to evolve as a program, where we’re consistent every year. Now the challenges of that is tougher, you know, when we were returning seven or eight guys and you could bring in classes of four or five freshmen. And freshmen have become sophomores and sophomores become juniors.

“I think that would help but we got to find our niche in an era of transfers to be able to stay consistent. And that’s one of the hardest things that all coaches will have to do now, is trying to figure out how to build a successful program and culture.”

The Wolfpack certainly tapped the transfer portal this summer to reload their roster after losing most of their backcourt. Kevin Keatts will have a busy offseason trying to coach the new guys into the culture that’s already been established.