How Breon Pass became a rarity in college basketball’s current landscape as a four-year player

By Noah Fleischman

As NC State hit the court for a preseason practice at the formerly known PNC Arena ahead of the 2021-22 campaign, a wide-eyed freshman Breon Pass stared into the rafters. He looked past the 19,500 empty red seats and gazed at the accomplishments of the past. 

He saw the 1974 national championship that was powered by David Thompson, placed next to the 1983 one led by legendary coach Jim Valvano. The 1987 ACC Tournament championship banner, the most recent addition to the group, wasn’t far away either. 

It didn’t take Pass long to set a goal for himself and the program. 

“I’m going to help hang two banners up there,” Pass pointed to the ceiling as he told James Johnson, who was in his final of five seasons as an assistant on the Wolfpack’s staff, at the time. 

Sure, that’s what every freshman wants to say. That doesn’t always mean they’ll be able to follow through — or if they’ll even be on the roster long enough to have a legitimate chance to do so. But here Pass was, looking at the banners that had hung for years without another championship for more than three decades.

The 6-foot, 175-pound guard, however, was determined to help be a reason why the Pack had to make room for more banners more than 100 feet above the hardwood playing surface sitting on top of a pristine ice rink. The building’s other tenants, the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, put the last championship in the rafters after winning the 2005-06 Stanley Cup. 

It was time for a new banner or two, Pass believed. And, well, he was able to accomplish a rare feat in college basketball. For one, he helped hang a pair of $795 banners as a part of NC State’s ACC Tournament championship team that appeared in the Final Four during the 2023-24 campaign. He also will have spent his entire collegiate career with the Wolfpack, despite having a limited role for a majority of his time in Raleigh, sticking with a program that many in his position ran from. 

Pass, who is set to be celebrated as a part of the Pack’s Senior Night festivities on Wednesday, is just the second Kevin Keatts high school recruit to have spent his entire eligibility at NC State. Only Jericole Hellems, who played for the Wolfpack from 2018-22, can say that as well.

“For me to be here for four years, I love NC State,” Pass said recently, still wearing his Wolfpack practice uniform sitting inside the team’s film room on the bottom floor of the Dail Basketball Center. “I’m very loyal to NC State — no matter what I went through during my time here.”

Early signs of a resolute player

There are some traits that can give a college coaching staff a good idea of whether a player is going to stick with a program. How many travel teams have they played for? What about the number of high schools they attended? 

The exercise is simple. Is this player going to run from competition or embrace it? It didn’t take long for Johnson to figure that out with Pass. 

Johnson, Pass’ lead recruiter coming out of Reidsville High, already had a good understanding of what the Wolfpack would get from the four-star recruit because of his relationship with his father, Curtis Pass. The college basketball coaching veteran was on staff at Old Dominion for four seasons, where he overlapped with Curtis as one of his players during the 1997-98 campaign. 

So, when it came time to recruit the younger Pass, Johnson’s rapport with Curtis didn’t hurt. But he still had to make sure Pass was the right fit. And this was at the same time as major college football programs were in pursuit of the dual-sport athlete. 

The Wolfpack assistant, however, wasn’t worried about the bids from South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas A&M to make Pass a collegiate wide receiver. Instead, Pass consistently told him he was a “basketball guy” and that ended any anxiety about the nation’s No. 126 basketball recruit opting to play football, where he was a three-star prospect. 

Pass’ athleticism as a combo guard that had the chance of becoming a point guard in the ACC spoke to Johnson, but so did that firm commitment to playing basketball and wanting to become great at it. The prospect’s demeanor didn’t lead the Pack’s coaching staff to think that he’d ever walk into the offices and demand more playing time or the ball more. 

“That was one of the reasons why we recruited him — because of the type of kid he is,” Johnson said in a phone interview with TheWolfpacker.com. “He’s a tough kid. He always stayed at one high school, always stayed at one AAU team. When you see guys like that, you just feel like they’re going to be able to stick it out. … We felt like he would be a guy that we could count on.”

Embracing a role

Even though Pass didn’t have a consistent role on game day through his first three years at NC State, he embraced another way to impact winning: becoming a thorn in the side of the Pack’s starting guards on the practice court. It’s one that not many would actually see, but Pass didn’t seem to care. 

Whether it was Terquavion Smith, who he arrived in the same recruiting class with, Jarkel Joiner or DJ Horne, Pass was there to push them — and himself in the process. 

“I’m always keeping them motivated,” Pass said. “Even in practice, I’m going at them to get them prepared for the games.”

It’s not a role that many in a program would fill for three years as their minutes went from 8.8 a game as a freshman to 5.4 as a junior, but Pass did it without complaining. Through his first three years with the Wolfpack, he scored a total of 140 points. 

As NC State raced to the Final Four last season, Pass played sparingly in the postseason, but when he was needed, he delivered. The guard knocked down a pair of big-time three-pointers in the ACC Tournament opening win over Louisville before he logged 4 points, a rebound and a steal in the Final Four as graduate point guard Michael O’Connell battled a hamstring injury. 

The ability was there, but consistent minutes on the court appeared to be nearly impossible to get.

Many around Pass asked if he wanted to enter the transfer portal to look for a new program. Those around him did just that. Forward Ernest Ross, the third member of the 2021 recruiting class, left for UTSA and eventually landed at Grambling, while guard LJ Thomas departed before last season ended and played for Austin Peay this year. The thought of doing the same entered Pass’ thinking momentarily, but was quickly erased. 

That wasn’t what he was raised to do. His father, Curtis, who passed away just days after he committed to NC State, believed in one phrase: “Trust the process.” It’s inked on Pass’ left forearm as a reminder. That kept him in Raleigh. 

