02.27.2010 | by Cherry Crayton | Filed under Sports | Comments: No responses |
Monday afternoon update: We’ve posted photos from Sunday afternoon’s game above. Below are quotes about the ACC tournament from NC State women’s basketball coach Kellie Harper and senior Nikitta Gartrell.
Kellie Harper on the ACC tournament
Had we’ve been able to get the win on Thursday [against Wake Forest], I think that would have made a huge difference going over into Greensboro. But I think that [66-50 loss] to Wake Forest . . . re-focused our team. . . . You got three wins in a row but you haven’t arrived. It probably really re-focused our team and reminded us what we do best and what allows us to win. . . . For us, we’ve got to be very focused this week. These kids understand what the ACC is. For us, we almost want to treat it like the next game is the season, rather than stop and re-start this thing. I think if we had played this game [Saturday], we would be taking a couple of games off. But unfortunately the way this has fallen, we’ll have [Monday] off, so it’ll be really important the kids get their legs back and come back fresh to practice on Tuesday. We don’t have a lot of new players, but we’ll definitely talk about the atmosphere, even for shoot-around at the ACC tournament. The media attention and all the hype—it’s important they understand what we’re getting into. . . . I think your veteran team understands it a little better and typically handles it a little better—understanding all the hype surrounding the tournament. But then you’ve got to be mature enough to focus in on what you need to do when it’s time to put the ball on the court.
Nikitta Gartrell on the ACC tournament
I’m excited to end on a good note, but going into [the ACC Tournament] Thursday, we have to bring the same intensity—the same team defense and the same team offense to get past the first round of the ACC tournament, which we’ve failed to do the past two years. I love my teammates, and I know we’re capable of doing it. It’s just going to have to start in practice. [We can’t] dwell on, “OK we beat Georgia Tech on Sunday.” That’s not going to fly, because in the ACC, it’s up for grabs. I think we are just going to have to practice hard like we always do.
Nikitta Gartrell on playing 11-seed Clemson after losing to the Tigers 69-56 on Jan. 31
After any loss, you dream of the chance to play the team again. . . . You think, “I wish I could play that game again.” We went down to Littlejohn, and we weren’t prepared. As a team, we lost our focus and just went through the motions. We didn’t do that tonight and like we’ve proven in other games. It’s a motivation game. Any time we lose to, I would like another opportunity. Starting with Clemson, we’re going to bring it.
Congratulations to the fantastic students who make up our Student Ambassador Program. The program won Outstanding Organization at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s District 3 student programs conference in Oxford, Miss. Adam Compton ’09, who served as senior class president in 2008-09 and as 2009 Homecoming chair, was named Outstanding Student Leader. These photos are from their trip to the University of Mississippi. Great job, everyone!
The Bulletin has the details on NC State’s new chancellor’s residence, which is planned for Centennial Campus, next to the Park Alumni Center. It would replace the home near the intersection of Pullen Road and Hillsborough Street, which has limited parking and lacks space for entertaining. The 8,500-square-foot home, financed by private gifts, is scheduled for completion by fall 2011. The Bulletin reports:
The new design calls for a two-story structure. The lower level — about 5,400 square feet — would be the “public” portion of the house, where larger receptions and other events would be held. The roughly 3,100-square-foot second floor would be the living quarters. Solar panels and geothermal heating and cooling are included in the design.
Johnson was an Eagle scout and assistant scoutmaster of Troop 102.
“We’re not here because somebody died, but because someone lived,” said the state Boy Scout staff member. “When we look between the dashes of 1957 and 2010, we can understand why so many are here.”
An overflow crowd attended the service at the church on Winchester Road. Officials from virtually every area college attended the service, some from as far away as the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“When we look between the dashes, we see a visionary,” the state Boy Scout official said. “We see a leader for his role as a role model and mentor. We can see so many Boy Scouts he poured his life into. His legacy on earth will be carried out by those he touched.
“Because of that spirit, we’ll have better husbands, better fathers and better community leaders.”
Johnson’s youngest son, Jeriel, recalled how his father supported him in sports.
“He was always there,” he said. “I can still see him when I finished a race in cross country. He was there to shake my hand and say ‘good job,” even if I finished in the middle.”
He said “fear” was not in Davis’ vocabulary and that she was a take-charge person.
Roderick Ragland, Davis’ brother, said his sister loved teaching, research and her family, but was also “a little bit eccentric.”
He said that as children growing up in Detroit, her pet duck following them everywhere made it difficult for him to build up his tough guy image in the neighborhood.
Davis was happy when she was cooking, with her dog or with good company.
