NC State’s ACC basketball championship ended 3 decades of misery for Wolfpack sports
There were legends everywhere, at the broadcast table, wearing red in the stands, tucked into corners of the Greensboro Coliseum. N.C. State has produced more than its share of women’s basketball stars and influencers, as much a keystone of Kay Yow’s legacy as anything.
They have all waited a long time to be back in this position, to watch the Wolfpack play for the championship that, deep down, really matters. Ten years after the last chance, 29 years after the last title, the sense of anticipation Sunday was palpable.
So were the nerves. Debbie Antonelli, a consummate professional, could ably disguise them as she prepared for the ESPN telecast, but she meant as much to the N.C. State program as a player as anyone, an impending inductee to the N.C. Sports Hall of Fame for that every bit as much as her broadcasting career.
Debbie Yow was neither required or inclined to pretend not to be nervous. The former N.C. State athletic director has always carefully guarded her late sister’s legacy, perhaps no more effectively than when she made the decision to hire Wes Moore in 2013. That was no slam dunk; Moore came not from Tennessee but Chattanooga, a distance of far more than a hyphen in terms of women’s basketball tradition.
Then again, those times have changed everywhere. One of the original powers of women’s basketball under Kay Yow, the Wolfpack watched the rest of the world catch up and pass it by. But unlike some of the original outliers, like Louisiana Tech and Old Dominion, N.C. State has managed to rediscover its relevance — and at a time when the ACC, with the addition of Notre Dame and Louisville, has never been better.
That task was completed Sunday as three decades of pent-up frustration came tumbling out along with all the balloons when the Wolfpack held off Florida State late for a 71-66 win.
“I can’t believe I lived long enough to see it,” State fan Edie Nightingale screamed to the fans behind her as a very red building shuddered from the noise.
Wolfpack women’s basketball hadn’t won an ACC title since 1991 or played for one since 2010, which would feel like eons if it weren’t a mere tick of the clock by N.C. State standards. This is, after all, a school that hasn’t won a baseball title since 1992, a men’s basketball title since 1987, a football title since 1979. (Former men’s player Simon Harris is on the women’s staff, which arguably makes this the closest the men have come to a title since 2007.)
Heck, it’s been seven years since any North Carolina team won the ACC women’s title. Duke was the last in 2013, and that was the 16th Triangle title in 20 years. This was a long time coming in more ways than one.
“These fans have been waiting a long time,” Wolfpack star Elissa Cunane said, “and we finally brought it to them.”
The players themselves may have more than a passing sense of how much this means to so many people they may never know, but their focus, as it should be, is on the now. They have earned the right to celebrate a title they worked so hard to win, an opportunity essentially foreclosed last season by injuries, making the most of this second chance.
Only later, perhaps, will they come to see this on the continuum on which it lies, an uninterrupted path from Yow to now and the return to ACC preeminence of a program that, in the minds of those who care about it, never really left.
This story was originally published March 8, 2020 at 3:00 PM with the headline "NC State’s ACC basketball championship ended 3 decades of misery for Wolfpack sports."
