Life and Relationship Coaching near Raleigh, NC

RALEIGH – The NC State women's golf team will host its lone tournament of the 2025-26 season with the City of Oaks Collegiate. The 54-hole format tournament will take place from Sunday, March 22 to Tuesday March 24 at Lonnie Poole Golf Course.

The first two rounds will be double tees starting at 8 a.m. and the final round will feature a shotgun start on Tuesday.

Lonnie Poole is a 72-par, 6,188 -yard course. The first tee time for NC State is at 8:50 a.m. off hole 1 on Sunday.

All seven players eligible to compete this season will compete for NC State with a five-person lineup and two individuals.

NC State is one of four top 100 schools in the 13-school lineup.

Live results from the tournament will be covered HERE.

NC State Lineup 1. Ellie Hildreth 2. No. 22 Marie Eline Madsen 3. Vania Simont 4. Elizabeth Sullivan 5. Lindsay McGrath Ind. Lea Ludwig Ind. Leena Stephens

Competing Teams (Scoreboard Ranking) 1. No. 59 Boston College 2. No. 145 Campbell 3. No. 213 Central Michigan 4. No. 109 Coastal Carolina 5. No. 86 East Carolina 6. No. 220 Fairleigh Dickinson 7. No. 171 Georgetown 8. No. 192 Howard 9. No. 214 Jacksonville 10. No. 44 NC State 11. No. 134 Oral Roberts 12. No. 147 Richmond 13. No. 82 Rutgers

Tee Times (Lineup off hole 1) 8:50 a.m. - Lindsay McGrath 9 a.m. - Elizabeth Sullivan 9:10 a.m. - Vania Simont 9:20 a.m. - Marie Eline Madsen 9:30 a.m. - Ellie Hildreth 9:30 a.m. - Leena Stephens (10) 9:40 a.m. - Lea Ludwig (10)

Upcoming NC State will play at the ACC Championship at Porters Neck Country Club in Wilmington, North Carolina from Thursday, April 16 to Sunday, April 19.

Zoe Brooks sat on the N.C. State bench in tears midway through the third quarter after an apparent lower right leg injury, cracks showing in her typically impenetrable armor.

Athletic trainer Brittany Blunt helped remove Brooks’ shoe and walked with the junior guard to the Wolfpack (Wolfpack Gear) locker room. N.C. State led Tennessee by seven points prior to her substitution. Steady scoring from the Lady Vols — and a lack of it from the Pack — cut N.C. State’s advantage to two.

Brooks’ departure could’ve meant the end of N.C. State’s season. Instead, her teammates rallied for a 76-61 win over Tennessee to add at least one more game to the schedule, marking the Pack’s third straight win over the Lady Vols. (N.C. State upset Tennessee in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, and defeated the Vols by three points in the 2025-26 season opener at Greensboro Coliseum.)

The seventh-seeded Wolfpack plays No. 2 seed Michigan on Sunday in the Round of 32.

“I’m proud of our team. We’ve had our ups and downs this year,” N.C. State head coach Wes Moore said. “It’s been bumpy at times. ... I feel like we’ve been tested, and we look forward to the opportunity.”

Sophomore guard Zamareya Jones played a major role Friday for the Wolfpack, before and after Brooks’ injury. She scored 15 first-half points, including 11 in the opening quarter, while assisting on another three shots. Jones was a contributor on 22 of N.C. State’s 40 first-half points.

Jones led all scorers with a career-high 30 points and surpassed 20 points for the sixth time this season. She also added three rebounds, three assists and five steals before fouling out with 85 seconds to play.

Khamil Pierre added her 22nd double-double of the season, scoring 16 points and pulling down 12 rebounds. Qadence Samuels contributed 12 points and five boards.

Brooks scored eight points, all in the first quarter, and played only 17 minutes. The exact status of Brooks’ injury is unknown, Moore said. The medical staff will perform treatment in hopes she is available for the team’s second-round game.

Freshman Ky’She Lunan played in Brooks’ place, hitting clutch free throws, pulling down a pair of rebounds and adding a couple of assists.

Talaysia Cooper led the Vols with 24 points and six rebounds.

