#3 seed NC State held on last night, defeating #6 seed Tennessee 79-72 in Reynolds Coliseum to advance to the Sweet 16 for the 5th time in the last 6 tournaments.
The Wolfpack led by only 1 after the 1st Quarter, but they looked like they had things under control at halftime, leading by 18 points.
At one point, NC State led by as much as 20 points in the 3rd Quarter, but the Lady Volunteers weren’t about to give up.
With 4:19 left in the 4th, Tennessee cut the lead to 2 points, but NC State might have bent, but they wouldn’t break.
Junior Guard Aziaha James led the way with 22 points and 7 assists, which were both team highs. She scored 7 points in the final 3.5 minutes, helping to squash tue Last Vols’ comeback attempt.
Junior Guard Saniya Rivers had 20 points (6-14 FG) and 6 boards.
Freshman Zoe Brooks was clutch off the bench, chipping in 16 points and 6 boards.
This marks the 16th time the NC State Women’s Basketball team has advanced to the Sweet 16.
The Wolfpack will play #2 seed Stanford on Friday night at 7:30pm on ESPN in Portland.
Looking at historical win records, we are at 19-5 / 9-4 right now. 7 regular season games to go.
Post Norm Sloan, the most wins in a season is Valvano’s championship season at 26 wins. Nobody got 25. Keatts got 24 once, Gottfried got 24 twice. Sendek peaked at 23.
We play more ACC games now, but since Sloan, the most ACC wins in a season is 11 which Keatts, Gottfried, and Sendek each did once. It’ll have an asterisk, but this one is definitely within reach.
On Twitter Josh Goodson said ‘Tomorrow is State’s biggest regular season game in years. And then BC will be State’s biggest regular season game in years. Then the game after that’. (etc, you get the idea)
February has the potential to fall anywhere on the scale from ‘one of the best regular seasons ever to CHOKE!!’. As long as DJ is playing this well, and keeps getting that tough basket when we need it, I tend to think we’ll trend toward the positive end of the scale.
Everything is so bunched up right now that there are likely going to be a lot of tiebreaker seedings. That creates even more urgency playing those teams we are bunched up with, UVA being a key one.
After the weekend’s festivities, looking at the Monday morning rankings, we rank 4th in the ACC, and are the 4th ranked team in the ACC in both NET and KP. Surely (don’t call me Shirley!) they will take 4 teams from the ACC, at least. At this point, I think we are solidly in the tournament. But still plenty of tough games that could mess this up. If we can avoid stumbling at Chestnut Hill (Q3), that should prevent a catastrophic fall in the rankings. Winning any of the other games (I think 3 Q2 and 3 Q1) should either… Read more »
At this point, it would be great to finish in the top four of the ACC. going from not playing at all, to double bye…priceless.
Several opportunities in front of us to boost this rating. GT was our last Q4 and BC will be our last Q3.
Three game northern road trip staring us in the face. Have to win 2 of 3, winning 3 of 3 would really put us in a strong position, but we won’t be favored at UVA.Then a three game home stand, UNC, WF, Clemson. Winning 2 might lock us into the NCAAT and seat us well. All three will be brutal games.Then we finish at Cameron. I thought that was UNC’s gig?
Was looking for comments from others but. This game gives me the hope that, despite our record, I have been reluctant to let out. Watching Grant score and defend early and Ross really have a great game is rewarding beyond my wildest dreams. Having suffered through way too many mediocre even horrible seasons, it’s tough to let yourself think about anything but the next game. Morsell is an unsung hero. Burns, what can you say? He seems to have set the tone of this team…. Don’t worry, be happy. Last time JJ and Smith shot this poorly, they kept shooting… Read more »
Apologies to Gantt. I am going to plead spellchecker or typo.
I’ll say it again, there’s no way those other conferences are that much better than the ACC. The entire this is biased on initial assumptions and rankings. Since we don’t play between conferences late in the season, that bias remains. If Duke or Miami won every remaining game through the ACCT they might still not be ranked top 5.
Still, we may get 7 teams in and get a chance to prove things.
I hope we get 7 in. However, I watched the Duke Wake game while on the airplane Tuesday and they looked awful. Both teams looked poorly coached. Maybe I am being harsh, but I don’t think it was a defensive struggle. Wake couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean that night. Duke recovered and the beat the Holes, so we will just have to see how all this turns out. We definitely control out own destiny ( except for teams we defeated falling in the NET ).