With three of the four regional brackets having been announced Monday night during ESPN’s 2018 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament selection show, NC State players, coaches and the several hundred fans gathered in the BB&T Grand Hall at Reynolds Coliseum who’d braved a late-season winter storm were beginning to wonder if this was déjà vu all over again.
Not that the Pack — with a 24-8 record following two wins in the ACC Tournament two weeks ago, a No. 21 ranking in the Associated Press poll and a top-25 RPI — was ever in danger of being left out of the dance, as it was in 2016. The nervous anticipation that built during the first 40 minutes of Monday’s selection show party was over the possibility that, as a top-four seed, NC State might, for the first time since 2007, be selected to host the first two rounds of the tournament.
“It seems like the last couple of years, we’ve been in the last bracket that gets shown,” senior post Akela Maize said (the Pack was the 57th selection, out of 64, to be announced in 2017). “You don’t really get used to it, but you just kinda expect we’d be in the last bracket. The suspense was like crazy, though.”
Pack head coach Wes Moore, who saw pre-selection predictions of a top-four seed and host opportunity a year ago vanish with NC State’s pick as a No. 6 seed, wasn’t ready to celebrate this year’s pre-tourney bracketology predictions of a No. 4 seed — until the third line of the Kansas City regional — the last one announced — came up on the screen showing “Raleigh, N.C.” as the host for the first-round game between Maryland — seeded No. 5 — and 12th-seeded Princeton.
“I knew it was either going to be us or Maryland, and one would be the four and one the five,” Moore said.
As it turned out, NC State will be the No. 4 seed — again, for the first time since 2007 — and will play Elon, the No. 13 seed, Friday at 2:30 p.m., following the Terrapins-Tigers game at noon. The winners will face each other Sunday at a time to be determined after Friday’s games, with that winner advancing to the Sweet 16 in Kansas City March 23.
“We knew, looking at the predictions, we were picked as a four seed to host, so we really had high hopes coming in,” senior forward Chelsea Nelson added. “I think we were getting a little nervous, but when we saw Raleigh up on the screen we all just went crazy.”
“It’s exciting [to be hosting] after some disappointment the last year or two, but also for the players, to have the opportunity to play here at home again,” Moore said. “But at the same time, this doesn’t guarantee anything — we still have to come out and get it done.”
Elon (25-7), which finished third in the Colonial Athletic Association in the regular season, upset the top two seeds James Madison and Drexel to win the conference tournament. For the first time in its 24 NCAA Tournament appearances, the Wolfpack will begin the Big Dance facing an opponent it has already seen in the regular season.
The Pack defeated the Phoenix 70-57 in Reynolds Coliseum Dec. 16 behind a 15-point, 11-rebound effort by senior forward Chelsea Nelson, and double-figure scoring from Maize (14), redshirt junior wing Kiara Leslie (10) and redshirt sophomore guard Kaila Ealey (11). NC State boasts an 8-1 all-time record against Elon, with the lone defeat (69-66) coming two years ago.
“They’re hot right now,” Moore said of the Phoenix. “They’re coming off a conference tournament championship after beating two very good teams [both JMU and Drexel made the WNIT field], and Charlotte [Smith] does a great job with them.
“We’ll have a tough battle because they’ll be motivated just to be in the tournament, but then playing NC State will really get their blood boiling, so to speak.”
The Phoenix are led by senior guard Shay Burnett, the team’s top scorer (13.3 points per game) and rebounder (7.5 per game). Burnett netted 14 points in the loss to the Wolfpack in December and was one of four Elon players saddled with foul trouble in that contest. Ra’Shika White, a 6-4 sophomore center, paced Elon against the Pack with 20 points in the losing effort.
A victory Friday would pit NC State, barring a huge upset, on Sunday against a Maryland team that went 25-7 this season and finished runner-up to Ohio State in the Big Ten. The Terps, who scored 80.3 points a game this season, have nine players who averaged double figures, led by All-Big Ten sophomore guard Kaila Charles (18.3 points per game) and sophomore guard Blair Watson (13.8).
“Hopefully, our fans will be excited and really turn out and make this a special weekend, with a lot of energy and excitement,” Moore said. “We like playing at home — we’ve had a lot of success here [12-2 in NCAA Tournament games played in Raleigh since 1982], so we like the opportunity to again have some momentum from the crowd.
