NC State Coaching Search Update: A deal for Wade in the works? Odom a serious candidate?

While many of you were heading to church yesterday, NC State was busy announcing that Kevin Keatts would no longer be the head coach at NC State.

Immediately rumors started flowing, people turned to Twitter (X) and jumped onto their favorite NC State media sites to make sense of it. Here is how it went down on our end and what we’re hearing right now.

3 Weeks ago we were told Keatts job was safe
It was right after the California trip where NC State dropped 2 in a row to Cal and Stanford that we started to get a feeling that Keatts really may not make it to next season. We made some calls and sent out feelers, but we were told to expect Kevin Keatts back next year with an increased NIL budget and one more shot to get things back on track.

We couldn’t figure out how they’d afford to KEEP HIM
Keeping him made sense since he had just gone to the Final Four and won the ACC Tournament, and I’m not sure there is precedent of a coach being fired one year after making the Final Four and winning his conference tournament. But even though his buyout was $7 million, we couldn’t understand how they were going to keep him. The fan base had checked out fully, attendance numbers were historically bad, and a few significant donors we knew had backed off a bit from funding basketball. So it was hard for us to understand how this was going to work. Sure you have collective bargaining next year, but with fans checked out and donors checked out, will you have enough to get the players you need? If you can’t get the players then the same excuse you had this year, will be there next year. And if you don’t win, the seats don’t fill. And… you get the picture. Once you lose the fanbase in the NIL world, it’s over. That was the feeling we had, and it turned out to be correct.

Keatts rumors start heating up
About a week ago we got a call from someone who has loose ties to the program. This person doesn’t call us unless something is up, and they called to kind of give us their take on whats going on. They basically said the Kevin Keatts era is likely coming to an end. We didn’t have full confirmation this was the case, but others we talked to were getting the same sense. With this movement coupled with what I just wrote in that last paragraph signaled that we should get prepared. Hence the “Something’s Got to Give” article we posted on Saturday night before the news broke Sunday morning.

Who to focus on? 
So with it becoming clear that Keatts might be on the outs, we started to make some calls. We got LOTS of names, some made sense based on circumstance.

Will Wade who was Debbie Yow’s #1 choice prior to the Keatts hiring, was back in coaching, having big success at McNeese State, and was likely to make a jump this offseason. We believed if State moved on from Keatts early and without a week of “evaluation” meetings that it would signify they had a plan and moving on a guy that was likely have to have a lot of competition for his services. Wade is the homerun hire here in the fan’s eyes. He’s seen to many as the perfect move after Keatts. He’s an X’s and O’s nerd, he’s firey, he’s unafraid and he’s obsessed with winning and accountability.

Then there were the names that were publically connected to NC State AD Boo Corrigan. We were hinted to look into Mike White, Ryan Odom and Mike Brey who all have prior connections with Corrigan. But to us, if you’re firing Keatts because you have an apathetic fanbase you’d need to make a hire that reignites them and gets them to reengage and start donating + buying season tickets again.

Mike White had some success at Florida but hasn’t done well at Georgia with two 11th-place finishes and a 9th-place finish this season. He hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament in 3 seasons there.

Mike Brey is 65 years old and had some success at Notre Dame, but it was up and down and it ended on a bad note. How would he fare in the NIL world? How long would he be around? I don’t think Mike Brey is the worst option honestly but I don’t think he moves the needle enough and if we ended up with him it’d mean we missed on our main targets. At least that’s the way I’d view it.

Ryan Odom is more of a question mark. He’s got promise,  he’s got the bloodline, but is he the right fit?  From a high level, he’s what Kevin Keatts was when we got Kevin Keatts. He’s had success at the mid-major level, but it’s yet to be seen how he’d do in a conference like the ACC. I think his personality really meshes well with Boo Corrigan, but I don’t think the fan base would feel like it’s a good match for them. He comes off as a nice, mild-mannered southern guy, a lot like his father Dave Odom who had an amazing run at Wake Forest in the 90s (and was rumored to had been close to taking over at NC State prior to the Sendek years), and that’s how Boo comes off to the base. But I’m not sure that’s the winning recipe in Raleigh if you ask the fan base. However, who cares how you come off if you win?

The news finally breaks Sunday morning and the media machine goes into motion
Sunday morning NC State made the announcement and right away the question becomes…”Who is next?”

