One of the best games of the season played out in Chapel Hill on Saturday afternoon. NC State had its best performance under first-year coach Kevin Keatts to get a 95-91 overtime upset win against No. 10 North Carolina. 

The Wolfpack, even at 15-7 and 5-4 in the ACC, should be on their way to an NCAA Tournament berth -- though there's still plenty of work ahead. You win a game like this, it can change your season. UNC isn't invincible at home, but losses in the Dean Dome are about as common as snowfall on campus there. 

What a change from a year ago. Saturday's result was the 180-degree opposite from what Wolfpack fans went through on Jan. 8, 2017. A then-12-3 NC State team -- featuring future lottery pick Dennis Smith Jr. -- was thought to be a dark horse contender for the ACC title. Instead, the Wolfpack's game that day ended with the second-worst beating in program history. North Carolina won 107-56, a 51-point margin, and the outcome signaled a spiral for the Wolfpack. The team managed just three wins the rest of the season, and in mid-February, Mark Gottfried was told he would no longer be coaching NC State at the season's end.

With Keatts, things are so much different. NC State has now matched its win total from a season ago. On Saturday, the team played with poise and verse, with a tangible sense of urgent opportunity, against UNC. The Tar Heels got a career-high 22 points from Theo Pinson and 31 from Luke Maye, but the Wolfpack didn't buckle. Keatts' backcourt totaled 79 of the team's 95 points, including 29 from Allerik Freeman, who came off the bench to score 29 on 7-of-7 from 3. Markell Johnson had 20.

I didn't realize NC State had this kind of big-game performance in them. The win not only puts them in the bubble mix, it also ruined the reigning national champions' chances of winning the ACC regular season and getting a No. 1 seed for a third consecutive season. 

NC State now has wins over Arizona, Duke, Clemson and North Carolina. There's work to be done, a lot of it, but this road victory is worth its weight in figurative gold. NC State's going to lose more games, obviously, but if it's destined for the bubble it's going to be in good shape. There will not be many, if any, teams that can claim top-of-the-résumé scalps like Keatts' club. Keatts earning wins over Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Sean Miller this season is outstanding stuff. 

We're about to hit prime bubble-talk time. Every year brings a batch of teams with a lot of contradictory results. The Wolfpack will be no different, except that they have wins over teams currently projected to be No. 1, 2 or 3 seeds. The worst losses are to UNC Greensboro and Northern Iowa. Considering all the teams around them, the Wolfpack are doing just fine all of the sudden. 

Nine regular-season games remain for NC State. Five are at home, four are away. If NC State can win all its home games, it will enter the ACC tournament with 20 victories, 10 in conference. That should probably be enough. An NCAA Tournament résumé is never decided by one win, but it can be defined by it. For the Wolfpack, that win came Saturday. It showed that the program hired the right guy in Keatts and proved that this team is capable of beating just about anybody.