Strong Start for Pack Women

#20 State visits #13 Carolina tonight.

Pack is Back (The Herald-Sun):

With a new coach leading a veteran team, the N.C. State women are off to their best start in more than a decade.

That includes the program’s first national ranking since one of its final seasons under late Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow.

The No. 20 Wolfpack (14-1, 1-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) beat ranked LSU in nonconference play, then rallied from 10 down in the second half to beat then-No. 20 Syracuse last weekend in the league opener. Now first-year coach Wes Moore is pushing his team to maintain its surprising start heading into Thursday’s game at No. 13 North Carolina (6 p.m., ESPN3).

A win would give N.C. State its first 2-0 start in ACC play since the 1999-2000 season, which was the last time the team started 14-1.

“I don’t think that’s so much about coaching or about me,” Moore said. “It’s about them. They wanted to step up and win so I think it started there. I always tell teams: It’s your team, we’re going to do as well as y’all want to do. I can’t make you buy in, I can’t make you work hard. We’re going to do as well as you want to do — and these kids have wanted to do well.”

It’s the program’s first ranking since ending the 2006-07 season at No. 18 after an emotional run to the NCAA round of 16 amid Yow’s long fight with breast cancer.

Beating the rival Tar Heels (12-3, 0-1) would mark the program’s first nine-game winning streak in 13 seasons.

Wolfpack off to winning start (ESPN):

The Wolfpack are 14-1 overall and won their ACC opener Sunday against then-No. 20 Syracuse 67-61. After going 17-17 and ending last season with a WNIT loss to James Madison and coach Kellie Harper’s departure, NC State is one of the best “surprise” stories of this college season so far.

Hey, Wolfpack coach Wes Moore needed something to cheer him up after the torturous NFL season his beloved Dallas Cowboys just put him through. NC State’s success so far has stirred a fan base eager to get behind the Wolfpack.

“It is exciting,” Moore said, but with that cautionary tone all coaches have, not wanting to be overly optimistic. “I feel like our kids did almost everything they could do to put us in good position in the nonconference. They took care of business for the most part.”

It’s different for Moore being an underdog now at NC State, as opposed to the Southern Conference favorite his Chattanooga team was for most of his 15 seasons there. NC State was picked to finish 10th in the ACC this season, and Moore seemed realistically prepared for a rough ride.

But his veteran players, in particular, have smoothed things over very well to this point. Eight of the 14 Wolfpack players are either seniors or juniors, some of the redshirt variety. Coaches who take over programs generally will admit to some worry about whether older players they inherit might be too set in their ways and/or resentful of a different regime.

That fear has not manifested itself with the Wolfpack; instead it has been the opposite.

“The seniors and juniors have played extremely well,” Moore said. “They’ve been very open to our system and way of doing things. I couldn’t be prouder of them, really.”

The question now, of course, is how good NC State really is. The Wolfpack’s biggest nonconference victory was Dec. 20 at home against LSU, which was ranked No. 12 at the time. That win got even more luster when LSU subsequently defeated Tennessee on the road.

“When we beat LSU, that’s when we started to realize we could play with pretty much any team,” Burke said. “But we’re still very grounded. We know what we’re going to have to face in the ACC. It’s really difficult.”

Next up Thursday in Chapel Hill, N.C., is NC State’s biggest traditional rival: North Carolina. The No. 13 Tar Heels are a team led mostly by freshmen and a sophomore. Even with their youth, they were expected to contend in the ACC — and nationally — this season. The older Wolfpack didn’t have any external expectations at all, really.

“We weren’t picked very high in the preseason polls in the conference,” Moore said. “So we have to climb over some people and put ourselves in position to be contenders.”

Thus far, the Wolfpack are showing they can do that.

“We just want to prove to the rest of the country,” Burke said, “that we really can play.”

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Home Forums Strong Start for Pack Women

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  • #36332
    StateFans
    Keymaster

    #20 State visits #13 Carolina tonight. Pack is Back (The Herald-Sun:) With a new coach leading a veteran team, the N.C. State women are off to their b
    [See the full post at: Strong Start for Pack Women]

    #36333
    FergusWolf
    Participant

    I think the quote from Wes says it all:

    “I don’t think that’s so much about coaching or about me,” Moore said. “It’s about them. They wanted to step up and win so I think it started there. I always tell teams: It’s your team, we’re going to do as well as y’all want to do. I can’t make you buy in, I can’t make you work hard. We’re going to do as well as you want to do — and these kids have wanted to do well.”

