Kevin Keatts eight years old, while the head coach of the male basketball team in NC state ended. On Sunday, the university announced its decision to separate from Keatts.
This decision comes less than a year after Keatts resulted in Wolfpack at the Championship of the Atlantic Coast Conference and in the Final Four. NC State ended the regular season of 2024-25 with a 12-19 file.
Sports director Boo Corrigan published a statement by thanking Keatts for his “contributions” and also recognized Deep Run from last year in the NCAA tournament.
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“I would like to thank the Keatts coach for his contributions to NC State and for always represented the university in class,” said the Corrigan declaration. “He will always have a precious place in the history of Wolfpack for the achievements of his 2023-24 team and I appreciate the passion he brought to this role. We wish him the best in the future.”
Keatts has described the last eight years “a dream come true”.
March 1, 2025; Atlanta, Georgia, United States; Wolfpack head coach from the North Carolina State, Kevin Keatts, on the sidelines against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the first half at the McCamish pavilion. (Images Brett Davis-Imagn)
“While we are entering this new era of university sports, I believe with all my heart that I leave the program in better position to succeed than when I started – and that the basketball program will continue to prosper when it is supported at the level necessary to compete,” Keatts wrote in an article on social media on Sunday.
Keatts went 151-113 to NC State, including 69-84 in ACC Play. His teams won three NCAA tournament offers, the latest arrival when the Wolfpack followed a five -day trip to its first ACC tournament title since 1987 with a just as a contained race as the first Final Four of the program since the late Jim Valvano led the “Cardiac Pack” for the 1983 NCAA.
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But he could not support this momentum, because this season has been transformed into an effort, with the remutillage of Wolfpack through the transfer portal – which had worked well enough to bring NC State to consecutive NCAA offers – proving to be a major miss. NC State went only 5-15 in the league.
March 1, 2025; Atlanta, Georgia, United States; Wolfpack head coach from the North Carolina State, Kevin Keatts, on the sidelines against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the second period at the McCamish pavilion. (Images Brett Davis-Imagn)
The dismissal comes after Keatts faced several challenges in his mandate, starting with the stabilization of a wobbly program in the court, then working for years in the middle of the shadow of a federal survey on corruption on sport linked to the mandate of the predecessor Mark Gottfried.
February 19, 2025; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States; Wolfpack head coach from North Carolina, Kevin Keatts, reacts first half to the Dean E. Smith Center. (Bob Donnan-Imagn images)
This case hovered for years before the program was placed on a year of probation in December 2021.
He arrived in 2017 from UNC Wilmington promising that “Kevin Keatts is a winner” in his introductory press conference. In many ways, he has equaled this, especially after the program has succeeded in the last two seasons of Gottfried after four consecutive offers from the NCAA.
Keatts started with a season of 21 victories which included teams from Duke, UNC and Arizona very classified before reaching the NCAA.
