NC State Basketball, where are the vibes??

I think some of y’all lied. The running theme of the magical run in March was, “after decades of frustration give me this one run and I’ll be happy.” Well, maybe you got your one run and now you’re so happy that you’ve gotten what you needed from NC State basketball? For one reason or the other, there seems to be so little buzz around the return of the NC State men’s basketball season. Let's dig into some areas of concern.

Engagement on social media seems to be nonexistent. The official account got 6 replies (and one spam). Normal replies after games last season were several dozen, although almost all of them were largely negative due to the vitriol in the fanbase at the time.

Other NC State-based outlets posted results with next to zero engagement.

Attendance at the season opener was embarrassingly light:

This was the night when both the ACC Championship and Final Four banners were to be revealed. And yet, seats were available for as low as $15. Lower level seats were still up for grabs a week before the game for just $30.

When the game returned after halftime, the view on TV made the lower bowl look half empty. Word from some people who were there posited that folks came for the banners and hung around to see the first half then left.

I am someone that is chronically online, and all these factors combine with a general lack of acknowledgment that the basketball season is returning. It's not the same as previous years where there has been an active amount of apathy. By that, I mean people going out of their way to point out how much they don't care about what happens. And it's definitely not the same as the folks reveling in the team's failure and piling on with posts taking pleasure in their failure.

What are some factors that could be resulting in this?

Schedule (aka inconvenience)

This one is a fair criticism. Getting to the ESA RBC PNC Lenovo Center (aka the USB Port as per Lotcast host Trey Lower) and in your seat by 6:45 on a Monday night is no small feat. Leaving work early to fight traffic and being there by that time takes extra effort. They may have been better suited to drop the banners on a weekend, but it’s best to do it on opening night so you can turn the page and look forward to this season rather than playing a few games and looking back, then forward again.

The team doesn’t get to dictate the schedule, and Monday was opening night for all of men’s college basketball, so that’s the date you’re working with. You can’t pick your start date, but you have to be there when the day comes.

Even if the opponent is just SC Upstate, it's not about them, but more about the moment.

TV (or lack thereof)

This one sucks, no bones about it. The team that was ACC champion and conference representative at the Final Four and national sensation gets relegated to ESPN the Ocho? Not everyone was able to watch the game, and to be honest it kind of sucks being forced to watch a game on a mobile device. I’ll do it in a pinch but it doesn’t feel the same. It gives the experience a second-class vibe. We thought we had broken through this after last season, but turns out you still have to be a “brand” to be on real TV.

Football (or lack thereof)

NC State fans are (understandably) upset. There is a sentiment they were sold a bill of goods with this team, with the fans being asked to make a large financial contribution to helping construct the roster. The season is more than half over and finally looks like it has gained the necessary momentum that should have been there in August, for a variety of reasons. Now, NC State is one of those schools that strives to be successful in both football and basketball. The momentum from one feeds the other and vice versa. But it is like those childhood relay races running with the egg on the spoon and passing it on. If one side drops the egg, it causes the other side to have to work hard to build that momentum back up.

Basketball ended on such a high in the spring it overlapped with a football spring game most fans didn’t watch because the Pack were still playing so deep in the tournament. That basketball momentum carried into August, where the football team immediately dropped a whole case of eggs all over their faces.

Football is Still Happening (for better or worse)

This happens every year at this time. Most people only have space for one sport at a time, and won’t tune into basketball until Thanksgiving at the earliest. Most of the time, NC State is playing a bunch of nobodies during November anyway, so why watch? This was definitely the case with SC Upstate on Monday night. However, after 5 tune-up games, the Wolfpack have tough matchups in five of six games: Purdue (repeat of Final Four), BYU or Ole Miss (NC State lost to both last year), Texas (ACC/Big 12 I mean SEC Challenge), FSU and Kansas (just the #1 team in the country playing on their home turf).

