Keatts grew up as an only child in Lynchburg, Virginia. His father was a masonry instructor at Amherst County High School, and Keatts worked as his apprentice on the weekends.[1] He attended Heritage High School and played point guard on their basketball team as well as quarterback on their football team. As starting quarterback, Keatts led the football team to be ranked the best in the state, losing only one game his entire career.[2] He played basketball for Ferrum College, averaging 13.3 points per game by his senior year.[3]
Coaching career
Keatts began his coaching career as an assistant at Southwestern Michigan College for the 1996–97 season.[4] He then went to Hargrave Military Academy as an assistant coach for two seasons before being promoted to head coach in 1999. In 2001, Keatts moved to Marshall as an assistant coach to Greg White. He returned to Hargrave in 2003 and served as the head coach until 2011. During his ten years (over two stints) as the head coach at Hargrave, Keatts had a record of 262–17.[5] He coached several future NBA players at Hargrave including Marreese Speights and Mike Scott.[6]
On March 27, 2014, he was named the head coach of UNC Wilmington (UNCW), succeeding Buzz Peterson.[8] In Keatts' first season at UNCW he was named CAA Conference Coach of the Year after leading the Seahawks to their first conference championship in nine years, and first winning season in seven years.[9]
In his second year, Keatts repeated his rookie-year double, once again winning the CAA regular-season championship and Conference Coach of the Year. In winning the 2016 conference coach of the year, he became the first coach in CAA history to ever win the award in consecutive years.[10]
On March 17, 2017, Keatts became the 23rd head coach at North Carolina State University, succeeding Mark Gottfried.[11] Keatts is the first Wolfpack head coach to defeat Duke, North Carolina, and Wake Forest in his first attempt since Tal Stafford during the 1918–19 season.[12] After being projected to finish 12th in the ACC,[13] Keatts led what recruits were left from Mark Gottfried Wolfpack to a tied-for-third-place finish in the conference, as well as earning an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
In 2024, the Wolfpack finished the regular season with a 17–14 overall record and a 9–11 record in the ACC, good for 10th place in the conference. However, Keatts' team rallied to win five games in five days in the ACC Tournament, including wins over No. 15 seed Louisville, No. 7 seed Syracuse, No. 2 seed and No. 11 ranked Duke, No. 3 seed Virginia, and No. 1 seed and No. 4 ranked North Carolina to earn the ACC's automatic NCAA tournament bid.
In the 2024 NCAA Tournament they were placed in the South Region and seeded No. 11. There the Wolfpack defeated No. 6 seed and No. 22 ranked Texas Tech, No. 14 seed Oakland, No. 2 seed and No. 8 ranked Marquette, and No. 4 seed and No. 13 ranked Duke to advance to their first Final Four since 1983, becoming only the sixth ever 11 seed to reach the Final Four.
National champion
Postseason invitational champion
Conference regular season champion
Conference regular season and conference tournament champion
Division regular season champion
Division regular season and conference tournament champion
Conference tournament champion
^ abLouisville Athletic Department (2013). "Kevin Keatts Bio". Louisville Cardinals. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved March 27, 2014.
