These are heady days for head coach Wes Moore’s NC State women’s basketball program.
Ranked No. 2 in the nation for the second consecutive week going into Thursday's overtime loss at Virginia Tech, the Wolfpack Women have already beaten one No. 1 ranked team (South Carolina) this season and could be in line for another opportunity when they play at likely No. 1 Louisville on Monday evening.
Earlier this season, Moore and his squad upended the top-ranked Gamecocks, which was the fourth win over a No. 1 ranked team in program history. The second of those came on March 3, 2007, when Kay Yow’s team defeated No. 1 Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.
Neither of those were quite like the program-defining victories Yow and the fourth edition of the Wolfpack Women had during the 1977-78 season, when they beat a top-ranked team and took on the biggest names in women’s college basketball.
The first of those games was a loss at No. 3 Tennessee on Jan. 2, 1978. The second was 10 days later after wins over No. 7 UCLA, High Point and North Carolina, when Yow and her team took down the biggest name in women’s basketball — Wayland Baptist.
Who?
Anyone familiar with women’s college basketball before Title IX of the U.S. Educational Acts were passed in 1972 knew about WBC, also known as Hutcherson’s Flying Queens.
The tiny private Southern Baptist school in Plainview, Texas, started up a women’s team in 1947 and quickly became so good that when the coach who led both the men’s and women’s teams had to choose which program he wanted to lead when two became too many. He chose the women.
There were few women’s college teams to face back then, and Wayland Baptist played against just about anybody, from international teams to industrial semipro squads to Amateur Athletics Union teams. At one point, the Queens won 131 consecutive games, which is over three dozen more than the current NCAA record for consecutive wins by both men’s and women’s teams.
In the 1950s, they won four consecutive AAU national championships and lost in the finals on their way to their fifth title. They were UCLA-good long before John Wooden took the Bruins to seven consecutive national titles.
Why, though, were they the Flying Queens? It seems back in the days before Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) or NCAA rules, there were no guidelines for what the few collegiate women’s teams could provide for their players.
A wealthy Plainview entrepreneur, Claude Hutcherson, and his wife adopted the women’s team from the local school, dressing them up in starched white shirts, ankle-length blue skirts and matching blazers.
They hosted swimming parties and banquets at their home. And, most importantly, as the owner of a small aviation charter company, Hutcherson let the team borrow a full squadron of six-seat Beechcraft Bonazas to fly to games all over the country.
They managed to rub elbows with the best men’s programs in the country and once, while snowed-in at a Nashville, Tennessee, hotel, they learned a razzle-dazzle routine from the Harlem Globetrotters that they took back with them to the wind-swept plains of Texas to perform at halftime.
The program was so successful, that the Flying Queens of 1947-82 were officially recognized for their ground-breaking pre-NCAA accomplishments with induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
In Yow’s inaugural season, the Wolfpack met the Flying Queens in the semifinals of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament in Amarillo, Texas. Playing in front of a home crowd and against a woefully undersized Wolfpack, Wayland ran away with the game, 94-65.
“They beat us to death inside,” said Sherri Pickard, one of the team’s tri-captains.
Even though the Wolfpack won both the state AIAW tournament and the regional tournament that year, they were hardly competitive on the national scene.
Yow put together two strong regular season schedules and recruited 6-2 future All-American Genia Beasley at center and 5-11 twins Kaye and Faye Young at forward. In 1977, she invited another early women’s college basketball power, Immaculata College of Malvern, Pennsylvania, to play at Reynolds, losing 95-90. The next season, Yow agreed to play at No. 3 Tennessee and to host No. 7 UCLA and top-ranked Wayland.
It was a way for a young program to make its mark and improve its position in the women’s college basketball polls, which began in 1977.
Yow was exceptionally proud of her team’s first entry into the national rankings, where they were mentioned with teams like Immaculata and Wayland Baptist.
“The ranking has motivated my team,” Yow said. “It’s not pressure; it’s motivation. When we were first ranked, Kentucky was ranked 17th and we were 18th. We really wanted to be ranked ahead of my sister’s team [future NC State athletics director Debbie Yow].
“The next week, we just switched places. The polls do mean something to us.”
Wayland flew into town along with a mid-January snowstorm to face the No. 4 Wolfpack. The game was played with borrowed officials and a smaller-than-anticipated crowd of 6,500 spectators at Reynolds Coliseum, most of whom walked from campus or nearby Raleigh neighborhoods.
The game itself was not close, with Yow’s team winning 98-86. Freshman guard Trudi Lacey had 23 points and Beasley added 20. The Wolfpack used its superior size to shoot 61 percent from the field, improving on their six-point halftime lead and holding off a late surge by the Queens.
“Wayland Baptist was the real deal back then,” said Yow’s former top assistant, Nora Lynn Finch, who later became the Associate Commissioner of ACC Basketball.
“The women’s game was so young in North Carolina back then, and we didn’t have much of an identity as a team.
“Wayland had three decades of international success. If you look at tradition and experience, we were the new penny in the bank. That’s what made the win in Reynolds remarkable.”
The Wolfpack quickly came back to earth, however. It’s next game was at Virginia, played in front of 134 spectators. Both Yow and Finch were disappointed in their team’s effort, despite a 77-62 victory.
Later that season, following a runner-up finish in the first ACC Championship, Yow’s team again won the NCAIAW and Region II tournaments.
After handily beating Missouri, Yow and her team again faced Wayland Baptist in the sectional finals.
This time, the Queens’ postseason poise and experience came throughin a 72-55 victory.
The Wolfpack finished the season ranked No. 3 in the final AP poll, the highest in school history.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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