Kevin Keatts grateful for NC State basketball's return to NCAA Tournament
NC State basketball coach Kevin Keatts has experience having to anxiously await the results of the brackets unveiling on Selection Sunday. The best part about this year’s version was that, unlike in 2019, his squad made the field.
Second best may have been that NC State was the first bubble team to learn its fate.
Keatts joked the only time he has slept well before Selection Sunday was when during the two years at UNC Wilmington where his team had won the conference tournament.
“I think it was a great shout out to the committee for not making us wait a long time,” Kevin Keatts joked.
The reaction from the NC State basketball team, as to be expected, was excitement about seeing their name flashed across the screens of CBS.
“”It was validation that all of our hard work had paid off, and guys who came in and contribute to the program and guys like Terquavion Smith, who decided to come back, that he was rewarded and gets the opportunity to play in the biggest tournament,” Keatts noted.
“I was really excited about it, and guys were pumped.”
NC State made it, but Clemson did not, and Keatts felt for the Tigers, who beat the Pack three times this season. Keatts drew back on his experience from a snub in 2019, where he learned how important non-conference strength of schedule mattered.
Keatts suspected that hampered Clemson, who had a non-conference strength of schedule of 333.
“That’s so tough, because when you set out to schedule, most times teams that you schedule, you think they’re going to do well,” Keatts noted. “Scheduling is so hard now, because there’s so many transfers. So when you schedule a team that could be really good, or they could be really bad by that time. They add transfers or lose some guys. It completely changes.
“Clemson situation’s, Loyola-Chicago was historically a good team. No one was sure what South Carolina was going to be. All of the sudden, some of those teams you think that’s going to be really good don’t perform well, and it brings a non-conference schedule down.”
Aside from recent lopsided losses to Clemson, Keatts feels well about how NC State is performing.
“I think when you get into this, into a tournament situation, one of the biggest things is matchups and how do you match up against the team,” Keatts noted. “We play certain teams three or four times, we probably could be successful with the way we play.
“I think a lot of times it comes down to matchups, and Clemson for us was just a tough matchup. They were physical. They did a good job of gap protection. … But I think, if you allow me to throw away a couple of those games, I would say we are playing really good basketball.”
NC State will be playing Creighton in the opener, tipping off Friday at 4 p.m., in Denver, Colo. As of Monday morning, Keatts was still in the learning phases about the Bluejays.
“I don’t know how we match up yet,” he confessed. “… No matter how we match up, it’ll be a tough game for us.”
Redshirt junior forward Greg Gantt will also be a game-time decision, Keatts noted, after injuring his knee in the ACC Tournament win over Virginia Tech.
“We’re hopeful,” Keatts added. “I don’t know where that will land at. … We practiced [Sunday], and he did not return at practice, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be available on Friday.”
Watch Kevin Keatts’ Zoom call with the media courtesy TheWolfpacker.com YouTube channel below.
