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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Remembering Kay Yow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I thought we’d take a break from the men’s team.
Women’s basketball coach MaChelle Joseph talked Monday about the influence that Kay Yow, the longtime N.C. State coach who died Saturday after a decades-long battle with breast cancer. Yow, 66, was first diagnosed in 1987. Among other things, Yow had a 737-344 record in 38 seasons, earned 20 NCAA tournament bids and coached the 1988 U.S. Olympic women’s team to a gold medal.
Those things aren’t what Joseph will remember about Yow.
“One of the things that I remember about her and think about her is that she always brought out the best in those around her. I can’t tell you that she had an enemy, and that’s rare in this profession,” Joseph said. “As competitive as we all are, the recruiting battles that we get into, Kay Yow never had an enemy. She’s probably the most well-respected and admired coach in our profession.’
Joseph remembered that when she first took the job as head coach at Tech six years ago, she went into the league coaches meeting before the season hardly knowing anyone.
“She just came up, sat down beside me and made small talk with me,” Joseph said. “I didn’t know really anyone there that well. For her to reach out to me, somebody who was the legend that she was and the coach that she was, that meant so much to me to have that interaction.”
Joseph said she considered Yow a role model in how she treated her team.
“You always knew, watching her, that the players were important to her as people and not just as players,” Joseph said. “She represented so many good things about what a coach should be and can be, to make a difference in people’s lives.”
Joseph will attend Yow’s funeral Friday. She also said the ACC will give teams patches to wear on their uniforms in memory of Yow.
The team is holding a “Chow 4 Yow” fundraiser for the Kay Yow/Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Cancer Fund. Ten winners will receive a day at the Tech athletics department, including a tour of the department, a behind-the-scenes look at daily operations and lunch with Joseph at the GTAA cafeteria.
On a completely different note, Joseph talked about the state of her team coming off a pretty momentous week.
Three days after coming from 15 points down to beat then-No. 2 North Carolina at home - it broke a 12-game losing streak to the Tar Heels and was one of the biggest wins in team history - the Jackets went to then-No. 4 Duke Sunday and lost 60-34. It was the second-lowest single-game total in school history.
Tech got a tough break when Alex Montgomery, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, got into early foul trouble.
Said Joseph, “We kept trying to sub her in offensively and defensively, and we just couldn’t get any flow.”
Joseph did take some solace in holding Duke to 60, a little more than 12 points under its season average.
“I thought defensively for us to hold Duke to 60 points on their home floor and out-rebound them, we got the job done on one end,” she said. “We just weren’t able to do it offensively.”
Tech is now 14-5 overall and 2-3 in the ACC, good for seventh place, and are fourth on the “Others receiving votes” list in the AP poll. The Jackets have already played four of the six teams ahead of them, going 1-3. Starting with a Thursday game against Miami at Alexander Memorial Coliseum, Tech has a run of four ACC games against Miami, Clemson, Wake Forest and N.C. State, who have a combined league record of 3-16.
Should Tech win those games, it would secure a .500 record in the ACC for the season and virtually assure an NCAA tournament bid. Tech’s season goal is a third consecutive NCAA berth and a spot in the Sweet 16.
Tech will play Savannah State after the four league games before a rematch with Carolina Feb. 15.
“We feel like the next five games for us are winnable games,” Joseph said. “If we play the way we’re capable of playing, we should start to get on a roll here.”
