How good a coach is NC State’s Kevin Keatts? ‘Best in the country’ says former assistant

A.W. Hamilton admits to being biased when it comes to N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts.

Hamilton played basketball for Keatts. He coached with Keatts. He was on Keatts’ initial Wolfpack staff.

Hamilton now is head coach at Eastern Kentucky, so his days are full. But he talks with Keatts often each week, he said. He looks forward to it, learns from it.

Hamilton is as happy as anyone that Keatts and the Wolfpack are headed to the Final Four. Having played Purdue this season, he also is aware of what awaits Keatts the Pack in the NCAA Tournament semifinals this week.

“I said this in 2017 when he got the job there that I thought Coach Keatts would win a national championship,” Hamilton said Monday in an N&O interview. “I think he’s the best coach in the country. He’s got the ‘it’ factor. He’s got it and those kids, they believe so much. They believe in each other. They believe in Coach.

“You can just feel it when you watch them. It’s just incredible what they’ve done, but it’s what he’s always done. The run those kids are on, it’s historic. They’ll be talking about this run forever.”

Nine straight postseason wins can do that. The first ACC championship at N.C. State since 1987 and the first Final Four appearance since 1983 will do that.

“What Coach has done, and you look at the NCAA Tournament, not many teams are playing inside/out basketball,” Hamilton said. “How he has adjusted and is playing through D.J. Burns, nobody in the NCAA Tournament has figured out how to guard him.”

Then again, Purdue does have a 7-foot-4, 300-pound All-America in center Zach Edey.

“One heckuva player with his size and his touch.,” Hamilton said. “He can go over both shoulders and does such a great job with his post catches.”

Edey had just 13 points against Eastern Kentucky in the Dec. 29 game but his scoring was not needed as the Boilermakers won easily.

Hamilton said Edey’s play is reminiscent of vintage Shaquille O’Neal in the NBA. Once he has a foot in the paint and gets the ball, it’s over.

“Nothing you can do,” Hamilton said. “With (Edey) you’ve got to do your work early, got to push him off the block and try to keep him outside the paint as best you can.

“But D.J. Burns has got the size and the strength that it’s going to be a fun matchup that’s fun to watch.”

Burns was the most valuable player in the ACC Tournament. He was named most outstanding player in the South Regional after his 29-point game against Duke in the 76-64 win on Sunday in Dallas.

Instead of some fans grumbling about Keatts or about the Pack needing a new coach – all the stuff being heard before the ACC Tournament – they now can talk about Burns’ spin moves or how the Pack beat North Carolina and Duke (twice) in March, when it counted most.

“We felt like the negativity was a little uncalled for,” Wolfpack guard D.J. Horne said last week. “I just hope they’re being respectful now about Coach.”

Talk about a quick reversal. Keatts has a two-year contract extension plus a pay raise and bonuses and a team so many are chattering about leading up to the Final Four.

“But it all goes back to the never-give-up, never-quit mentality,” Hamilton said. “When adversity hits, some people view it as a setback. With them, it was a stepping stone to something better and they got to the other side of it.”

Hamilton’s first experience with Keatts dates to 2000, when Hamilton came to play for Keatts at Hargrave Military Academy. Hamilton left to play at Wake Forest, but when Keatts left Hargrave to be an assistant coach at Marshall, Hamilton was soon at Marshall, too.

When Keatts returned to Hargrave, Hamilton was his assistant coach. When Keatts became an assistant coach at Louisville under Rick Pitino, it opened the way for Hamilton to take over as the Hargrave head coach and run a program of his own at the Chatham, Virginia, school.

“Coach changed my life,” Hamilton said.

Then came N.C. State.

Hamilton joined Keatts in 2017 in taking over a program that was part of a far-flung national investigation of college athletics begun by the FBI. Keatts’ staff inherited the mess left by former Wolfpack coach Mark Gottfried that resulted in allegations of NCAA violations stemming from the recruitment of Dennis Smith Jr.

“The way Coach maneuvered that was amazing,” Hamilton said. “We were recruiting at even a high level then. Getting Manny Bates was a huge deal. Braxton Beverly, some of those guys. Al Freeman. You look at that first class we put together and it was a really good class.

“The year I was there, we made it to the NCAA Tournament and I think we tied for third in the league. Won at Carolina. In the Battle 4 Atlantis we beat Arizona. I think N.C. State fans could tell what Coach was capable of and what he could do with that program.”

But the NCAA investigation had its effect on the program. It wasn’t until December 2021 that sanctions were announced. Then came an 11-23 season in 2021-22.

“I went through four years of not getting a recruit, losing recruits, not knowing what the NCAA was going to do with us,” Keatts said. “Year one, two and three were not year one, two and three of normal years because of the scrutiny we had.”

But look at the Pack now.

“They’ve already etched their way into the history books by winning an ACC championship,” Keatts said of team. “We’re going to hang a banner.”

N.C. State has two national championship banners hanging at PNC Arena. In 1974 and 1983, the Pack reached the Final Four and came back with the trophy.

“I do hope history repeats itself because we’ve got a great history,” Keatts said.