Despite loss, NC State women’s players hold heads high
Mimi Collins wants the 2023-24 N.C. State women’s basketball team to call her. She wants her teammates at her future wedding. She doesn’t want coach Wes Moore to sing, but maybe he can pull out his dance moves.
River Baldwin found a family and fell in love with basketball again, saying the team has “unmatched chemistry.”
It’s the closest team the players have been on. Aziaha James, who’s played with the Pack for three years, said there’s pure joy and everyone sticks together. That’s why the Wolfpack is all right. The 78-59 loss to South Carolina (37-0) in the national semifinal hurts. It will think about that devastating third quarter. It will second guess and wonder how it could have done things differently, but it will move forward.
N.C. State achieved its primary goal: Playing in the Final Four, with the best group and for a program it loves dearly. That’s what matters most.
“We’re ride-or-dies. It’s not just a one-woman show or anything. Everybody’s doing certain things to impact the game, and that’s what makes us good,” Madison Hayes said, calling her teammates sisters. “South Carolina’s a great team. They ended up beating us, but I feel like this team was just so connected and tied together. It’s really hard to break us apart.”
Collins described N.C.
State’s run as “heaven sent” and said she wouldn’t trade her team for anyone else.
“It’s never a dull moment between these girls. They’re not just my teammates; these are my sisters. I’m going to keep this memory forever,” James said, tears in her eyes. “I love this group of girls forever. These are my sisters, and I’m so proud of them.”
Freshman Laci Steele played four minutes. Even though the Wolfpack isn’t cutting down the nets, she also wouldn’t have chosen a different program. She chose N.C. State because of the people. Everything the team has been through validates her decision.
Then there’s Saniya Rivers. The junior transferred from South Carolina after winning the national title in 2022, and people questioned her decision. She has no regrets. Her team proved why she made a great decision, Rivers said. It made the Final Four and features unbreakable bonds.
“If I stayed [at South Carolina], we’d be in the Final Four. I left, we were in the Final Four,” Rivers said. “That’s a great team. They played a hell of a game, but we’re happy. I’m happy.”
The loss is disappointing, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Hayes reminded her teammates N.C. State hadn’t been to the Final Four since 1998, before any of them were born, back when Kay Yow coached the program. And it made it against all odds — literally. Look at the Vegas betting lines and win probability for most of the tournament games, and the Wolfpack’s opponent was most often the favorite. Last season was supposed to be the year. It didn’t even make it out of the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Then, N.C. State entered this season unranked. ACC coaches didn’t think it had much going for it this year. It was supposed to be a rebuild after losing depth and experience. The external expectations weren’t just low. They were nonexistent.
Even South Carolina coach Dawn Staley saw what N.C. State had. She believed Yow played a part in N.C. State’s historic season.
“It’s funny how you get hot and you get the unlikeliest group to get to the mountaintop,” Staley said before the game, noting N.C. State didn’t have the best team on paper. “Basketball is funny in that way. You persevere, and you figure out ways in which to shock the world. I’m sure they shocked the world when it comes to where they were at the beginning of the season to where they are now. I think it’s a beautiful story.”
But the team didn’t just play for the sisterhood inside the current locker room. Everything the Wolfpack did included the teams that didn’t make it this far. It played for Yow, the program she built, and the N.C. State sisterhood that transcends decades.
That’s what the team has thought about most of the week: Honoring the women who laid the foundation for where they are today and everyone who believed.
“That just shows the skill of this team. You know, everybody doubted us,” Rivers said. “Nobody believed in us, in this group outside our Pack family, but we flipped it around, came in unranked, and played with a chip on our shoulder all season. We proved what we needed to prove; win, lose or draw tonight.
“I know we’ve made them proud. More than proud, so we can live with that.”
Jadyn Watson-Fisher: jwatsonfisher