Pierre said the win exemplifies the team’s ability to play for each other.

“Zoe would have loved to be out there on the court,” Pierre said, “so just trying to get the win for her and understanding that it’s bigger than ourselves and we have a team full of 10 girls and a whole staff. We’ve got to do it for each other more than we do it for ourselves.”

Jones said beyond Brooks’ injury, the team entered the game with something to prove. Social media posts from Tennessee players mentioned “running it back,” Jones said, which fueled her.

“I’m the type of person that feeds into that stuff,” Jones said. “Coach Moore isn’t big with that, but that’s the type of person I am. So seeing them saying ‘running it back’ like they were gonna beat us, we knew we beat them the first time and we could beat them again. I came in with the mindset of winning this and advancing.”

N.C. State (21-10) can credit its win, at least in part, to its stellar start. It opened the game with a blistering hot offense, shooting 10 for 10 from the field, and used a 15-0 scoring run to create a lead of as many points. The Wolfpack had all the momentum and looked like it might steamroll a struggling Lady Vols team.

Tennessee (16-14), which made its 44th straight NCAA Tournament appearance, didn’t go down quietly. The Vols were particularly effective off the glass, pulling down six offensive rebounds in the first quarter and turned three of them into second-chance baskets. They only added to their rebounding total and went to the locker room with 11 offensive boards.

UT also forced a number of uncharacteristic turnovers late in the first quarter and early in the second. The Wolfpack committed nine in the opening half, including four of the team’s first five second-quarter possessions.

N.C. State made up for its lack of aggression on the boards and its ball handling errors by shooting 63% from the field in the first half and holding Tennessee to 31%.

The Vols went 3 of 22 from deep (13.6%). They were 0 for 9 in the second period, thanks in part to the Wolfpack zone defense. N.C. State led by 11 points at halftime.

The Wolfpack’s second-half start wasn’t nearly as efficient as its first. N.C. State started 1 for 11 from the field and missed seven in a row, going without a field goal for more than five minutes. Tennessee, however, couldn’t build on its momentum after cutting the Pack’s lead to one possession and holding it to three made field goals.

It gave up drives to the basket, which N.C. State turned into free throws, and did not score a field goal in the final four minutes of the game.

The Wolfpack finished the game 51% from the field and 21 of 25 (84%) from the free throw line. It committed 16 turnovers, but Moore said that’s to be expected when playing against a press defense the entire game.

N.C. State also held Tennessee to 33% from the field and 19.4% from 3, but allowed 21 offensive rebounds.

The Lady Vols were without senior Janiah Barker due to illness. Barker averaged 14.3 points and 6.6 rebounds, while shooting 46.5% from the field. In the season opener, Barker scored 15 points and made three baskets from the perimeter.

“It means everything,” Jones said of the Wolfpack’s win during a TV interview. “Everybody said we had the toughest game — the first round game — and we wouldn’t make it out.”

N.C. State men’s basketball is still going dancing, despite a rollercoaster of a season.

The Wolfpack (Wolfpack Gear) learned Sunday where it will begin its NCAA Tournament: The Pack (22-10) will be a No. 11 seed in the West Region, beginning play at Dayton, Ohio, in the First Four, against Texas on Tuesday night at 9:15 p.m. The game will be televised on TruTV.

It will face Texas (18-14) for the second time this season after falling to the Longhorns, 102-97, in the Maui Invitational.

“I’m shocked by going to Dayton, but, look, we did it to ourselves,” N.C. State head coach Will Wade said Sunday after the bracket reveal. “I told our guys, there’s no victims in the room. We have a Quad 4 loss to Georgia Tech. We didn’t handle business down the stretch. We’re fortunate to be in. We’re happy to be in. I did think our metrics and some of our stuff was a little bit better, but we’re not complaining about being in. We’re in the thing. We got a chance, and now it’s on us to play better and to play well.”

First- and second-round games will take place in Portland, Oregon. If the Wolfpack wins its opening game over Texas, it would play BYU in Portland on Thursday at 7:25 p.m.

If N.C. State were to advance to the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight, it would play in San Jose, California.