“When she was happy, her smile and laugh would light up a whole room,” Ragland said.
But, he said, she was also stubborn and persistent. She wouldn’t leave school at North Carolina State University and come home to Detroit after learning she had breast cancer, despite pleas from Ragland and their father, he said.
“Not many people know she was a breast cancer survivor,” Ragland said.
Talitha Caudle, a graduate student at UAH, said Davis always had time for her and always made her feel special.
“Dr. Davis’ served as a source of inspiration to so many of us and will always be my role model,” Caudle said.
Above are video highlights from the NC State women’s basketball’s team 74-63 win over UNC-Chapel Hill Sunday afternoon in Chapel Hill. After the jump you’ll find a game story and post-game comments from NC State coach Kellie Harper. For a box score and game report, go to GoPack.com.
Jon Harper with Sharnise Beal (Photo by Peyton Williams for NC State magazine)
Saturday morning update: Four players on the NC State women’s basketball team scored in double figures and the Wolfpack made 8 of 14 3-pointers and 15 of 15 free throws to beat Boston College 73-62 at Reynolds Coliseum Friday night. Senior guard Nikitta Gartrell led the Pack with 20 points, with freshman guard Marissa Kastanek adding 17 points, redshirt junior guard Amber White 11 points, and senior forward Sharnise Beal 10 points. With the win, the Pack improve to 15-11 and 5-6 in the ACC; and with three games left in the regular season, they have guaranteed themselves a winning season and are eligible for a post-season tournament.
NC State opened the game by making 4 of 5 3-point attempts to pull out to a 12-2 lead and extended the lead to as many as 17 points in the second half. The closest Boston College came was within 7 points.
NC State travels to Chapel Hill Sunday for a 2 p.m. game against UNC, which is 14-7 and 5-6.
Go to GoPack.com for a game recap, and click here to watch post-game comments from first-year NC State head coach Kellie Harper and Nikitta Gartrell.
The NC State women’s basketball takes on Boston College tonight at 6:30 in Reynolds Coliseum. As part of our ongoing series “A Coach’s First Season,” we talked to NC State assistant coach Jon Harper yesterday before a 4 p.m. practice. In the Q&A with him after the jump, he talks about the season so far, his background, his role as an assistant coach and facing Boston College for the second time this season. The Eagles (14-11, 5-5 ACC) defeated the Wolfpack (14-11, 4-6) 83-66 on Jan. 10. The Q&A begins after the jump.
Also, NC State magazine talked to Debbie Mulligan Antonelli ’86 immediately after NC State’s win over Miami in the Hoops 4 Hope game Sunday. (Read that here.) A basketball analyst for ESPN and a three-year starter under Kay Yow, Antonelli co-hosts the weekly national podcast Shootaround with Beth & Debbie. To start off the latest podcast, she shares what happened as she was leaving Reynolds Sunday, and it’s a telling story about Coach Yow. Be sure to listen to the podcast yourself to get her account and her reaction. It’s the first thing she talks about and last for just a couple of minutes. If you want a summary of what she says, here you go:
As Debbie was leaving Reynolds Sunday night, she saw several former players in the women’s basketball office. She went into the office and asked them what they were doing. The former players were looking through files. Unbeknownst to them until that night, Kay Yow had kept a file on every player that ever played for her. The players only looked through the files kept on themselves. Inside her file, Debbie says, was every card, note, letter, and photo that she had sent Coach Yow, including photos of her children and high school transcripts. “Any correspondence I had sent her,” Debbie says. “Can you believe that?” Even included were 500 sentences that Yow had Debbie write as punishment for being late to a team work out. Debbie says she gathered some files to take to former players. “I think I need a wheelbarrow to carry out Summer Erbs’ file,” she says.
02.15.2010 | by Cherry Crayton | Filed under Sports | Comments: No responses |
Nearly 40 former players on the Wolfpack women's basketball team unveiled these banners to honor former NC State coach Kay Yow during the Hoops 4 Hope game on Feb. 14. (Photo by Peyton Williams)
Amber White, a redshirt junior on the Wolfpack women’s basketball team, had it in her mind: We will not lose this game. All week leading up to Hoops 4 Hope, which featured NC State hosting Miami for a Sunday evening ACC game in Reynolds Coliseum, White thought about how she couldn’t play in it last year because of an Achilles injury and how she wanted to make her former coach Kay Yow — who created Hoops 4 Hope five years ago to raise awareness about breast cancer — proud. Even when NC State fell behind by 12 points early in its game against Miami before a crowd of nearly 6,500, and even when it trailed by as many as eight points in the second half, White was determined: We will not lose this game.
