North Carolina State University Athletics
Wolfpack Women Fall 65-60 in ACC Tourney Opener
3/6/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
Clemson, coached by former NC State player Christy McKinney, took a 65-60 overtime victory, to send the Wolfpack home after just one game at the Greensboro Coliseum. It was
The Tigers made eight free throws in the final 75 seconds to break open a ragged game that was close throughout the second half. Clemson took the lead in overtime with 1:15 remaining, on a pair of free throws by Morganne Campbell. She was fouled on the play by NC State junior point guard Shayla Fields, her fifth foul of the game.
Yow thought her team may have been caught looking past the Tigers, which fell to the Wolfpack 89-57 last week at Clemson.
“Our mindset was a major factor in the game,” Yow said afterwards. “I’ve been around as a head coach for more than 40 years and have been on both ends of this. This game really, really scared me from the beginning. I stressed to the team that it would be played completely differently than the other game.
“This might have been our worst game of the year.”
And not just because the eight-seeded Pack (18-12 overall) lost to the ninth-seeded Tigers (12-18). It was bad because NC State’s players were warned about looking ahead to face top-seeded
“We came out looking at playing
“Coach told us it wasn’t going to be that way, and it wasn’t.”
The Wolfpack certainly struggled to get points, both from first-team All-ACC selection Whittington and any of its perimeter players. Whittington, who led the team in scoring with 16 points, made only five of 17 shots in the second half and overtime. The Wolfpack’s guards made only nine of 43 shots. Starters Nikkita Gartrell (0-for-12) and Shayla Fields (3-for-13) had a particularly rough game.
“We didn’t come out with enough intensity,” Whittington said.
Both teams went through stretches of poor shooting. During one three-minute stretch in the second half, neither team scored a basket. The Tigers missed all seven of their shots, while the Pack missed nine, including six missed shots on a single possession.
From the outset, the Wolfpack was flat, committing 14 turnovers and missing 15 shots in the first half. The miscues improved in the second half, but the shooting didn’t. In overtime, Yow’s team was just three-for-14 from the field.
“They just out-played us in a number of ways,” said a dejected Yow, whose team had bounced back from an 0-4 start in the ACC to win six of its last 10 games. “We’ve had some games where we shot like this, but it has been a while since we had one of them. It just wasn’t there for us today.”
The Tigers built as much as an 11-point lead in the opening 20 minutes, before the Wolfpack reeled off eight unanswered points to cut the lead to 27-23. Despite all its miscues, the Pack trailed only 31-28 at intermission.
Clemson came out hot in the second half, quickly pushing its lead back to nine points by scoring three consecutive baskets. Whittington, however, did not want her final trip to the ACC Tournament to end after only one game. She led a rally in which State outscored the Tigers 8-1 to cut the lead to 46-44 with 10:27 to play.
Junior Shayla Fields cut Clemson’s margin to 48-47 with 8:44 remaining on a three-point play, and Amber White gave the Wolfpack its first lead of the game with 8:30 to go with a pair of free throws.
Both teams went completely cold at that point, scoring just nine points between them during that span. With less than 90 seconds to play, the game was knotted at 53.
Whittington, bothered by a cramp in her right leg, twice had chances to give her team the lead, but missed a short jumper in the lane with less than a minute to play and a baseline jumper with 9.8 seconds remaining.
She was called for a foul in pursuit of a rebound on the first miss, giving the ball to Clemson out of bounds. After calling timeout, the Tigers’ Christy Brown missed a layup and the Wolfpack got the rebound. Fields was trapped in a backcourt double-team, but called timeout before committing a turnover.
The Wolfpack held the ball for 25 seconds before Whittington got the ball inside and tried to get off her second potential game-winner. But the attempt missed the basket and the Wolfpack was called for a shot-clock violation, its 21st turnover of the game.
Clemson had 9.8 seconds to get off a shot, but the Wolfpack had two fouls to give. White committed the first with 6.7 to play and the second with 5.2 remaining. Clemson’s D’Lesha Lloyd missed a short jumper to win the game with less than two seconds remaining in regulation, sending the game into overtime.
The loss likely ends the Wolfpack’s hopes of making a fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament, Yow said.
“I don’t think our chances are good, or even exist at all for the NCAA, after this game,” said the coach.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