“But you still have to go out and make the plays and get it done.”
“It is special to be hosting for the first time in 11 years — that’s cool,” Nelson added. “But we know we’re going to have to bring our ‘A’ game, be focused and locked in on who we’re playing.”
Nelson’s Record Effort Powers Pack to ACC Semifinals
NC State probably sewed up its top-four seed for this year’s NCAA Tournament with its longest run in the ACC Tournament since 2011.
The Pack, which earned the No. 5 seed after tying Duke for fourth in the conference at 11-5 , opened ACC tourney play in Greensboro, N.C., in the second round March 1 with its third victory over North Carolina this season, winning 77-64 despite a 27-point explosion from Tar Heel guard Paris Kea.
The Pack trailed 11-3 early in the opening period before a 19-5 run put them ahead to stay. Sophomore guard Ace Konig led the way with a team-high 19 points on 7-of-10 shooting, including a 5-of-7 effort from three-point range.
The next day, the Pack earned payback against the Blue Devils for a January loss, riding a record-setting 22-rebound effort by Chelsea Nelson (for a 47-37 edge on the boards) and a critical inbounds play for a Kiara Leslie layup with 1:17 to play for a 51-45 upset. Nelson’s 22 boards (she also led the Pack with 15 points) broke the ACC Tournament single-game record of 21, achieved by Clemson’s Barbara Kennedy in both 1981 and 1982.
“Nelson proved the kind of senior she is,” Duke head coach Joanne P. McCallie said afterward. “I mean, it’s incredible what she did out there. She won the game for her team, flat out, and I think it’s a lesson, because rebounding isn’t the sexiest thing, but it won that game, hands down.”
“I think Chelsea did us a favor [against UNC] by only playing 20 minutes due to foul trouble,” Moore joked, “so she was well rested.”
Nelson continued her strong play in the semifinals March 3 against top-seeded Louisville, finishing with a team-high 20 points and nine boards. But the Cardinals, led by a 15-point effort by center Sam Fuehring and 13 from guard Jazmine Jones, erased a seven-point, first-half Pack lead en route to a hard-fought, 64-59 win.
Cards senior guard Asia Durr, who was named the 2018 ACC Player of the Year, was held to just nine points by an outstanding defensive effort by Leslie, but NC State’s perimeter shooting deserted it. The Pack guards shot a combined 7 of 31 from the field and just 3 of 15 from long range.
Louisville went on to defeat Notre Dame 74-72 to end the Irish’s four-year reign as conference champs and earn a No. 1 seed in the Lexington (Ky.) Regional for the NCAA Tournament.
Nelson, who averaged 30.0 minutes, 16.0 points, 12.7 rebounds, and 1.0 steal per game while shooting 16 of 37 (43.2 percent) from the field, became the first NC State player since Marissa Kastanek, in 2012, to be named to the ACC All-Tournament team.
Notes
• Eleven times in NC State’s 23 previous NCAA Tournament appearances, it has reached the Sweet 16, including 1998, when Kay Yow’s squad earned the program's only Final Four appearance. Of those 11 trips to the NCAA Regionals, nine began with first-round wins in Raleigh, including the Pack’s most recent Sweet 16 appearance in 2007, when fourth-seeded NC State defeated Robert Morris (84-52) and No. 5 seed Baylor (78-72 in overtime) on the way to the regional semifinals in Fresno, Calif., before falling to top-seeded Connecticut 78-71.
As noted earlier, NC State is 12-2 all time in NCAA Tournament games played at home.
• This will mark head coach Wes Moore’s 12th NCAA Division I Tournament appearance, and third in the last five years at NC State. It will also be Moore’s second time hosting the tournament; his fifth trip to the NCAA Tournament with Chattanooga, in 2004, began at home with a first-round win over Rutgers before losing to Vanderbilt in round two.
But this won’t be Moore’s first time in Raleigh for the tournament. Ironically, he was also coaching the Mocs in 2007 when they lost to Baylor 68-55 in the first round at PNC Arena (then the RBC Center), setting up that second-round matchup between the Pack and Bears.
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