The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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52 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY BRIAN RAPP I t's been a long time — 16 years, to be exact — since Wes Moore last lost more than 10 games in a season. The second-year NC State head women's basketball coach suffered a 17- loss season in his first year at Chattanooga, in 1998-99, the last losing season in his 26-year, 600-win coaching career. Since then, he's suffered just two double-digit loss campaigns — until this year. The loss of a senior-dominated group that featured two WNBA Draft picks — includ- ing the most accurate shooter in Wolfpack history, center Markeisha Gatling — com- bined with the biggest rash of injuries in four years to create a disappointing 2014-15 sea- son for the red and white. NC State's 18-15 final mark, while still a winning record, was a full seven wins removed from its 25-8 re- cord of last year, and its 7-9 showing in ACC play dropped the Pack from a fourth-place, 11-5 finish in 2014 to 10th this year. "No, I've never had a year with so many season-ending injuries [three], Moore admit- ted. "And it was a bad year to have them." Coming into the season, Moore acknowl- edged that he and his coaching staff took a gamble, preferring to save their available scholarships from 2014 for what was hoped to be better recruiting prospects for the class of 2015. "When you come into a new program, it takes awhile to establish recruiting ties," Moore said. "So we took a gamble, so to speak, in that we hoped we could save scholarships to be able to sign a talented class after we had a chance to establish our- selves here." The strategy has paid off in a highly ranked group of incoming recruits (see side- bar) for next fall — but backfired when this year's Pack lost one-third of the roster to injury and ineligibility. But neither Moore nor the Pack's play- ers are using that as a convenient excuse to explain this season's setbacks. Far from it — Moore, for his part, feels he has a major share of the responsibility for the Pack's falling short of its annual goal as a team: to win enough to earn an NCAA Tournament berth. "I don't look at us winning 18 games in spite of all the injuries as successful," he explained. "In my eyes, our goals are the same every year: to get better every day and improve as a team so you're playing the best in March and make the NCAA [Tourna- ment]. Your aspirations are to get there — especially here at NC State. "The toughest thing about this season is that even with all the adversity we faced, we were still right there. If you change maybe five points, and the outcome of two or three games, you're probably in the tournament. We had a stretch of four ACC games [North Carolina and Pitt at home, Syracuse and Virginia on the road, from Jan. 22 through Feb. 5] where we had a lead with five min- utes left in three of them, and lost. We win those, and our ACC Tournament game (a 57-56 loss to Virginia Tech on a last-second basket), and we're probably in the NCAA Tournament. Those games were pretty much a microcosm of our season." "It was a very hard season, especially with all the adversity, the injuries," senior guard and co-captain Len'Nique Brown- Hoskin added. "But I think we finished, overall, the best we could have." Things began unraveling even before the first tip, when incoming freshman center Sara Boric, a native of Bosnia, was ruled ineligible by the NCAA due to questions about her course load in Europe. Her loss left the Pack with just two frontcourt new- comers, freshmen Chelsea Nelson and Akela Maize, to join returning veteran sophomore forward Jenn Mathurin and junior college transfer Carlee Schuhmacher. Still, the Pack got off to a strong start in the first month by winning nine of its 13 non-conference outings, including an 82-66 victory over Davidson at home Dec. 19. By then, though, freshman guard Chloe Jack- son had been lost to a broken foot. But the Davidson win would prove to be even more costly when senior guard Krystal Barrett suffered a torn ACL in the closing minutes, ending her four-year career. "That was a huge loss because KB was off to a great start [career highs in shooting percentage, rebounds per game, scoring av- erage and a perfect 24-of-24 effort at the free throw line that led the ACC at that point], and she was our top defender against the opponents' best perimeter scorer," Moore said. "And it changed everyone's role — we would have had two senior guards with a very talented [redshirt sophomore] Domi- nique Wilson coming off the bench for a spark, like what Miah [sophomore guard Miah Spencer] did last year." Then, 11 games later, junior wing Ashley Eli went down with a ruptured Achilles ten- don during a 71-55 win over Wake Forest at home Feb. 8. That left the Pack with a total of nine available players for the remaining 10 games of the season — two of them, sophomore Ashley Williams and junior Kaley Moser, non-scholarship walk-ons. "There was a lot of adversity," Moore ad- mitted. "Numbers-wise, practice-wise. But our kids never used it as an excuse. They just kept working, and I'm proud of them from that standpoint." "I feel a lot of teams would have given up when things got hard like they did," Barrett said. "I think it showed a lot of heart meet- ing that challenge, and I commend them for fighting through adversity and not giving up." "We played for each other," Brown- Hoskin added. "That's what kept us going. Knowing that KB wouldn't step on the court A SEASON OF UNEXPECTED ADVERSITY Untimely Injuries And Youth Combine To Make For A Difficult Campaign Sophomore guard Miah Spencer, who led the Wolfpack in scoring with an average of 14.0 points per game, is one of the reasons head coach Wes Moore is excited about the future of his program. PHOTO BY BRIAN RAPP "This was a year of growing pains. Every program has that one tough year. You hit some bumps in the road; you just have to stay focused and keep looking ahead." ■ Head coach Wes Moore