Third straight ACC title only the beginning for NC State, which has unfinished business
Let’s just say some of N.C. State’s players were a bit reckless with the scissors, dancing and posing and hopping down off the stairs with abandon.
They’ve had enough practice at this by now. They’ve earned our trust.
As expected, N.C. State won the ACC women’s basketball title yet again, celebrating amid confetti and falling balloons in the Greensboro Coliseum for the third straight year. Miami, which upset Louisville on Saturday, hung around for a while. N.C. State, having been here before, would not be denied.
The Wolfpack used a 10-0 run to close out the first half and open some space, then blew past Miami like a Raina Perez spin dribble. The only doubt was the status of Elissa Cunane, who crumpled to the floor in the third quarter after turning her left ankle and disappeared to the back recesses of the Greensboro Coliseum, only to make her triumphant return to the bench in the fourth.
N.C. State coach Wes Moore debated whether to put her back in the game, then figured it would soothe everyone’s minds. Including his. Really, at that point, it was just marking time until the celebration started. Yet again.
And as the very partisan crowd chanted “three-peat” in the final minute, Kai Crutchfield dribbled out the clock, then heaved the ball into the air at the end of a 60-47 win.
Duke won five in a row from 2000-2004. North Carolina won four in a row from 2005-2008. N.C. State has won three in a row. And counting, although this was the last stand in Greensboro for this group that has gone through so much, and come so far.
“I did come back to play these big games and win these big games and win championships,” Perez said. “That’s what we’ve been doing.”
There’s a progression here, on this same floor in Greensboro albeit under very different circumstances — immediately pre-COVID, mid-COVID, imminently post-COVID — that mirrors the entire narrative arc of N.C. State’s program.
Two years ago, the end of an historic drought and the realization of a long-thought-lost dream, triumph and relief and redemption all rolled into one.
Last year, the reaffirmation of all of that, and a chance to prove itself after COVID wiped out the NCAA tournament and cost the Wolfpack that chance the year before.
And this year, this final run in Greensboro for the core of this group — Cunane and Crutchfield and Kayla Jones and Perez — was merely a milestone toward their continuing completion of so much unfinished business.
“It’s a big step but I think the NCAA tournament, we were all a little disappointed,” Moore said. “Of course Kayla Jones got hurt, we ended up in the Sweet 16, but I think they wanted to rewrite that chapter. But then to win the regular season which hadn’t been done in 32 years, that just solidifies their place I think, and then to win this a third time. We still obviously have a lot of work to do.”
There’s plenty to savor.
The Wolfpack won the ACC regular-season title for the first time in 32 years. They became only the fifth team to win three straight ACC championships. And now they will pursue, as an unquestioned No. 1 seed this time, the Wolfpack’s first Final Four trip since 1998.
As they rolled into the Coliseum on Sunday morning, N.C. State fans lined the driveway for hundreds of yards, an impromptu parade route ahead of an expected coronation. It was merely the beginning of what the Wolfpack hopes will be another long road ahead.
This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 3:28 PM with the headline "Third straight ACC title only the beginning for NC State, which has unfinished business."
