North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Harper, Pack Riding Hot Streak Into Tourney
3/4/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Winning four games in four days isn't exactly easy. In fact, it's never been done in the history of the ACC men's or women's basketball tournaments.
But it's not impossible.
That's something both Kellie and Jon Harper know from experience. In 2005, when Kellie Harper was in her first season as head coach at Western Carolina, she led her Catamounts on a four-game winning streak to claim the Southern Conference championship and advance to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history.
The parallels to her current NC State team are pretty remarkable. It was her first season at the school, the team was picked in the preseason to finish ninth in the league and entered the tournament as the No. 6 seed.
"It had never been done before and we did it," said Kellie Harper, whose Catamount team capped the remarkable run with a double-overtime victory in the title game.
Jon was also part of a similar run in 1997, when he was a student manager for Auburn's women's basketball team.
So that will be in the back of their minds when the Harpers lead No. 6 seed NC State into the 2010 ACC Women's Tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum tonight against Clemson.
Kellie Harper firmly believes her team, which won four of its final five regular-season games, is capable of going on a similar run.
"Sure we can do it again," she said. "A lot of it is you have to be really focused on the present. You have to be focused on what you have to do in each possession. You have to break it down that small, and not worry about the big picture."
The Wolfpack (17-12 overall, 7-7 ACC) enters the tournament playing its best basketball of the year. It ended the regular season with a 54-46 victory over No. 22 Georgia Tech Sunday afternoon at Reynolds Coliseum.
And getting several wins in the ACC Tournament would certainly improve the Wolfpack's chances of getting an NCAA Tournament bid, a prospect that seemed very slim on the bus ride home from Durham on Feb. 11, following the Wolfpack's 70-39 loss to No. 8 Duke.
Though they haven't talked about it much publicly, post-season play is a huge goal for a program that has been through so much in the last four years. The four seniors on this year's team were freshmen the last time the Wolfpack made it to the NCAA Tournament, advancing to the Sweet Sixteen following the inspirational return of ailing head coach Kay Yow.
"These players really want to go to the NCAA Tournament," Harper said. "It has been their goal from day one. It is not something we have talked about every day, but it has been out there enough that I have heard it.
"I know our players are very motivated. For our players who have been there, our seniors, they want to go again. For those who have never experienced it, they want the opportunity. We'll see what happens."
Harper knows that after the Duke game her players could have easily shut down, moved on with the semester and begun thinking about their distant prospects for next year. But she's proud that they didn't.
"That was a real turning point for our team," Harper said. "That loss hurt our players. It wasn't just the loss, it was how we lost. We, as a staff, needed to explain that we had five games remaining to do something special.
"It would have been so easy for our players to shutter down and not really believe what we were saying."
But, with a good combination of senior leadership and youthful energy, the Wolfpack turned things around, spreading scoring honors around the squad and refusing to rely on just one player to shoulder the load for the rest of the team.
Sophomore Bonae Holston leads the team at 11.8 points per game, followed by Gartrell at 10.8 and freshman Marissa Kastanek at 10.7. Three others average just over seven points per contest.
"Right now, we are on an emotional high," said senior Nikitta Gartrell, who has suffered through first-round losses in each of the last two ACC tournaments. "I feel we are very excited about the season we have had. Right now, everything is falling in our favor.
"This year, it will be totally different from the last two years."
It's an emotional high that Harper has excelled at during her days as a player and her first stint as a head coach.
On the first day Harper met Kastanek, the coach forthrightly told the young player: "My teams peak at the right time."
"I think we are definitely peaking," said Kastanek, who on Tuesday was named ACC Freshman of the Year. "We are clicking together as a team and everything is on a roll. Winning four games in a row is not out of the question."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
