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Maybe it’s only fitting that NC State’s women’s basketball team is living up to the words of another Wolfpack coach.

“Survive and advance” was the phrase the late Jim Valvano used to describe his team’s improbable 1983 run to the national title, a moniker that’s become almost synonymous with the NCAA basketball tournaments.

And it certainly fits a group that has survived near-catastrophic series of injuries, the rigors of the best women’s basketball conference in the country and two NCAA Tournament opponents to advance to the Round of 16 in back-to-back years for the first time since 1991.

Monday night, on the court named for their iconic former coach in an arena bearing the name of the originator of the catchphrase, the Pack (28-5), the No. 3 seed, defeated 17th ranked Kentucky, the No. 6 regional seed, 72-57 to move on to the four-team regional round in Greensboro.

One year after losing to eventual national runner-up Mississippi State in the regional semifinals in Kansas City, Wes Moore’s squad is back in the Sweet 16 just an hour down the road.

The Wolfpack is preparing to face an Iowa team ranked eighth in the country, seeded second in the region and featuring ESPN’s National Player of the Year, 6-3 senior center Meg Gustafson.

“I just couldn’t be prouder of this team and group of young ladies,” Moore said. “They just amaze me, and keep on amazing me. It was just a great performance, and we’re really excited about having the opportunity to move on.”

Kentucky (25-8) was held to just 31.9-percent (22 of 69) by the Pack’s tenacious defense, including a chilly 3-for-16 (18.8 percent) the final 10 minutes, when a 7-0 Pack run to start the period sealed the win, ballooning what had been a five-point (53-48) lead to 12.

Senior Kiara Leslie, in her final home game in Raleigh, led all scorers with 26 points and added 10 rebounds.

“The will to keep playing is what drives me,” Leslie said following the win. “I definitely want to come out and perform for my teammates. It’s also my senior year, and I want to keep it going as long as I can.”

Leslie was one of three Pack players to register a double-double in the game, a first this season. Freshman center Elissa Cunane, despite constant double- and triple-teaming whenever she touched the ball in the paint, still collected 13 points (hitting 5 of 6 free throws) and a game-high 15 boards, helping the Pack to a huge 50-31 advantage on the glass.

Senior forward DD Rogers added 11 points and 11 boards. Sophomore guard Kai Crutchfield contributed 11 points, shooting a blistering 75-percent (3 of 4) from the field, all three-pointers.

NC State’s 10-for-21 shooting from long range (46.7-percent) was its best performance since making 13 of 23 treys (56.5 percent) in its second game of the season against Kent State.

For the third time in 12 years, and 13th overall, NC State finds itself one of the last 16 teams remaining in the NCAA Tournament, though in a situation it has never faced before.

Only once in its 12 previous Sweet 16 appearances has the Pack played in North Carolina, in 1987, when it lost to Rutgers (75-60) in Fayetteville. Thirty-two years later, the Pack will be playing in what will certainly be a home-court environment in the Greensboro Coliseum, where it played just three weeks ago in the ACC Tournament.

“It’s exciting to be going to Greensboro,” Moore acknowledged. “This opportunity to play an hour and a half away is something that we definitely will feed off of.”

Rogers and her teammates and coaches feel that a large Wolfpack Nation presence in Greensboro Saturday (and hopefully Monday) will be a key to NC State advancing on to Tampa for the Final Four.

The Iowa Hawkeyes will be the third Big Ten team NC State faces this season, after the Pack’s earlier meetings with Michigan State and Michigan, both victories.

The reigning Big Ten regular-season and tournament champions present the biggest post-season challenge the Pack has faced.

Iowa (28-6), after an opening round scare by Mercer (in a 66-61 comeback win), downed Missouri 68-52 in Iowa City, riding a 19-2 second-half run to earn its seventh trip to the Sweet 16.

The Hawkeyes are led by Big Ten Player of the Year and conference tournament MVP Meg Gustafson, the 6-3 senior post tabbed by ESPN as the Women’s College Basketball Player of the Year.

A 28-points-per-game scorer who averages 70-percent accuracy from the floor, Gustafson is the conference’s all-time rebounds leader, with 1,438 going into this weekend. She averages 13.5 boards a game.

