| Subject: NC State Fires Kevin Keatts One Year After Final Four Run; Ivy League Hot Seats |
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An Observer
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Date Posted: 14:53:41 03/09/25 Sun
North Carolina State just fired eighth-year head coach Kevin Keatts one season after the Wolfpack made a remarkable run through the ACC tournament, winning the automatic bid and taking that momentum to the Final Four of the NCAA tourney.
I understand that coaching is a profession where the winners get overpaid and the losers get fired.
But my question is: Who are you going to get who is better?
Fans (for sure) and university administration (often) think that the recent high water mark for any program should be the new normal, that because NC State came out of nowhere last year to reach the Final Four, the national semifinals are the new measuring stick for what is expected.
Look at three examples here in the Ivy League: Donahue, Engles and Henderson.
The Penn fans here and on the new basketball board have abandoned the Quakers and now openly root for Donahue to be fired. I get it. A coach should be able to win at Penn, because the Quakers have the tradition, the facilities and institutional commitment to winning in men's basketball. Okay, Steve Donahue is probably going to be a justifiable casualty.
The Columbia fans here are equally vocal about the need to fire Engles. I get it here, too. Jim has had a long enough tenure to produce results and has not done so. Having said that, the Lions were ahead of the top teams in our conference deep into the second half in many games this season and did have that inexplicable road upset at Villanova. It's not like there isn't some signs of promise. Before you can win games, you have to lead in the second half.
The question is: Who are you going to get who is better?
Here, I think Engles really suffers because of the success of Columbia football and especially women's basketball. For decades, we Ivy League fans just assumed that it was impossible to win at Columbia. Losing was the old normal.
Now the bar has been raised because of the co-championships achieved by Poppe and Griffith. I think that Jim Engles is going to lose his job in significant part due to expectations being raised, which of course is Columbia's prerogative but, more than a few years ago, was not a reasonable expectation of championships, co- or not, being won.
What about the Princeton fans openly debating on the new board whether Henderson should be fired? The basic premise is, "We're Princeton. We should win all the time." Very Quaker-esque.
I don't get it.
Championships are won with talent, hard work, reasonable luck with injuries and a couple of shots at crunch time that go in instead of bounce harmlessly off the rim.
Henderson and his troops played on the second weekend of the NCAA tournament two years ago. How many Ivy League teams do that?
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