What to know about North Carolina State
Here’s what you need to know about fourth-seeded North Carolina State, Mississippi State’s opponent Friday in the Sweet 16 in Kansas City.
The Wolfpack is back
It’s been 11 years since the North Carolina State Wolfpack advanced to the Sweet 16, and that it happened this year was something of a surprise. N.C. State was picked to finish 10th in the (to be fair) deep Atlantic Coast Conference in the preseason, but shocked many by winning 26 games (again, the most since the last Sweet 16 team back in 2007).
It’s been a prolonged down period for N.C. State after legendary coach Kay Yow, but former assistant Wes Moore is now in his fifth season as head coach and built the team back into something Yow would be proud of.
“(Yow) battled cancer for 20 years and she kept coming back. That’s what they’ve done, just the way they keep fighting,” Moore told the Raleigh News & Observer.
“Think back to the Louisville game: we were down 26-1 to start the game, how ‘bout that? You feel like you’re out there in your underwear in front of 3,000 people. Next thing you know it’s a four-point game with three minutes left and we got the ball. We had a chance. That’s the way they are. They ignore the noise and keep coming.”
A lot like MSU in this way
Mississippi State coach Vic Schaefer basically played five players during Monday’s second-round win against Oklahoma State and has leaned on his starters overall far more than he did last season.
Moore can relate — six players are averaging at least 23 minutes a game, and scoring 61.3 of the Wolfpack’s 67 points a game.
Kiara Leslie is the newest face in the core group — the 6-foot redshirt junior guard transferred in from Maryland, and actually then ended her old team’s season Sunday in a 74-60 N.C. State win in the second round. Leslie scored 21 points with 11 rebounds and three steals. She’s an outside shooter, one of two N.C. State relies on (the other, Aislinn Konig, is making 34.4 percent of a remarkable 7.7 3-point attempts a game).
Chelsea Nelson is the team’s best player — a 6-foot-2 senior forward who was named first-team all-ACC by both the league’s coaches and a “blue ribbon panel.” She’s averaging 13.1 points and 9.6 rebounds a game, and expect her to match up with MSU star Victoria Vivians.
Can it beat the elite?
Three other ACC teams made the Sweet 16 — No. 1 seeds Louisville and Notre Dame, and No. 5 seed Duke. N.C. State played those three a combined five times and went 1-4, the lone win a 51-45 game against Duke in the ACC tournament earlier this month.
Nelson was important in that game with 15 and 15.
But the Wolfpack lost to Duke by 13 points in the earlier matchup and lost to Louisville and Notre Dame by an average margin of 10.67 points. So while the team has rarely been outclassed, it would also be a step up for it to play with Mississippi State and challenge for the upset win.