The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/337646
26 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY MATT CARTER N C State has closed its book on the 2013-14 calendar sports year. The men's and women's bas- ketball squads exceeded expecta- tions by reaching their respective NCAA Tournaments, and five non-revenue squads finished in the top 20, highlighted by wom- en's golf's 10th-place finish at the NCAA Championships. Men's basketball's third straight NCAA appearance put them in rare company. Just 23 the 351 NCAA Division I programs have done that over the last three years. Individually, redshirt sophomore heavy- weight wrestler Nick Gwiazdowski won a national championship, basketball sopho- more forward T.J. Warren was named the ACC Player of the Year after surpassing David Thompson's single-season school scoring record, senior long-distance runner Andrew Colley was named the ACC Men's Cross Country Performer of the Year after winning the conference title, and first-year women's basketball coach Wes Moore was honored as the ACC Coach of the Year and was a finalist for National Coach of the Year. Wolfpack director of athletics Debbie Yow sat down with The Wolfpacker for an exten- sive interview to discuss the year as well as other issues at NC State, within the ACC and across the NCAA. Here are highlights of that interview. What were your thoughts on the past year athletically? "I told our staff from day one that reaching a top-25 status as a program is mercurial in nature, so they all are using the word mer- curial now when they talk to me. They've looked it up. "Progress is never linear year to year. There will be times where we take a step back to take two steps forward. Obviously we have big challenges in football. I was very proud that men's basketball went back to the NCAA Tournament. Only 7.1 percent of all the Division I teams in the nation took both their men's and their women's programs to the NCAA Tournament. That's a small percentage. "Baseball started the preseason ranked top 10, and we didn't go to the tournament. Obvi- ously I am not going to try to sugarcoat what that looks like, and we're going to work with Coach [Elliott] Avent to try to figure out if there is anything else we can do to better support his efforts and those of his staff to get us back on track. "We don't know where we are going to fin- ish in the Director's Cup, but we anticipate it won't be as high as last year. We're at No. 32 right now and finished at No. 34 last year, but there are several sports still out. "We could score some points in track and field for the men and women, but we don't sponsor lacrosse for the men or lacrosse for the women, so we can't score there and we know we didn't score in baseball. We do get a few points in softball." Some sports get lost outside of the big four of football, men's and women's bas- ketball, and baseball, but there were some success stories. "Swimming had a first-ever — first time ever in the history of the program that both the men and the women finished in the final rankings in top 20 in the country. I can't imagine anybody expected [wrestling] Coach [Pat] Popolizio to do more than what he's done in such a short period of time, with Nick [Gwiazdowski] transferring in and winning the heavyweight division in the NCAA. "We are just going to see more of that in the future because his recruiting is off the charts. When Reynolds is renovated, he's going to have a magnificent space to showcase wrestling, and it will be a pit for Yow mentioned the success of wrestling, with heavyweight Nick Gwiazdowski winning a national championship, and the strong showings by the men's and women's swimming teams and the women's golf team as being among the bright spots in the Wolfpack's past year. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS STATE OF THE PACK Wolfpack AD Debbie Yow Reflects On The 2013-14 Season At NC State 26-28,30.32.Interview With Yow.indd 26 6/27/14 12:02 PM