RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Kellie Harper got her wish. The North Carolina State players who had been through so much before her arrival are headed back to the NCAA tournament.
The Wolfpack earned a No. 9 seed and will travel to Minneapolis to face UCLA on Sunday in the Kansas City regional. It's a big step for a program that was picked to finish ninth in the Atlantic Coast Conference in the preseason, let alone the 32-year-old coach who is following late Hall of Famer Kay Yow.
The players she inherited played through grief following Yow's death last year, then went through the unsettling coaching change that saw Yow's longtime assistants depart to make room for Harper's staff.
"The last few years they have been through a lot and they've been resilient," the first-year coach said Monday night. "This year they were still going through something with the coaching change, and they've shown a lot of resiliency and a lot of faith and stuck together. They've done everything we asked them to do and they were definitely rewarded for it."
N.C. State (20-13) is in the tournament for the 21st time, but it had missed the tournament the past two seasons since an emotion-fueled run to the round of 16 in 2007 under Yow.
"Everybody bought into what Kellie was trying to do, not so much just to change this entire program but just do the little things in order for us to get where we are," said senior Nikitta Gartrell, a freshman on that '07 team. "We believed we could be here and we finally got here."
Harper and her players gathered at a Raleigh restaurant to watch the selection show Monday night with fans, who gave a huge cheer when N.C. State's name came up on the board. Those fans also gave a hearty boo when rival North Carolina also made the tournament field.
Harper said she felt good about her team's chances of making the NCAAs -- a goal she had in the back of her mind from the start of the season -- after their unexpected run to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship game.
"It's really exciting because growing up as a little kid you see all the hype about the NCAA tournament and now I'm going to be a part of it," said freshman Marissa Kastanek, the ACC rookie of the year. "She really wanted us to experience that and now we're finally going to get the opportunity."
