N.C. State Showing Its Own Teeth In Shark-Infested Waters Of ACC While Continuing To Dance

DALLAS - North Carolina State coach Kevin Keatts knows something about sharks.

He swims among them in his state in the Atlantic Coast Conference with six-time national champion North Carolina and five-time national champ Duke each about 25 miles away in slightly different directions. 

He works among sharks, who may have fired him by now, had he not got his team to win five games in five days to win the ACC Tournament two weeks ago for the automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. No. 11 seed North Carolina State (25-14) has won three straight in the tournament and is now one win away from reaching its first Final Four since the 1983 national championship.

And guess who the Wolfpack plays in order to do that? Why No. 4 seed and neighbor Duke (27-8) on Sunday (5:05 p.m., CBS) in American Airlines Center.

North Carolina State coach Kevin Keatts argues with a referee during his 11th-seeded team's 67-58 upset over No. 2 seed Marquette on Friday night at American Airlines Center in Dallas. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

"It's funny, I was thinking about it last night. Like, man, we both could have just flown home and played this game somewhere in North Carolina - probably at the PNC would have been a good idea," he said Saturday at the NCAA South Region press conferences.

PNC Arena is North Carolina State's home arena. Call it the team's personal shark tank.

N.C. State Coach Kevin Keatts Loves ‘Shark Tank’

No wonder Keatts' favorite television program also happens to be "Shark Tank," a business reality show featuring entrepreneurial contestants trying to sell a business model to five basically flesh-eating venture capitalists. 

"I think like any place, you have to carve out your own space," Keatts said when asked about the difficulties of finding N.C. State its niche so close to ultimate blue bloods North Carolina and Duke.

"I'm into ‘Shark Tank,’ and I watch that all the time," he said. "And they talk about having shelf space, and how do you get your product on the shelf and everything else. The one thing I've always said when I took this job - I never wanted to be compared to Duke or Carolina. It's just not who I am. We do things a little bit different."

Going just 17-14 in the regular season and finishing 9-11 in the ACC was a different path.

"But we've done a good job," he said. "Now we're on this nice run, because we've carved space out. And we're doing things our way and not trying to be someone else."

And North Carolina State's powers that be were considering possibly firing Keatts, 51, before the ACC Tournament run that ended up giving him a two-year extension on his contract. He came to N.C. State in 2017 after taking North Carolina-Wilmington to two NCAA Tournaments. He is in his third NCAA Tournament with the Wolfpack, but the first two ended with first-round losses in 2018 and last year.

"I never worry about that," he said. "Whatever was going to happen was going to happen."

Kevin Keatts Just Kept On Swimming

So he just kept swimming.

"I was going to make sure that I did everything that I could and did everything right by those young men," he said.

Now, everything is gravy right? North Carolina State is playing with "house money," since it is the worst remaining seed in the tournament. Wrong. 

North Carolina State coach Kevin Keatts celebrates beating North Carolina in the ACC Tournament championship game on March 16 in Washington D.C. to get the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. (Getty Images)

"We don't look at it as house money," he said. "We didn't come here to say, ‘Hey, we’ve won enough and just go out there and play, and you have nothing to lose.' We do think we have something to lose. We came to win. So we don't count on that. I understand, obviously, that's how it looks when you come in as an 11 seed, and you're in the Elite Eight. But honestly, these guys are here to win."

And they're dancing and singing all the way to the bank, if you will. But they're loose because of the music, not the house money.

"Yeah, it's weird. We are loose," Keatts said. "We listen to a lot of music. I grew up in an era where there were great rappers, and we had great rap songs. I know I got a bunch of them, but I've learned so many different songs, different rap songs than I've ever seen. Here's the other thing about it. We just don't listen to rap. On game day, coming back from the shoot-around, we put on gospel music. And we're blasting that just as much as the rap songs. They know every word to each one of them. We're loose."

And swimming free so far.