North Carolina State University Athletics
"Coach Yow will never steer you wrong."
3/4/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
March 4, 2005
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH -- Marquetta Dickens wasn't exactly sure what to think before this season when NC State women's coach Kay Yow asked her to make the radical move from a guard position to power forward.
So she talked it over with her role model, former Wolfpack standout Tynesha Lewis.
That was a stroke of fortune for the No. 19 Wolfpack, since Lewis herself had made team-saving position switch late in her career. Midway through Lewis' senior year of 2000-01, because of injuries to point guard Terah James, she was asked to move from the shooting guard to the point.
There were some early struggles, but the Wolfpack won seven straight games at the end of the season, made it to the championship game of the ACC Tournament and reached the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA Tournament. The 22-11 season ended with a loss to No. 1 Connecticut.
Lewis played well enough - and became a versatile enough ball-handler - that she was drafted by the WNBA. She's on the roster of the Charlotte Sting for the upcoming season and is currently playing professionally in Spain.
Now, thanks in part to Dickens' contributions, the Wolfpack women are again poised to be a post-season factor when they begin play in the ACC Tournament Saturday at 8 p.m., facing the winner of Friday's first-round game between Maryland and Clemson.
"Tynesha basically told me to just stick with it, especially about playing in different positions," said Dickens, who has known Lewis since she was in middle school in Tarboro. "She talked to me about how this could be a good thing, playing a different spot because they like guards who can post-up in the WNBA.
"She told me that Coach Yow would never steer me wrong." It's been a story-book kind of season, as the Wolfpack overcame low expectations and the loss, for three games, of Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow, who has had several health issues since she discovered late last fall that she has had a recurrence of breast cancer.
The Wolfpack (21-6 overall, 10-4 ACC) became one of the biggest surprises in the ACC during the regular-season, finishing third in the standings, well above the seventh-place finish that was predicted in the preseason.
Not coincidentally, Yow's team took off with an upset win over Vanderbilt, the first time all season that Dickens was in the starting lineup. She's been in there ever since, guarding opposing power forwards defense and playing a key role in Yow's four-guard-out offensive system.
"We knew coming into the season that we had seven players who would be contributing a lot for us, and that at least two players wouldn't be in the starting lineup but would be people I considered as starters as well," Yow said. "At the beginning of the season, we sort of rotated around with Marquetta, Rachel Stockdale and Khadijah Whittington.
"Then, as we got into the season, I decided to stick with the same five starters, knowing the other two would get in the game a lot, and Marquetta is who we decided on."
Since then, Dickens has been a consistent, and versatile, contributor. She's athletic and strong enough to play inside, but she is also a strong outside shooter, who can post up and penetrate. That creates some matchup problems for opposing teams.
She's scored in double figures in four of her last six games, and hopes to have another big ACC Tournament. Last year, Dickens established her career high with a 20-point performance in the semifinals in a loss to North Carolina.
For her part, Dickens just hopes that the Wolfpack - which lost three games to the top two seeds, North Carolina and Duke, by a total of 10 points - can make March Madness a little crazier.
"We lost to Carolina and Duke by less than three points in each of those games," Dickens said. "We could easily be the No. 1 seed. We have to show everybody when we get to Greensboro that we are a great team. We have to show everybody that what they have seen all year will continue in the post-season."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
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