NC State women’s basketball ‘did everything they could’ to boost NCAA Tournament seeding

After its first Final Four appearance in 25 years, NC State appeared to have a hangover to start this season. The Wolfpack struggled against top competition with a 4-3 mark through its first seven games, including losses to then-No. 1 South Carolina, TCU and then-No. 7 LSU. 

The Pack seemed to be in need of a solid center after Caitlin Weimar suffered a preseason hip injury. If there was any way NC State was going to right the ship, a frontcourt presence was going to be needed to compete with the nation’s best. 

Luckily for NC State, it was able to develop freshmen forwards Tilda Trygger and Lorena Awou into solid post players — even though the former isn’t a natural center. That immediately helped boost the Wolfpack’s ability to beat teams it viewed as its peers. In turn, NC State won 22 of its last 25 games to cruise into Selection Sunday with one of the best resumes in the ACC. 

The Wolfpack owns an 8-6 record against Quad 1 competition, including six victories over Associated Press Top 25 teams, this season, while it has a perfect record against the other three quads at 18-0. 

NC State coach Wes Moore was pleased with his team’s ability to respond to the early-season woes and responded with nearly two dozen wins. 

“We had a really challenging schedule early in the year,” Moore said on the Wolfpack Radio Network postgame show after the regular season finale at SMU. “I’m proud of them. A lot of teams could got down right there and it could have snowballed on you a little bit. But they came back, won some big games and got momentum.”

That finish to the season allowed NC State to dig itself out of a hole in the eyes of many, including ESPN’s Charlie Creme, who runs the outlet’s women’s bracketology. He believed the Wolfpack’s strong finish to the regular season and a pair of ACC Tournament wins was enough to secure a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which will be revealed Sunday (8 p.m., ESPN). 

Creme has NC State hosting 15-seed Tennessee Tech, 7-seed Michigan and 10-seed Iowa State/Princeton in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in his latest projection.

Not only did the Pack find a way to be one of the top teams heading into March, Creme believed it was able to jump past Notre Dame for the ACC’s best seed in the NCAA Tournament as the No. 6 team on the seed list, in his opinion.

“I think they earned their way to the two-line,” Creme said on an ESPN Zoom availability Wednesday. “It took pretty much the entirety of the season to get back to that level. By getting to the ACC final, I think that was enough to solidify that — even leapfrogging Notre Dame on the overall seed list.”

While the Wolfpack, the co-regular season ACC champions, lost the league tournament title game on Sunday in a 76-62 result to Duke, Creme thought that didn’t affect where NC State stands going into next week’s tournament. He also didn’t believe that the Pack winning the ACC title would have helped it climb past where it currently stands. 

“I think they did everything they could to get as high on the overall seed list as they could,” Creme said. “Even winning an ACC Championship would not have moved them past UConn. So six is definitely NC State’s ceiling heading into Selection Sunday.”

When the bracket does come out, Creme thinks the Wolfpack has what it takes to get back to the Final Four for the second straight season. He argued NC State would be the top team of the second tier of squads that could make it to Tampa, while the five teams ahead — South Carolina, Texas, UCLA, UConn and USC — all are national championship contenders.

But once the tournament begins, he did add, anything is possible when it comes to the Wolfpack. Last season, NC State worked past Texas in the Elite Eight behind consistent outside shooting. If those two teams met again with another trip to the Final Four on the line, Creme thought the Pack would have a clear chance of winning for the second straight meeting. 

“What their ceiling is in the tournament I think will depend a lot on matchups,” Creme said of NC State. “If that was to be, for instance, a matchup down the road in the Elite Eight, I would think NC State’s opportunity for the Final Four would certainly be there.”

Time will tell, but NC State has itself positioned nearly as best it could be at this point going into the selection process this weekend.