DALLAS — An overweight center, fasting small forward and three-time lacrosse All-American. A former Virginia reserve and a two-time transfer who finally decided to come home. All led by a coach social media said would be fired.
This motley bunch is the last remaining double-digit seed of March Madness 2024. This once-downtrodden team has delivered the most unlikely postseason run N.C. State’s fiercely proud men’s basketball program has witnessed since 1983.
Will this squad replicate the Wolfpack’s ’83 national championship? Almost certainly not.
But just as 41 years ago, N.C. State is grand theater.
“There have been plenty of … pinch-me moments,” assistant coach Joel Justus said Thursday ahead of Friday’s South Regional semifinal against Marquette at American Airlines Center.
“It makes for a great story — it does,” head coach Kevin Keatts said. “When you look at teams that are in the Sweet 16, you always try to figure out, how did they get here? We got here because we’re very unique.”
Prior to the ACC tournament, speculation swirled that Keatts was a short-timer, that mixed results and apathetic fans dictated regime change after seven seasons. N.C. State had finished 10th among 15 teams in the regular season, and its only hope of making the NCAA field for the third time in his tenure was to earn an automatic bid by winning five games in as many days at the conference tournament.
The Wolfpack had won only five games in the previous six weeks, but they ran the table in Washington, D.C., defeating a handful of former national champs in succession: Louisville, Syracuse, Duke, Virginia and North Carolina.
The ACC title, N.C. State’s first since 1987, triggered bonus clauses in Keatts’ contract that extend his deal through April 2030 and raise his guaranteed annual compensation by $400,000.
“What changed?” Keatts said. “We got smarter. We got the same players, who are playing with a little bit more confidence. … This team just believes.”
That belief translated to the NCAA tournament, where last week in Pittsburgh the Wolfpack defeated Texas Tech and Oakland, turning DJ Burns into a national celebrity.
N.C. State lists the 6-foot-9 Burns at 275 pounds, at least 40 pounds shy of reality. But his low-post footwork is graceful, his shooting touch feathery, his smile contagious.
And mercy, when he starts leaning his ample backside into a defender, gradually yet inevitably dribbling into the paint, crowds are rapt and opponents seemingly helpless.
“Well, he was a local star for a whole year,” Keatts said, “and now everybody in the national media is starting to understand that. I mean, he’s just fun. He scores, and he gets beat up all the time.”
Simmering throughout his two seasons at N.C. State, concerns over Burns’ weight and poor conditioning boiled over when Keatts didn’t start him Jan. 27 at Syracuse. What followed was a blunt conversation during which the staff told Burns that his diet and workout regimen had to change — immediately.
Burns bought in, and his new-found stamina was evident last Saturday. Against upstart Oakland, he scored 24 points and played 42 of 45 minutes, 18 more than his average, in an overtime victory.
Conversely, N.C. State’s staff has worried about forward Mohamed Diarra eating enough as he fasts during daylight hours for the Muslim season of Ramadan — March 10-April 9 this year. But Diarra, the Wolfpack’s leading rebounder, has been observing Ramadan rituals since he was 12 and playing youth soccer in his native France.
“I’m used to it,” he said with a broad smile.
Keatts has blended Diarra and Burns with guards Michael O’Connell, Casey Morsell and DJ Horne, plus reserves Jayden Taylor and Ben Middlebrooks. All are transfers, which helps explain why this disparate group needed time to jell.
O’Connell, he of the 3-point prayer that forced overtime against Virginia in the ACC tournament, was a decorated high school lacrosse attackman in New York who committed to Maryland lacrosse before opting for hoops at Stanford.
Morsell has started 92 games in three years at N.C. State after starting 16 in two seasons at Virginia. Horne, a third-team all-conference selection and the team’s leading scorer, played at Illinois State and Arizona State before landing back in his native Raleigh.
Jim Valvano’s 1983 N.C. State team was more conventionally built with high school recruits but no less touched by good fortune.
Dane Suttle was an 83.5% foul shooter, but with Pepperdine leading N.C. State late in overtime of their 1983 first-round NCAA tournament game, he missed the front ends of two bonus free throws. The Wolfpack survived in double-OT.
Virginia’s Isaac McKneely was an 84.7% foul shooter this season, but his two misses late in regulation in the ACC tournament set the stage for O’Connell.
“That one, of all the games, was the one when you asked, How did that happen?” Justus said.
N.C. State (24-14) is the South’s No. 11 seed and a 6.5-point underdog against second-seeded Marquette (27-9). But the Wolfpack have been favored only twice in this seven-game march.
“It’s definitely an incredible experience,” Middlebrooks said, “but I would say we’re all just living in the moment right now, and honestly, the job isn’t finished.”
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From l-r, N.C. State players DJ Burns Jr. (30), Ernest Ross (24) and guard DJ Horne (0) celebrate in the final minute of their ACC tournament final conquest of North Carolina.