Propelled by history, classic Reynolds crowd, NC State women upset No. 2 UConn
Revenge may be best served cold, but this was frozen over, trapped in a block of ice like some poor woolly mammoth who wandered into a Siberian lake and remained there for eons.
There wasn’t a single N.C. State player left who played in the epic Elite 8 showdown-slash-travesty in Bridgeport two seasons ago, but Wes Moore hadn’t forgotten. Connecticut hadn’t forgotten. Reynolds Coliseum certainly hadn’t forgotten.
Propelled by a crowd packed to the corners of the old barn, the Wolfpack pulled back a nine-point UConn lead before halftime and outdid the Huskies shot-for-shot in the third quarter, leading by as many as seven, then going on an 11-0 run early in the fourth quarter to all but put the game away.
“Oh my goodness, the fans were amazing tonight,” said N.C. State guard Saniya Rivers, who had a game-high 33 points.
The power inherent in this building when it’s like this, even with its face-lift, is incomparable. Within these old walls, in these tight quarters, amid the din, the Wolfpack showed anything was still possible, even beating the Huskies for the first time since 1998 after losing six straight over the intervening 25 years, even getting revenge for a game only two players even watched from the bench.
Geno Auriemma watched the last two minutes with his arms crossed, face grim, consigned to his fate. He knew as well as anyone that this N.C. State performance, this atmosphere, this passion, this 92-81 Wolfpack win, was 21 months in the making.
“That game will haunt me forever,” Moore said. “I think back to the last possession of regulation, I might could have done a better job and gotten us to the Final Four. Nothing will ever replace that. But this is a new team, and this win stands alone. It’s a great win over the No. 2 team in the country, with three players in the top 15 in the country according to ESPN and a Hall of Fame coach at the other end. The satisfaction of winning this game, this year, is enough.”
There’s no way to replicate the stakes from that March 2022 game, when the top-seeded Wolfpack was forced to play the Huskies on a virtual home court. (Literally: UConn’s logo was on the floor in Bridgeport!) The vast bulk of that N.C. State roster has moved on since then, most of it immediately after that game, the last gasp of a group that accomplished everything short of a Final Four.
What’s done is done. But to borrow from a famous Ole Miss fan, the past is not always past.
Moore joked after that 2022 loss that it ought to count as UConn’s home game in the home-and-home the two schools had already agreed to play over the next two seasons, and when the return game finally came to Raleigh, many of the faces had changed. But not all of them.
There were still five UConn players left who played that night, including a trio of familiar names that accounted for 56 of the Huskies’ 91 points in that game: Aaliyah Edwards. Paige Bueckers. Azzi Fudd. The closest the Wolfpack came? Now an N.C. State guard, Saniya Rivers played five minutes for South Carolina two games later as the Gamecocks claimed the national title over the Huskies. Sunday, she set a new career-high in points.
All of which is to say that for most of the people on the court Sunday, what happened two years ago was ancient history. But history has a way of coming back to life, especially in Reynolds, and by the end of the second quarter the slumbering old ghosts up in the girders were fully awake.
“The atmosphere was fantastic,” Auriemma said. “That had something to do with it. The crowd was incredibly supportive and N.C. State played off the crowd.”
The moment was delayed, perhaps, but the crowd showed why the NCAA really did the Wolfpack such a disservice in 2022, pulling and dragging the Wolfpack along the same way the pro-UConn crowd had done through two overtimes at the allegedly neutral site N.C. State had secured as the No. 1 seed. The NCAA was happy to put competitive balance aside when it sent the Wolfpack there, knowing it would be full of UConn fans and happy to collect their dollars.
The growth of the game and the rise of South Carolina as a persistent preeminent powerhouse may have diluted UConn’s perennial basketball dominance, but the brand remains as strong as ever. There were UConn legends everywhere you looked, and not just on the bench or on the court. With the USA Women’s National Team scrimmaging Duke earlier Sunday, Diana Taurasi sat on one baseline. Rebecca Lobo was calling the game for ABC. You can’t escape. It’s part of what made 2022 such a gross inequity.
This very different, younger, less accomplished, still uncertain of itself N.C. State team didn’t stand much of a chance on paper, a 10-point underdog. After a transition year that saw the Wolfpack relinquish its position at the top of the Triangle basketball pyramid, this N.C. State team was pulled along by history it might not fully understand, pushing forward into a future that suddenly overflows with promise.
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This story was originally published November 12, 2023 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Propelled by history, classic Reynolds crowd, NC State women upset No. 2 UConn."
