— There’s long been a notion that NC State fans expect more now than they actually do.

They somehow expect a national title in basketball when they really just want some form of consistency, with maybe a magical season thrown in every few years. Or that in football, their expectations are unfair, when most of them would only like to see an occasional upset coupled with winning most of the games the Wolfpack SHOULD win.

Steven Muma, editor of SB Nation’s Backing the Pack, says he wants either football or basketball to have what it hasn’t in what feels like so long - a team that gives them a magical run. A team that can win the ACC, even if not the national championship.

“I don’t expect NC State to routinely compete for conference titles or national titles in either major sport, but I think it’s at least reasonable to say that we should at least come pretty close every 5-10 years or something,” Muma said. “Periodically, there should be a point where everything kind of comes together and they elevate themselves a little bit above what they normally are.”

That’s what NC State has lacked. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament, so they’re not like Northwestern in basketball, which just made its first NCAA Tournament this year. They’re not as downtrodden as former stepping stone Duke was in football. For the last 30 or so years, in both sports, more often than not they’ve been... respectable. Sometimes really good, never great, rarely awful and usually just...okay.

But in basketball in particular, shadows and ghosts loom around the program and do make it difficult, according to former sports information director Josh Rattray.

“I grew up near Chicago. There’s this old Saturday Night Live skit that I love. It was right before he died, Chris Farley hosted (Saturday Night Live). It was like 1997. There was a Superfans skit where he had this mental block, he thought it was still 1985,” Rattray said, referring to the Superfans skit where Farley, Robert Smigel and George Wendt did, using exaggerated Chicago accents, proclaiming the supremacy of “DA BEARS!” - particularly the 1985 Super Bowl winners. “(Farley’s character) was living his life like it was still 1985. He was dating checks 1985. He was talking about watching Sally Field on the Carson Show. They had to bring in Mike Ditka to shake the sense into him that this was 1997. I sometimes thought about that sketch. (NC State is) living in 1983. ‘The ‘83 team would’ve done this! The ‘83 team would’ve done that!’ Well, the ‘83 team lost 11 times, too. Sometimes you just get over it. I was born in 1983. My mom was pregnant with me when that game happened. I think sometimes you’ve just got to push over it.”

Reason for Expectations?

It’s more of an emotional connection than a logical one, though - NC State fans know not to expect those kinds of results. At least, not right now.

Since this project began, NC State has seen Dave Doeren begin a football season on what many thought would be a hot seat, and rebound after a rough start to have a very strong finish that has left NC State fans optimistic about the coming season. In basketball, Mark Gottfried’s team had expectations not to win the league or even finish as a top-25 team, but certainly to make the NCAA Tournament and be in the middle of a crowded ACC. Instead, the Wolfpack’s season fell apart, and they finished a spot out of last place. Gottfried was let go towards the end of the year.

Speaking to former basketball manager Tor Ramsey, who served in the late 1980s, it was after Gottfried’s dismissal but before the hiring of new head coach Kevin Keatts.

“This coaching hire, this basketball coaching hire we’re about to make, may be the most important one made - well, certainly in the most recent history of the school. I believe the new coach is going to be a lot more than just a coach who can coach," he said. "There’s a lot of guys out there, and it’s a good year. It’s going to take somebody with a certain degree of arrogance - arrogance and intensity. It’s going to take somebody who’s going to, I think, be their own personality.”

“I think that we need to have a coach come in who’s going to say, ‘Guys, this is my program,'" he added. "'You put your trust in me to lead the NC State program, you need to put your trust in me to lead it the way I see that this thing needs to be led.'"

“It’s the guy who’s going to say, ‘I don’t care what NC State Stuff is,'" Ramsey continued. "'I don’t care what that is. NC State Stuff happened before I got here. NC State Stuff ends right now. There's no such thing. It’s a fabrication. We’re going to do the reverse NC State Stuff. We’re going to do the Jim Valvano reverse NC State Stuff where the ball does bounce our way.’ That’s what we have to have.”

Does Keatts Hold The Torch?

Keatts was introduced as NC State’s next head coach on a lovely Sunday afternoon a few short weeks ago in the newly-renovated Reynolds Coliseum by chancellor Randy Woodson and athletic director Debbie Yow.

Before Gottfried had even been let go, news was leaked that he was going to be. Since that moment, NC State’s search was completely leak-free and the hiring of Keatts - once they decided on him - went quickly and quietly, emphasis on the latter.

Ramsey spoke as the search was just beginning about the perception hit that NC State took during its last two coaching searches, as they were publicly turned down by big names and seemingly every move was known by everyone before it even happened. The search that ended up with Gottfried was much less of a disaster than the one that ended with former point guard Sidney Lowe, but even that saw current Texas head coach and former VCU head man Shaka Smart essentially spurn the Wolfpack.

Smart was the hot name. The search before: Rick Barnes, John Calipari, those were hot names.

This time around, Yow knew this was a hire she had to make for the future of NC State. Ramsey was rightfully confident in her ability to do it.

