After 15 games this season, head coach Wes Moore looks like he might lead the Wolfpack women’s basketball program back to the heights it reached in the 1980s.
Coaching changes often bring a bounce to a program, but Moore’s return to N.C. State, where he was an assistant coach for Kay Yow from 1993-95, has a different feel to it. After coming to Raleigh from Tennessee-Chattanooga, where he coached for 15 seasons and became the all-time wins leader in Southern Conference history, Moore seems poised to reach another level.
One year ago, Moore no longer had any real challenges or achievements remaining at Chattanooga, barring a magical Butler-type run to the national championship game. If he was ever going to make the move to a school in a major conference, the time had come to do so.
Enter N.C. State.
The Pack languished under previous head coach Kellie Harper. Loaded with depth and recruits who truly are “student-athletes”, Harper often seemed to struggle with tactics and player rotation. Starters spent extended time on the bench in games, rotations were inconsistent from game-to-game, players played out of position and when the inevitable late-game collapse would occur, no adjustments would be made. Harper has the potential to be a great coach in the future, but she struggled in her four years at State.
And N.C. State needed an immediate change. Moore’s hiring has provided a boost on many fronts. The Wolfpack received its first AP top-25 ranking of the season on Monday, coming in at No. 20. It is also the first time State has been ranked since the final poll of the 2007 season. Attendance in Reynolds Coliseum, home of the Wolfpack women’s basketball team, has also increased during recent weeks as a result of State’s fine play.
Moore accepted a job that required rebuilding and the planned multi-million dollar renovations to Reynolds mirrors the task he faces; to take a once-proud program back to its former heights. When the arena is finished, Moore will be entering his fourth season at State. With a team composed almost entirely of players he will have recruited, it is not hard to envision the women’s basketball program being top-tier both in the ACC and nationally.
In Sunday’s victory over then-20th ranked Syracuse, with the Orange stifling the Pack with a zone defense that caused intense pressure in the backcourt and clogged the lane in the frontcourt, Moore made the brilliant tactical maneuver to insert freshman Ashley Williams, a well known three-point shooter, into the game with only nine minutes remaining.
Williams, who had not played up until that point, stretched the Syracuse zone and N.C. State—trailing by nine points when she entered the game—began a run where it out-scored the Orange by 16 points over the remainder of the game. It took foresight and guts to make the move, but it paid off for Moore and the Pack.
The veteran coach, who Harper coached for as an assistant at UTC, is showing that he has a wealth of basketball knowledge, but is also benefiting from having a group of players with high basketball IQs. Senior forward Kody Burke, a two-time Academic All-American, and sophomore forward Ashley Eli both have nearly perfect GPAs.
Moore installed a new offense that features four players out and one in. It is helpful to have players that are hungry to win, smart enough to comprehend a new system and selfless enough to accept that the system change needed to occur.
This week N.C. State will travel around the state of North Carolina to both UNC-Chapel Hill and Wake Forest. With the Pack facing a ranked archrival in UNC and a school with two top scorers in Wake, it will not be easy to pull off a victory. But you get the feeling with Moore in charge that there will be a strategy for success. During the last few years, that could be what N.C. State has been lacking most.