Jeff Goodman jumped right in and drops Will Wade’s name as a possibility.

One name that is expected to be in the mix for the NC State opening is McNeese State’s Will Wade, source told @TheFieldOf68.

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) March 9, 2025

The key for being able to land someone like Will Wade is that NC State will need to step up its funding/resources to be able to compete financially with the Duke’s and North Carolina’s.

I’m told that Kevin Keatts had in the $2 million range this past season – which obviously…

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) March 9, 2025

We were told that there had been ‘unofficial conversations’ with Wade weeks leading up to Keatts firing. What does that mean? Well, we are assuming it means that donors or others around the program (not officially in the program) have been having conversations with Wade, gauging his interest, etc. This was corroborated by multiple sources around, but nobody directly in the program (as expected).

The guy who broke the Keatts being fired news, Joe Giglio, is one of the most connected guys around the NC State program. He’s saying NC State and Wade are in talks.

As @GoodmanHoops has been saying, NC State working quickly to land Will Wade but was told by one source the deal is “not done yet”

— Joe Giglio (@giglio_OG) March 9, 2025

He follows with Wade context, which if you’ve been following along here at PackInsider, we’ve explained this scenario multiple times.

Back in ’17, Wade (then at VCU) was Debbie Yow’s choice to replace Mark Gottfried but Wade balked when he thought the Clemson job (his alma mater) might come open.

She decided to offer Kevin Keatts the job instead and Kevin took it

— Joe Giglio (@giglio_OG) March 9, 2025

We assume he got the context on the Wade/NC State decision back in 2017 from the same source we did, and we assume he got the Keatts being fired by NC State from either Keatts himself, one of Keatts people, or someone on the staff. None of those people would be directly involved with the Will Wade negotiations, so while I trust Giglio would never put something out that he didn’t have great intel on, we can’t fully corroborate this tweet. That said, it’s lining up with our intel and Goodman’s intel, so I’d assume there is definitely something happening there.

Who is in the mix aside from Wade?
I think Wade has multiple suitors, but I also have heard that there are a lot of schools that won’t touch him because of the FBi investigation on paying players. I don’t know how much sense that makes in today’s culture. Look, the majority of great coaches you’ve seen over the years were getting their players compensated in one way or another. Like it or not. Wade got caught, but now it’s basically legal. So it’s a grey area. But what’s not grey is his ability to win. The guy has won and won at all levels. He’d be the one to ignite the fanbase and get giving + season tickets back on track.

That said, who else should you focus on? Well, the only other name we have that we believe has legs is Ryan Odom of VCU. He’s one we heard early on, prior to Keatts firing, and he’s a name that was given to us, unprompted by someone very connected to the program yesterday. Odom doesn’t seem like the guaranteed homerun hire you fire Keatts for and he’s being connected to the Virginia job (he seems like a Virginia guy), but again, the fact that his name keeps coming up means there is likely some interest there from some sect of the donor base or from within the athletic department.

Then there is Justin Gainey, a former NC State point guard who is being groomed by Rick Barnes to take over Tennessee. This isn’t a name that was given to us by anyone, but it’s one I think you should look at. The problem here is that he has no head coaching experience. Is NC State in a spot where they can take this chance? I don’t think so. Not with the current state of things. Not with the current NIL culture and not with the ACC in limbo. I think if you miss on your main targets you lean into a bigger name with more experience. This is where Brey comes in, but also where I’d reach out to Sean Miller who might be interested in leaving Xavier (however I’ve hear they have a very good NIL situation.) That said, Gainey isn’t an awful outcome if you can’t land the big fish. If Rick Barnes views him as his protege, then who are we to question his abilities? That said, Barnes may be in his final years coaching, so maybe Gainey wants to wait.

Changes to the NIL situation…
I think the other noteworthy information we’ve gotten is that there would be other big changes attached to this decision to fire Keatts. Apparently, the NIL situation is going to be fixed. Sure there is collective bargaining coming, but we heard that if they move on from Keatts it’s going to be a signal from the donors that they are ready to fully rethink how basketball is funded and what it takes to be successful in this environment. If you are negotiating with a new coach, the NIL package is going to be a HUGE part of those talks and we believe NC State firing Keatts means that they have a plan in place that they feel comfortable with.

We’ll update you with more as we get info…