The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1481002
48 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY TIM PEELER K ay Yow and her 1997-98 women's basketball team went to Charlotte confident they could win the ACC Tour- nament championship that had eluded the Wolfpack for more than seven years. In fact, Yow's No. 9 and third-seeded Pack almost expected it in a five-team race that included North Carolina, Duke, Clemson and Virginia. Only one of the other teams in the league even had a winning record. As it happened, that team — unranked Maryland — was fighting for a bid to the NCAA Tournament and came out with a fire the Wolfpack lacked. It didn't help that senior Pack star forward Chasity Melvin picked up her fourth foul 75 sec- onds after halftime and sat out nearly 16 minutes of the second half. The Terps won going away, 61-48. "It was devastating," recalled then- junior point guard Kristen Gillespie. "Our expectation and focus was to win the ACC championship." Gillespie, now the head coach of Mis- souri Valley Conference champion Il- linois State, still uses the words Yow told her team after that tournament- opening loss. So often, in fact, she al- most gets tired of hearing them herself: "What is delayed is not denied." Gillespie added: "She knew we still had so much basketball still to play. We were meant to achieve more. We didn't want to hear that at the time. The wind had been ripped out of our sails, but she kept on harping about it: 'There is something better for this team.' "It took us a while before we believed it." The Missing Piece Yow and her team not only had 10 days before the start of the women's postsea- son tournament, they also had a home- court advantage, having earned the right to host a four-team subregional at Reyn- olds Coliseum. That's all Yow needed to get her team back on track. With horror novelist and Maine su- perfan Stephen King sitting in the stands, the Wolfpack rolled over the Black Bears 89-64 in the first game. Two days later, they did the same to the Penguins of Youngstown State, earning the right to go to Dayton, Ohio, for the NCAA East Region semifinals. It was the ninth time in program history that Yow took her team to the Sweet 16. That trip to the Buckeye State might have been the greatest weekend in the Wolfpack women's history. Chasity Melvin scored 8 of her 18 points during a 14-0 run that propelled NC State past Connecticut and into the first Final Four in the program's history. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS PACK PAST Kay Yow Saw Her Players' Vast Potential In 1998 — And Eventually, They Saw It, Too