NC State women have proven people wrong, all the way to the Final Four. Why stop now?
River Baldwin earned MVP at the Paradise Jam Tournament in November after leading N.C. State to a 3-0 record in the Virgin Islands, which included a win over then-No. 3 Colorado.
Those were her breakout games — she scored double figures in each one — and the team joked she plays best in warm climates or against teams from warm locations.
Baldwin said she had a dream on Saturday night, before Sunday’s game against Texas, where the climate gets a little toasty, about being at the beach.
“I usually have really good intuition about games,” said Baldwin, who scored 16 points in the second half in the Wolfpack’s upset victory over the No. 1 seed Texas.
“Early in the season, I had this weird gut feeling about playing Miami and we lost. We came into the Tennessee game, and I was very calm,” Baldwin said. “Specifically (before) Stanford, I had a weird sense of peace all day. It’s so weird. {Sunday}, I had the same peace.”
She wasn’t the only one confident that the No. 3 seed N.C. State (31-6) could upset Texas (33-5) and advance to the Final Four in Cleveland. Mimi Collins felt it from the tipoff, even more so for her and Zoe Brooks in the second quarter.
Madison Hayes said it’s normal for the team to speak wins into existence, but she knew they were going to pull off the victory with three minutes remaining.
This will be the Wolfpack’s first trip since 1998, when Kay Yow coached the program. No one on the N.C. State roster was alive. Graduate student Collins, the oldest player, wasn’t born until 2000. Baldwin, another other grad student, wasn’t born until 2001.
“I think it’s just an honor to be part of a legacy that is N.C. State women’s basketball,” Baldwin said. “I didn’t start here, but I feel like I’ve been here my whole career. I really found a home here.”
The win also provides head coach Wes Moore’ his first Final Four appearance.
“I’ve waited 40 years for this,” Moore said as he climbed the ladder to finish cutting the nets.
N.C. State was close to making the national semifinals in 2022, but it lost its Elite Eight game to UConn in double overtime. Moore admitted this week he’s gone over that game in his head countless times.
“As a coach, you second-guess everything you did for that 50 minutes of that game, and you look back and think, ‘If I just would have done this, we’d have gone to the Final Four,’” he said on Sunday. “I didn’t know if I’d ever get another chance, you know? I know I’m fairly young, but it’s tough to get there.”
ACC coaches and media members picked N.C. State to finish eighth in the league and the team didn’t earn a spot in the inaugural Associated Press Top 25.
But its resume earned a No. 2 seed in the ACC Tournament and N.C. State advanced to the championship game. It went 7-2 against Top 25 teams in the regular season.
They’ve felt all along that they belong among those playing in the Elite Eight, and now the Final Four.
The team chanted, “From not ranked to the Final Four,” after cutting down the nets on Sunday.
The Wolfpack wants to extend its season one more game. To do so, it’ll have to get through undefeated and top-ranked South Carolina.
The Gamecocks will be favored; the Wolfpack knows that. But so were Tennessee, Stanford and Texas — and we all know how those games ended.
“Everybody thinking we were gonna finish eighth in the ACC and we had no chance in the Final Four, that has carried us through the season,” Baldwin said. “We’re just the type of players that are like, ‘OK, we’ll prove you wrong.’”
This story was originally published April 2, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
