THE CENTER OF THE COLLEGE BASKETBALL UNIVERSE (OR RALEIGH, N.C.) — It is exactly 1 p.m. the day after the biggest win of Kevin Keatts’ coaching career — NC State’s improbable Elite Eight victory over rival Duke, sending the Wolfpack to its first Final Four since 1983 — and Keatts is steps from the entrance to the campus bookstore. Unsurprisingly, the man behind the school’s most successful postseason run in over four decades cannot get far without being stopped.
Like, not even a few feet.
Students ask for selfies. Passersby throw up the Wolfpack hand signal (middle and ring finger touching the thumb, the other two digits straight up like wolf’s ears) and share encouraging words. Keatts, donning an incredible sweatshirt with five ice cream cones on it — one for each of his team’s five ACC tournament wins last month — is sweating in the hotter-than-it-sounds 79-degree weather, but he’s smiling. Beaming, actually. Soaking up every second of this run for the ages.
Two women approach Keatts before he crosses an intersection, and tell him what every NC State fan is thinking right now: “Coach, we hope you go all the way!”
“That,” he responded, grinning, “makes three of us.”
Ideally, Keatts — less than 24 hours removed from that historic victory, and less than 12 hours after he, his staff, and his players landed at home from Dallas — would be game-planning by now, ahead of Saturday’s Final Four meeting with No. 1 seed Purdue. (Or, you know, napping. It’s been a long weekend.) Instead? He’s bopping around campus, not seeking out any adoration … but as part of a prescheduled visit from a potential transfer portal target. Sign of the times, that he’s doing so with this season still ongoing. Although, all things considered, could there be an easier recruiting pitch?
Hey, planning on watching the Final Four this weekend? Yeah? Well, we’re in it.
Such is the view from the epicenter of campus in Raleigh, N.C. — which this week, also happens to double as the center of the college basketball universe. For all the hype surrounding NC State’s men’s team, all the comparisons to its 1983 title team, don’t forget that the NC State women are also Final Four-bound. In fact, the women’s team — which upset No. 1 seed Texas 76-66 in the Elite Eight, en route to the program’s first Final Four in 26 years — has been the more accomplished of the two the last few years. Wes Moore’s program won three consecutive ACC tournament titles from 2020-2022, as well as the 2022 ACC regular-season title. It even reached the Elite Eight in 2022, eventually falling (in controversial fashion) to UConn. (The Huskies have also sent both their men’s and women’s teams to the 2024 Final Fours.)
But this is a new threshold for them, too, a bar no NC State women’s team has hit since 1998, during the program’s only other Final Four appearance. It’s fitting that both the men and women made history on the same day, hours apart. The women went first, winning in Portland, Ore. — and by the time they got to their postgame locker room, the second half of the men’s game was just beginning.
By then, back in Raleigh, NC State students and fans had already started sprinting to Memorial Belltower to celebrate. In her postgame press conference, Aziaha James — who made seven 3-pointers against Texas, scored 27 points, and was named MOP of the Portland 4 region — was asked about the significance of making school history.
“It’s good,” she said, “to light it up for Hillsborough (Street).”
And light up the tower they did, a brilliant bright red. Same color as the (many) cracked red solo cups stuffed in two recycling bins next to the obelisk. Parents, in the comfort of the daylight, paraded their kids in front of the monument, asked them to hold up their Wolfpack signs, and took commemorative photos — hoping,…
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