    I wish all of our teams had this attitude.

    Go Pack, beat them Heels!

    #36334
    packbackr04
    Participant

    a great season so far for the ladies.

    as a side note. A great story from a caravan event right before Fowler announced the hiring of Harper.

    me: “heard, you are about to hire a new womens B-ball coach, can you give me any info?”

    Fowler: “no i cant mention any names”

    me” “well, can he/she coach worth a damn?”

    Fowler: “i dont know if she can coach, but shes hot as hell”

    #36335
    Adventuroo
    Participant

    If you listened to the post game comments after the Syracuse game, Coach Moore understands what it means to play UNC. However, he did make a point that if you just channeled all the emotion into a “lets beat UNC”, that there could be a letdown afterwards.
    He said that he was going to keep them focused on winning, regardless of who the opponent was, as he had in the past. BUT, he would certainly make them aware that is was UNC which is a big rival and he had no love for that school….

    Coach Moore really seems to “get it” and he also understands HOW TO WIN. Obviously coach Harper did recruit some talent, but not the top tier. When you take some talent and mix in good coaching (utilization) and keep them focused and they play as a team that says, “we can win”, that is the secret to a great program.

    As an aside, he has “officially” arrived at NCSU. Sometime right before Christmas, we ate at Amedeo’s and the Kelly Harper Booth was there. Later on, we went back and some of the booths had been renamed or rearranged. I did not inventory all of them, so maybe the KH (UGH…what ugly initials) booth is still there, but there IS a Wes Moore Booth.

    GO PACK….seeing UNC BB suffer TWO losses on consecutive nights would be priceless.

    #36353
    Gowolves
    Participant

    Fergus, I had a coach in HS who used to say the same thing. One of the best coaches I ever had. You have to have a mature team to approach them that way. I think the team has real good leaders. That makes all the difference in the world.

    #36354
    BJD95
    Keymaster

    It’s on espn3 tonight. Worth pulling up your interwebs window, methinks.

    #36369
    PoppaJohn
    Participant

    This is really exciting. Just like the men, the women are a historically high quality team. Great to see Coach Moore getting right back to it.
    Very impressive coaching job.

    #36380
    wufpup76
    Keymaster

    “But his veteran players, in particular, have smoothed things over very well to this point.”

    ^What a concept, haha. Very impressive ladies, keep going!

    ‘The Carolina Way’ needs some more comeuppance.

    #36382
    JohnGalt78
    Participant

    B Ball Babes! Rock on! Beat the Cheats!

    BTW, on the men’s side, is a loss to UNCheat now a “bad” loss, as they say? Ha ha ha ha ha ha…. Rat bastards! They will be “0-3 in the ACC” after this weekend.

    #36421
    Adventuroo
    Participant

    Post Morteum. Decided at the last minute to escape Raleigh and go to the bowels of liberalism and lack of academic integrity….

    Game was pretty for about the first half. Then, it seemed that the ladies got a bad case of the malady that Gott said plagued the men. They just looked TIRED and Lost (lack of focus is the term). That lead to a complete meltdown….the China Syndrome happened to us. Went to the half with a zillion to one run (actually down 16 points).
    Miracles of miracles….they cut that to only 8 within the first couple of minutes and looked like they were on a tear. UNC wisely called time out. We fizzled.
    However, about 10 minutes to go, we chipped at it….but to no avail.
    There was a LOUD contingent of students (bussed in I think) and they had a LOT of enthusiasm.
    DW and I did our post game….the Ladies were either tired and not as sharp from the celebration after the Cuse game or else they used all their pent-up adrenelin on UNC during the first minutes and it took 20 minutes before they got another recharge….and the damage was done.

    Only OTHER comment….I hate LIGHT BLUE. My wife said the LAST BB game she saw in Chapel Hill was exactly 11 years ago. I was traveling and she got prime seats (UNC was LOUSY) from her boss and took relatives and our VERY PG daughter. My daughter allegedly said…”I can’t let my little boy grow up in an environment like this….”. I would point out that he is a mix…his dad is a loyal UNC grad and my Meredith grad daughter is about as fanatical about her Wolfpack as he is about his Tar Heels.

    Time will heal the pain….Time will also allow Coach Moore to rebuild. He did get a LITTLE hostile. He was “critiquing” the Zeb’s interpretations of certain on court activities. One Zeb gave him a warning. Several minutes or perhaps in the next half, he took a stronger exception to another mis-interpretation and was T’ed up. Hit one…missed one…it helped some.

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