Kevin Keatts 'proud' of NC State's season

After falling to Creighton in the first round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, NC State head coach Kevin Keatts was proud of his Wolfpack squad. It was obviously disheartening to lose in the Big Dance but the entire season will go down as the best one of Keatts’ tenure.

NC State finished the season with 23-11 record and 12-8 conference record, both of which are the best marks under Keatts. Jarkel Joiner and Terquavion Smith both earned a spot on the All-ACC second team. The team also returned to the NCAA Tournament since his first season in Raleigh, N.C.

“I am proud,” Keatts said after losing to the Bluejays. “We did some really great things this year. Maybe one of the best turnarounds in college basketball, and it’s because of the people around me and the staff that I put together, and everybody’s hard work and everybody’s commitment to get us to where we needed to be.”

Keatts entered the season on the hot seat following a majorly disappointing 2021-22 season. After winning records in their first four seasons under Keatts, the Wolfpack dropped to 11-21 with a very poor 4-16 record in the ACC.

That was the worst record in the conference that year as the team won only one of its 12 final games of the season.

“We don’t want to go back to that one year,” Keatts said. “I want to look at it as it was a bad year, and I want to continue for the program to rise.”

Keatts now has a 113-79 record at NC State with two NCAA Tournament appearances and two NIT quarterfinal runs.

The turnaround this season has put NC State in a better position than it had been before under the 50-year-old head coach. Keatts acknowledged that he needed to be humbled in order for the team to reach this point where it was able to return to the NCAA Tournament.

“The biggest thing is like, to be quite honest with you, I got humbled,” Keatts said. “When you get humbled, you look at things a completely different way. And I’m glad I got humbled because you learn a lot through going through some adversity, and that was something that I had never done in my life. But I went through adversity, and it made me look at things in a different light. I’m glad I did because we’re where we’re at today because of what we went through.”