N.C. State (23-9), eight days after it last played in the women’s ACC Tournament Championship, finally discovered its postseason destination when it was one of four schools in the nation to be televised live on ESPN’s tournament selection show.
Appearing on the show, along with Duke, Middle Tennessee State and Arizona State, the Wolfpack was revealed as the fourth seed in the Fresno region where it will face No. 13 seed Robert Morris (24-7) for the first time in school history. The teams square off in first-round action Sunday at noon in the RBC Center.
Senior forward Sasha Reaves said State’s seeding was very rewarding for a team that has battled through adversity this season — mainly the absence and return of coach Kay Yow as she has struggled with breast cancer.
“Mainly a four seed was what I was looking for,” Reaves said. “I heard my teammates saying that anything lower than a four seed, then they wouldn’t have been satisfied. So it was good getting that.”
The Pack became the first No. 4 seed in tournament history to defeat two No. 1 seeds in the same season.
Meanwhile, playing in the RBC Center will certainly give the players an advantage playing close to home and in front of a local crowd, according to senior guard Ashley Key, but she said it will be “even greater” for Yow.
“She doesn’t have to travel because it is only two minutes down the road,” Key said. “She will get to rest, and she will have a lot of fans behind her.”
The team has been riding the emotion of Yow, winning 10 of 12 games since she returned to the sidelines, including a home win against then No. 2 North Carolina and a run to the championship game of the ACC Tournament, a weekend in which it handed No. 1 Duke its only loss of the season.
While it might seem that the emotion that State has been using to create this run could eventually run dry, Reaves said the team has plenty of inspiration and motivation left in the tank for the tournament.
“We are still going to use it and go as far as we can go in the tournament,” Reaves said. “I know a lot of people think we might have run out, but we still have a lot of emotion left in us.”
Yow added the emotion the team has displayed during the run has been crucial to the team’s past accomplishments and will be important for its future success.
“They have discovered that they beat two No. 1 seeds,” Yow said. “If you wouldn’t have had that experience, playing on that emotion, you could go a lifetime and not really know they could have done this. They could have done it all along, but they wouldn’t have got it.”
Another key to the Pack’s success over the final month of the regular season leading to the tournament, according to Yow, is the team’s ability to focus on the task at hand and not concern itself with where the selection committee would place it.
“Our focus was just on each game and our position in the ACC,” Yow said. “We were much more concerned coming down the stretch where our seed was going to be in the ACC because we realized that was going to affect the NCAA.”
As for being on national television, Reaves said the experience was “fun” and rewarding, but it was also a great opportunity for more people to see Yow and her perseverance.
“That all let us know we are part of something very special,” Reaves said. “That was good for her to get the attention that she so deserves. She deserves even more.”
And as Yow stated during her live interview with ESPN’s Trey Wingo during the show, the Pack’s resume shows the team will be a contender in this year’s tournament — a team that everyone should be watching for.
“We can compete with anyone in the country,” Yow said. “When we go out on the court, that is the mindset we need. This is a special team with a special spirit.”