“I believe that God really wanted me here, no matter what it looked like on the outside,” Pass said. “On the inside, this is where I feel like I needed to be. It’s where He led me to be. Most people told me that I deserved to transfer, but it all came down to what I wanted to do. This is where I wanted to be.”

Sticking it out might have been what was best for Pass. Not only is he just over an hour away from his hometown, he’s been able to carve out a role on the floor this season. Pass is one of the Wolfpack’s top backcourt reserves, averaging a career-best 4.2 points with 1.1 assists in 13.4 minutes a game. He has scored in double figures three times, including a career-high 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting in NC State’s season-opening win over USC Upstate — just moments after the Pack lifted the two banners Pass promised during his freshman season. 

Through the highs and lows at NC State, Pass has been able to emerge as a key role player. He leads the team in three-point shooting (39.2 percent) and free throw percentage (85) in his final season of college basketball. 

Pass was not only motivated to earn his degree from NC State, but he was also focused on proving to those back in Reidsville that it is possible to overcome challenges to earn what he wanted. 

“I just want to show the example of you can stay four years at college and still be something in life,” Pass said. “Not running from your problems. Just going through what you’re going through. The sun is going to shine one day.” 

For NC State coach Kevin Keatts, Pass’ career-arc is “impressive” in today’s age of unlimited transfers in college basketball.

“He worked hard every day and had a positive attitude,” Keatts said. “It just means a lot. You won’t be able to do that often. You may get one guy every two or three years that it will happen, but it’s probably not going to happen very often.”

Keatts wasn’t alone in admiring Pass’ commitment to the Wolfpack program. Senior guard Jayden Taylor, a former Butler transfer, praised his teammate’s dedication.

“You don’t see that too often,” Taylor said. “That just shows the loyalty and the kind of person he is. Breon’s done a lot for this program, a lot that people don’t see.”

While NC State’s season hasn’t gone according to plan — the Pack is fighting for a spot in the ACC Tournament — Pass has found a way to appreciate every chance he has to play basketball. He knows what it’s like to ride the bench on a nightly basis, so being able to check in for just over a dozen minutes a night has been a dream come true. 

“I feel like everything I’ve been through my last few years paid off this year,” Pass said. “Even though the season’s not going how I wanted it to go, I’m still enjoying it. I’m still trying to find those little moments to be happy in it, just making the best of it because you don’t get this back.”

How rare is Pass?

Coaches around the ACC have become used to researching mostly new rosters from year to year when scouting opponents for the first time each season. Some players are the same, some are different — and a few played for other conference teams in the past. But the revolving door of the transfer portal has led to a dying breed: four-year players like Pass. 

How uncommon is it? There are fewer than four (or five)-year players in the league this season than fingers on their hands. The ACC features just eight total scholarship seniors or graduate students that have spent their entire careers at the university they started at. 

Only Clemson’s Chase Hunter and Ian Schieffelin, North Carolina’s RJ Davis, Notre Dame’s J.R. Konieczny, Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud, Virginia’s Taine Murray, Wake Forest’s Cameron Hildreth and Pass qualify for that elusive group. One that appears to be withering away.

Welcome to college sports in 2025. 

The ever-rotating pool of players has taken a toll on college coaches, who have to constantly recruit their own roster on a yearly basis. 

“It tells you it’s kind of like, ‘What have you done for me lately?’” Keatts said. “It’s sad, but coming to a school and graduating from that exact school doesn’t mean as much as it used to — especially if you feel like your basketball opportunity is not where it needs to be.”

The transfer portal, which allows teams to quickly flip their roster with experience, has led to coaching staffs not having as deep of relationships with their players, Clemson coach Brad Brownell believes. It’s why he entered the coaching profession, but consistent turnover hasn’t allowed him to be able to impact some players as much as he would have been able to if they spent their entire careers in his program, like Hunter and Schieffelin have. 

“I’ve got unbelievable relationships with both Ian and Chase, partly because it just takes time to build really meaningful relationships with people,” Brownell said. “You need to go through some good and bad. We certainly have all done that together. That’s one of the joys in coaching: to watch a young guy develop as a player and person and just see them grow. That’s something that I think all of us are going to miss a little bit.”

While Clemson is the only roster in the ACC with multiple players in their final year of eligibility who were recruited as high schoolers, there are 10 teams in the league that don’t even boast one. 

The dwindling number of one-school seniors is a trend that will likely only continue as NIL and the transfer portal continue to dominate the scene, according to Keatts and Pittsburgh coach Jeff Capel. 

Capel spoke from experience. He was a four-year starter at Duke during his playing career from 1993-1997, and it included a thought of looking for a new program to play for when things got tough at points in Durham. But instead of running, he pushed through it.

Why? His father wasn’t going to let him run from it.

“‘You’re not quitting. Fight through it, figure it out,’” Capel recalled his father telling him. “Not a lot of people want to figure things out.”

Capel, a father of three of his own children, said this wave of constantly looking to escape a challenge for the easy solution isn’t confined to just college athletics. Yes, it’s visible through the hundreds of social media posts that usually end with “please respect my decision,” but Capel has seen it in day-to-day life. 

“It’s easy to bail, it’s easy if things aren’t going well for you to walk or go somewhere else,” Capel said. “I think young people now in general, not just athletes, are missing out on the opportunity to learn. Failure is not a destination. Sometimes the best teacher is failing.”

That very lesson helped Pass succeed during his time at NC State. It kept him hungry for more on the basketball court, which he has been able to prove this season, while it also taught him how to be patient. 

Pass didn’t run from disappointment. Instead, he challenged himself to grow. It’s a choice that, looking back on now, was the right one. The one he can live with for the rest of his life. 

“I don’t regret not leaving here,” Pass said. “I’m happy with my decision. The outcome is the outcome, and I’m happy to be a part of it.”