“[They] had a lot of fire in their eyes. They did not want to lose this game. For so many reasons,” first-year NC State coach Kellie Harper said. “When that team has that type of attitude, it doesn’t mean you’re going to win. But you have to have that attitude to give you that chance.”
The Pack did come back and win. Freshman guard Marissa Kastanek had a team-high 16 points and scored on a game-winning put-back with 1: 07 left to give NC State a 66-64 victory over Miami. White added13 points, seven assists, seven rebounds and three steals. After the game, she said:
Tragic news from Alabama . . . Maria Ragland Davis ’85 MS, ’92 PHD and Adriel Johnson ’89 PHD were shot and killed Friday during a biology department meeting at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Both were biology professors. The chairman of UAH’s biology department also was killed.
WRAL has a story about Davis and Johnson, and The Huntsville Times is providing detailed coverage of the shooting.
A storage bin that holds equipment for the Wolfpack women's basketball team. (Photo by Peyton Williams)
The NC State women’s basketball team will host Miami today at 5:30 p.m. in Reynolds Coliseum for the fifth annual Hoops for Hope, an event former NC State coach Kay Yow created to raise awareness about breast cancer. It’ll feature a tribute to Yow, who died in January 2009; a silent auction; a march of survivors at halftime; and the ACC matchup between the Wolfpack (13-11, 3-6) and Hurricanes (16-8, 3-6), which will be televised by ESPN2. Yesterday, 11 former NC State players participated in the annual Wolfpack alumni game part of the Hoops for Hope weekend. The N&O has a story on it. Some things others that have been written about Hoops for Hope include this and this. One snippet of one article (from a GoPack.com):
But [NC State women’s basketball coach Kellie Harper] also knows that it is her duty to continue the momentum Yow created for this event, which regularly draws a sellout crowd to Reynolds Coliseum. . . .
“The event has been unbelievably successful for the last few years,” Harper said. “We don’t want to do anything to take away from that. Obviously, Coach Yow and her inspiration were huge draws for people. What we hope is that her legacy and her charge will continue to draw people to this event and to this cause.
“Hopefully, people realize that this is more than a basketball game. It’s an opportunity to give to and to support a great cause.”
Here is our contribution as part of our ongoing series, A Coach’s First Season: We’ve compiled some of the things people have said about Kay Yow throughout the season (ranging from Tennessee coach Pat Summitt to former NC State player Debbie Mulligan Antonelli ’86 to the players on the current team) as part of our ongoing series, A Coach’s First Season. Find that compilation after the jump.
And, immediately below we have an excerpt from an interview that NC State magazine did with Yow in spring 2007 in which she talks about the hardest thing she ever had to do: watch her mother battle cancer.
What is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do?
Watch my mother suffer with cancer, because she had cancer in the 1980s and through the early 1990s. There just wasn’t much that could help her. They didn’t have the kind of antinausea medicine they have now for treatment, and she would be so sick after her treatment. Watching her take chemo and go through such a tough time. And then watching the last 15 days of her life.
The cast of Good Ol' Girls is, left to right, Lauren Kennedy, Sally Mayes, Teri Ralston, Gina Stewart and Liza Vann.
Lumberton native Jill McCorkle has written five novels and three collections of short stories, and her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic and The New York Times Book Review. Now in her fourth year of teaching creative writing at NC State, she has seen her work adapted for the off-Broadway show Good Ol’ Girls, which follows five Southern women who celebrate life from childhood through old age. It opens Sunday and runs through April 11. NC State magazine intern Anqi Li talked with McCorkle about the production and her work. You can read more about McCorkle in The Bulletin and listen to an interview she did with WUNC’s The State of Things.
Good Ol’ Girls is a hugely collaborative project. How did you become involved?
Singer/songwriter Matraca Berg was a big fan of Lee Smith’s fiction and pitched the idea to Marshall Chapman, who knew Lee. Lee loved the idea and thought that my work had a kinship to what Marshall Chapman was doing with her music. A lot of my monologues are kind of sassy, almost irreverent women, and Marshall Chapman’s work has a real rock ‘n’ roll edge to it. It was just a nice match up of music and monologue. I didn’t even hesitate to say yes because I trusted Lee.
What about Good Ol’ Girls speaks to people?
It’s fun, lively and humorous with wonderful music, but it also takes a serious turn. The play spans a woman’s life — not an individual woman, but a woman at large. I can relate to every character, and that’s a big part of its appeal. We all have some point of reference to these different women at different stages [of life]. I want the play to remind people of their own roots, to connect with them in a way that makes them comfortable, at home. That’s what I always hope happens with my fiction. (more…)
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