Senior guard Marissa Kastanek drives around Duke junior guard Chelsea Gray during the basketball game in Reynolds Coliseum Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013. Photo by John Joyner.
It was a tough stretch for the women’s basketball team during the winter break.
Over the holidays, the Pack fell in three of its four games — with all of the losses coming within league play. The lone victory came in Rochester, N.Y., when N.C. State won a squeaker vs. St. Bonaventure, 70-66, after the Bonnies trimmed a 17-point Wolfpack lead with less than seven minutes remaining to only two points with 20 seconds left. A put-back from junior forward Kody Burke with 13 seconds to go sealed the victory.
Sunday afternoon, the Wolfpack fell to 8-7 overall and 0-3 in the ACC with a dispiriting 69-56 loss to Wake Forest (8-6, 1-1) at Lawrence Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem. With the loss to the Demon Deacons, it marks the second year in a row N.C. State has opened the conference season with three straight losses.
The Pack committed 20 turnovers against the Demon Deacons and it was made to pay, as Wake Forest tallied 29 fast-break points in the game. Burke was the one of the few bright spots for N.C. State, as the junior forward from Northridge, Ca., had her fourth double-double on the season, 11th in her career, with 12 points and 11 rebounds.
It seemed N.C. State was poised to turn the corner after its first two league games. The Wolfpack was handed a tough opening conference slate, with match-ups against the top two teams in last season’s conference standings, Duke and Miami, to begin ACC play.
The ACC home opener in Reynolds Coliseum featured the Wolfpack hosting the third-ranked Duke Blue Devils. The last time N.C. State had played its Triangle neighbors from Durham, the Pack secured a major upset by beating the Devils, 75-73, in the quarterfinals of the 2012 ACC tournament.
Burke, with 15 points and six rebounds, and senior guard Marissa Kastanek, with 12 points, three assists and two steals, led the way for the Pack in the 67-57 loss to its rivals from the Bull City.
“I feel like our guards really just look for me,” Burke said. “I feel like a lot of my points come from our guards being unselfish.”
In its league opener, N.C. State had what head coach Kellie Harper deemed an effort that “lacked focus” in Coral Gables, Fl., against Miami. The Pack were throttled, 79-53, as the Hurricanes held Kastanek scoreless for the first time in her career.
“This was tough, we couldn’t get anything going on the offensive end,” Harper said. “We weren’t taking good shots, but also we were taking rushed shots.
“I thought we were too soft on defense at the start of the game, and Miami played with so much confidence and was able to dictate the pace of the game,” Harper said. “I thought in the first half our offense dictated how we played on defense.”
“The biggest thing is: Where is our focus at?” Kastanek said. “Is it at just beating one team, and then we are satisfied, or is it at being a great team in general?”
“A great basketball team gets motivated and excited for every opponent they play,” Kastanek said.
The Pack now enters a pivotal moment of its season over the next few weeks, starting with a home match-up with its other rival from the Triangle, UNC-Chapel Hill. With tough road games against Maryland and Virginia looming afterwards, the margin for error has grown significantly smaller.
“I still have a lot of confidence in this basketball team,” Harper said. “I like this team. If we continue to work hard and continue to improve, we can make a strong run.”