Fansided

Report: Kevin Keatts agrees to leave UNC Wilmington for NC State

By Nick Tylwalk

Mar 16, 2017; Orlando, FL, USA; North Carolina-Wilmington Seahawks head coach Kevin Keatts looks on during the first half against the Virginia Cavaliers in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Amway Center. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 16, 2017; Orlando, FL, USA; North Carolina-Wilmington Seahawks head coach Kevin Keatts looks on during the first half against the Virginia Cavaliers in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Amway Center. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports /
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You don’t always have to win in your March Madness appearance to line up your next head coaching gig.

As a head coach in men’s basketball, timing is everything, but it’s more important in a meta sense than in terms of how your team did in its last game. For Kevin Keatts, it didn’t matter that his UNC Wilmington squad came up short in its NCAA Tournament upset bid this week against Virginia.

What’s important is the body of work Keatts has done with the Seahawks in his three seasons at the helm, including back-to-back tournament appearances and a .720 overall winning percentage. That was enough to convince NC State to make Keatts its next coach.

Now that the Seahawks aren’t dancing, the Wolfpack is ready to make it official:

Keatts knows what it takes to win at the highest level thanks to his time as an assistant to Rick Pitino at Louisville, where he was on the staff during its national championship run in 2013. UNC Wilmington was his first stop as a head coach at the Division I level, and it’s hard to argue that he hasn’t helped put the Seahawks on the map in a basketball crazy state in a very short period of time.

The Wolfpack find themselves temporarily irrelevant in that same state thanks to two straight sub-.500 seasons, which cost Mark Gottfried his job back in February. Perhaps most damning has been State’s inability to be even semi-competitive in ACC play, winning just nine conference games since the beginning of the 2015-16 campaign.

Next: Highlights from Kevin Keatts' last game at UNC Wilmington

In arguably the toughest basketball league in the country, Keatts has his work cut out for him. But the timing couldn’t be better for him to take on the challenge, either for him or NC State.