“I will say this, though - one thing I’m optimistic about the direction of the program is that I do think that Debbie Yow has kind of got her game on now," Ramsey said. "Wes Moore was a great hire and good things are happening with the women’s basketball team. Whatever process she’s going through, I hope it results in getting the guy.”

The hire is huge for the future of NC State. Neither Roy Williams nor Mike Krzyzewski will coach forever, and even if both schools absolutely nail it in hiring the successor, there will be a window there for NC State. And the right guy needs to be in place.

Keatts’ hiring was almost universally praised by the national and local press, and most NC State fans are cautiously optimistic about it.

When Yow and Woodson strode proudly to the podium to introduce Keatts, they didn’t couch their rhetoric at all.

“This is an important moment for our basketball program, and we believe - in fact, we know - that we have found the architect to help us achieve our goals,” Woodson said.

Yow went through Keatts’ bonafides and said when they met with him, they could have sat and talked for hours. There was a lot of common ground.

And they just knew.

“He has what I call ‘The Stuff’, which is the right mindset, the ability, and the wisdom to maximize every opportunity for success,” she said.

Keatts is just 44 years old. He was an assistant under Rick Pitino at Louisville on the staff that won the 2013 national title before he got the head coaching job at UNC-Wilmington headed into the 2013-14 season. He took a team expected to finish next-to-last in the CAA to a tie for first place in the league.

“Kevin Keatts is a winner, and I’ve always been,” he said, going third-person in his first press conference. “I’m not saying I’m the best coach in the world. I’m not saying I can do it better than anybody else. But what I do know how to do is I know how to motivate guys and I know how to win games.”

Obviously, NC State’s best coach in recent memory was Jim Valvano. But when he was hired, Ramsey said, it wasn’t popular. He wasn’t a name. But he came into town during a bit of a window in the Triangle, and NC State jumped right through.

“You’ve got to realize, nobody knew who Valvano was. And in Valvano's case, again, we didn’t hire an NC State guy. We hired a guy that nobody knew of who came down here and he was his own personality, his own vision, what he wanted to do,” Ramsey said.

“Now, we were only six years removed from a national championship in 1980. There was that advantage. And also, Duke had just lost Bill Foster and had just hired this unknown guy from Army (Mike Krzyzewski). That was another advantage," Ramsey continued. "But you still had Carolina and Dean Smith and you still had Terry Holland (at Virginia), who was doing some big things there. You were still kind of playing in the shadow. It was a 7-man league at that point in time. So it was very different circumstances.”

No More Status Quo

Yow didn’t hire an unknown, but rather than hire a splashy name, she wanted to hire someone who would build the program, someone who understood it. A long-term solution. She came to NC State as the athletic director in 2010.

Her mission - stated - was to refuse to accept the status quo. Almost every single non-revenue sport under Yow has made great strides, and many have been built up to programs that compete (and win) conference and national titles. She’ll retire in the next few years, but she’ll do everything she can to ensure her legacy at NC State remains a positive one.

She is said to dislike the concept of NC State Stuff, partially due to her desire to refuse to accept that things are this way just because. And she will leave the athletic department better than she found it.

“Good fortune and bad fortune and mojo and all that kind of stuff, it’s one crazy mix. But I still stand by once you take a step back and look at the trajectory of NC State, by and large it’s a pretty good big picture,” Rattray said. “When the smoke clears, I think all the NC State stuff anecdotes are really funny and great and makes for great Twitter when something weird happens. But at the same time, the body of work has been pretty good, largely. From 7-8 years ago, it has improved immensely.”

But Rattray served under Gottfried, and he felt like the fanbase at times was unfair to his boss and the team. And even to the football team.

He cited an incident of the crowd booing when the team got down 6-1 early against Pitt, coming off of a bad loss to Cincinnati.

“Like if you’re chanting fire the (football) coach, I don’t know what you’re supposed to expect, what productive outcome you’re hoping for when you do that," Rattray said. "Or when you boo kids that are down 6-1, I don’t understand what your outcome is for that. In those two examples, the outcome for NC State ended up being positive.”

Marion Youngblood, life and business coach and NC State graduate, knows that bad energy can collect and multiply and create a veritable cocktail of negativity. But she also just thinks from a big-picture perspective that what Rattray says has merit.

If the fans feel NC State Stuff is about to happen or just want to wallow around in negativity, she understands the impulse. But she’s sick and tired of it and wants it to stop.

When she thinks about the future of NC State, she smiles. And she wants NC State fans to smile, too.

“I’m proudly optimistic because I kind of know that if they’re going to turn it around, then they need us supporting them, believing in them and portraying that when we talk about them in public, when we talk about the fact that I am a proud State fan. I’m happy to say that out loud to people, and I can tell them why,” Youngblood said. “I’m going to give the players my full support and energy so that they can pick up on that just in case there’s anybody around who might be emitting something a little bit different.”

And her advice to her fellow fans is simple.

“Really dig deep - why are you a State fan? Don’t make it miserable for yourself. Enjoy being a State fan. There’s a lot there. Come on. Let’s help them create a beautiful legacy, starting now.”