In the Big Ten Tournament title game against Maryland (a 90-76 win), Gustafson set a tournament record with 45 points to go with 10 boards, her 30th double-double of the season.

Gustafson is one of three seniors in Iowa’s experienced starting five. Hannah Stewart, a 6-2 forward, is the team’s second-leading rebounder (6.6 per game) and third-leading scorer (11.1 points), while 5-3 point guard Tania Davis averages 10.4 points and 2.7 boards a contest.

The winner Saturday moves on to the regional final Monday evening against either No. 4 seed and 15th-ranked South Carolina (23-9) or No. 1 seed Baylor (33-1), the No. 1-ranked team in the country and top overall seed for the tournament.

The Bears, led by 2019 Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Coach of the Year Kim Mulkey, are riding a 25-game winning streak, their only loss coming against Stanford (68-63) on Dec. 15.

After sweeping the Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles for the eighth time in nine years, Baylor earned the No. 1 seed for the sixth time in program history, and easily defeated Abilene Christian (95-38) and California (102-63) in their opening rounds in Waco.

Senior 6-7 center Kalani Brown (15.5 points, 8.1 rebounds) and 6-4 junior forward Lauren Cox (12.6 points, 8.0 rebounds) lead an attack that, as a team, averages 50.1 percent shooting and 81.5 points a game.

The Bears have allowed opponents just 54.3 points a game, while outrebounding teams by an average of 17.8 boards a contest.

Former NC State guard Chloe Jackson, a fifth-year senior, averages 11.4 points an outing for Baylor.

NC State coach Wes Moore was concerned about his team’s 14-day layoff between its ACC Tournament semifinal loss to Louisville on March 9 and its NBCAA Tournament opener against Maine on March 23 — especially since the Black Bears’ America East Tournament win over Hartford (68-48) had come on March 15.

“They played a week after we did, and at times, offensively, it showed.” Moore said of the Pack’s 63-51 win last Saturday. “We made a nice run in the second quarter [an 11-0 stretch to end the period and give the Pack a 39-22 lead at the half], and then in the second half, for whatever reason, we got a little stagnant out there [Maine outscored the Pack 28-24 over the final two periods].”

The win was a rare second for NC State this season against a non-conference opponent, after an 84-46 thrashing of the Bears in December, when the Wolfpack still had Grace Hunter, Armani Hawkins and Erika Cassell healthy.

Kiara Leslie led all scorers with 20 points on 8-of-15 shooting. Elissa Cunane added 16 points and a team-high nine rebounds while Kai Crutchfield tallied 14 points, three short of her career high.

• NC State’s two wins over the weekend give the Pack 28 so far this season, second-most in program history. A win against Iowa Saturday would tie the 1977-78 squad (29-5) for the most wins ever. The victories over Maine and Kentucky even the Pack’s all-time NCAA Tournament record at 24-24.

• Barring an upset by South Carolina Saturday, and assuming an NC State win over Iowa, the Bears and Pack will meet for only the third time in program history in Monday’s regional final. NC State has split its two previous meetings with the Bears, losing 79-63 in the San Juan Shootout in Puerto Rico in December 2003. The Pack's lone win over Baylor came on March 20, 2007, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at PNC Arena, NC State taking the Bears to overtime before prevailing, 78-72.

NC State is 19-11 all-time against South Carolina, the Pack winning the most recent meeting, 55-53, in Raleigh in December 2011.

• Pack coach Wes Moore is hoping for a better fan turnout this weekend in Greensboro than NC State’s two NCAA Tournament games in Reynolds Coliseum. Average attendance for the two-day sessions was just 2,726, half of Reynolds’ 5,500 capacity.

“I thought we could have had bigger crowds,” Moore said following NC State’s second-round win over Kentucky. “We sold out three of our last four regular-season games, so the numbers weren’t quite what we wanted. But, the ones that were here were loud!”

“They definitely pumped me up to play even harder,” added senior forward DD Rogers, who, with graduate guard Kiara Leslie, played her last home game Saturday.

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