Nothing to Complain About (YET)

The people who were complaining about Kevin Keatts in February and wanted him to be fired will not auto-magically become his biggest supporters this season. As soon as things look like they’re turning sideways, the haters will return. They will return because haters gonna hate, that’s what they do. They screamed for years about wanting to be proven wrong, “Show me something, Kevin Keatts!” Then Kevin Keatts provides something not done in most of our lifetimes, people yelled, “Build the statue!” But did that excitement build a new base of fans dedicated to this coach, or if things take a while to build back up will they say, “Oh you just caught lightning in a bottle and you can’t do it again.”

We have to be happy with what we got and remember not to move the goalposts for what makes us happy as fans. Sports are a fickle beast, and expectations never go away. I think it’s fair to want this team to be in the top 4-6, in the mix for a double bye and a consistent tournament team. Based on what we saw with the extremely limited sample size of exactly one game, it seems totally plausible to expect this.

All those reasons are valid, but I think I know the one at the heart of it:

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Laundry (aka lack of familiar faces)

DJ Burns is a generational player for NC State. There will never be another like him, just like there won’t be another TJ Warren or Julius Hodge. Burns is the biggest personality the Pack have had since Hodge. He absolutely loved being here, and the fans loved him back. You might never see the fans cheer every time a player simply touches the ball, as he methodically backed down a player from the three point line into the paint. It was just a joy watching him play, something I will cherish and miss.

I would bet that if DJ Burns, DJ Horne and Mo Diarra were all returning, the USB Port would have been buzzing with energy and a packed crowd. That feeling of getting to know a player as they stay on the team year after year is something that is being lost in college sports. Players are swapping out jerseys as fast as they swap underwear.

This causes fans to face the reality that when it comes down to it, they’re rooting for laundry. Two guys played for conference foe Louisville last year, but now we like them because they have our jersey on. It feels weird and really takes away from the classic feeling of having a player come in as a freshman, watching them grow into a stronger player over the years and then send them off. We got a small taste of that with Burns at least staying for two years, but so many players are one year rentals.

Kevin Keatts followed a similar model this year, bringing in quite a few upperclassmen looking for one last rodeo. Early results look positive with these vets being able to contribute right away. But I am glad he still brought in more freshmen than usual. Paul McNeil, Trey Parker, Bryce Heard, along with sophomore Dennis Parker Jr. give hope for a core to build around. The challenge comes in re-recruiting your roster to have those guys stick around for a few years, because you never know.

As a fan, this can be complicated. You want to root for the team, but you spend the first two months learning all the new faces, and figuring out how this new group of players will gel together, and how the style of play may be different now, all while having the idea stuck in the back of your mind worrying about which players are going to leave. It stinks to have to worry about this while the season is going on, but that’s the world we live in now. Rumors already abound about possible suitors for quarterback CJ Bailey, and there’s still a quarter of the season left!

Conclusion

In the end, wins will bring the fans, as it always does. Well, almost always, you could be Wake Forest or Duke and have a top 25 football team with an empty stadium, couldn’t be me. We saw this last year, with Wolfpack fans showing out in force in Arizona. I wish that winning wasn’t a prerequisite for fans showing support. What is your threshold for gracing the arena with your presence? Kevin Keatts couldn’t have done any more to garner fan excitement last year (well, he could have won two more games, but apart from that), and yet it seems like it’s the same old story. Actually, not even the same old story, at least before people were hate-watching the games so they could complain about them. Will more people watch the games and engage positively on social media? The comments after a loss always outweigh those after a win, that’s pretty standard. People are more likely to leave a negative review online than a positive one. But this year should be different. Many people said that Keatts would get a multi-year grace period from criticism. But those comments were said in the heat of the moment last spring, let’s see how valid they are if the team is still working to get its feet set in January.

Sometimes, NC State fans are their own worst enemy. Twitter is a hellscape on any normal day but after a Wolfpack loss, watch out. When the team wins, oftentimes it's crickets, almost as if people just want something to complain about.

We’ll see how the next five games go. Will people chime in with support against similarly weak opponents in the season opener? One would hope people won’t tune in just when State is playing a marquee opponent. And God forbid they lose to a few of these tough matchups. The real test will be how quickly those haters come back out of the woodwork. A common refrain the last few years has been, “When Kevin Keatts proves he can win something, then I’ll come!” Okay, well, they won the ACC and the South Regional Final, was that enough for you?