Keith Gill, Sun Belt Conference commissioner and chairman of the NCAA Tournament selection committee, said the Wolfpack was among the “Last Four In.” The official seed list from the NCAA shows the Wolfpack seeded No. 41, just ahead of fellow First Four at-large teams Texas at No. 42, SMU at No. 43 and Miami of Ohio at No. 44.

A 1994 Duke (Blue Devil Gear) graduate who played football for the Blue Devils, Gill also said the committee typically does not allow for rematches, but “bracketing irregularities” led to the exception for N.C. State and Texas.

“If you look in the First Four game between Texas and N.C. State, normally, we try to avoid repeat matchups,” Gill said during a CBS interview. “Those teams played in Maui earlier this year, but with the way that the SEC built the bracket and the ACC built the bracket, we couldn’t find another First Four matchup. We also couldn’t put them in a different region, so we ended up having to relax our principle there, so that we could complete the field.”

Predictions prior to the final announced selections changed regularly as prognosticators listed the Wolfpack as high as a No. 9 seed and as low as a No. 11. Its location on the bracket also varied through the final weeks of the regular season and as conference tournament games took place.

This is N.C. State’s eighth NCAA Tournament berth since 2012, and fourth in the past decade. The Wolfpack missed the ACC and NCAA Tournaments last season. The year prior, it went on its magical run to the Final Four.

“We’ve got another opportunity to play, thankfully, so we’ve got to take advantage of the opportunity,” senior forward Ven-Allen Lubin said Thursday. “This could be our last game. We just want to make sure that we’re prepared.”

N.C. State went 20-13 in the regular season and 10-8 in ACC play. It picked up a 98-88 win over Pittsburgh in the ACC Tournament second round. The following day, it lost to Virginia, 81-74.

Wade and his players have all said the team left opportunities on the table, especially down the stretch.

The Wolfpack ended the regular season on a four-game skid and lost six of its past seven games. N.C. State defeated Pittsburgh in its opening game of the ACC Tournament, but could not upset Virginia the next day, despite leading. The blown lead to Georgia Tech — which didn’t make the conference tournament and fired Head Coach Damon Stoudamire — also haunts the program. That was the Yellow Jackets’ last win of the season. It also lost to Notre Dame. That was a Quad 2 loss, but the Fighting Irish still didn’t make the ACC Tournament.

“Thank goodness we beat Pittsburgh,” Wade said. “We’d have been in real trouble if we hadn’t beaten those guys.”

ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi had the Wolfpack as high as a No. 6 seed in projections earlier this season. Despite the slide, Lunardi never listed the team outside the main bracket.

He, along with News & Observer bracketology correspondent Patrick Stevens, felt confident the Wolfpack would make the field of 68. They also believed N.C. State would earn a bye, avoiding the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, pending multiple bid stealers.

Despite a few bid stealers in the field, the Selection Committee opted to make the Wolfpack play its way into the field of 64.

“It’s been a pretty spectacular slide. There’s no question about it,” said Lunardi during a media call on March 9, ahead of the ACC Tournament. “The ACC, which has enjoyed a nice resurgence, both N.C. State and SMU, you could almost group them together, are working very hard now to miss the tournament. But, there are teams like this every year, and they rarely fall all the way out.”

Lunardi said N.C. State had help from other bubble teams losing and several solid wins on its resume. The team needed a win in Charlotte — which it secured — to feel confident that it would have a spot.

N.C. State finished with 11 wins over Quad 1 and Quad 2 opponents — it should be thanking several ACC opponents, like Florida State, for help with that. The team’s results feature wins over multiple NCAA Tournament teams and only one bad loss.

“There’s no victim here. There’s no woe is us. Woe is NC State this. ‘We got screwed.’ There’s none of that,” Wade said. “We did it to ourselves. If we wanted a better outcome. We should have had better results. ... We are who we are. We got what we deserve. We got what we earned. Now it’s our turn, and now it’s our time to see if we can do something with this opportunity more than we’ve done during the regular season.”

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard, Hatteras Island commissioner Mary Ellon Ballance and county manager Bobby Outten traveled to Raleigh on Thursday, March 5, 2026 to advocate for urgent solutions to the recurring erosion and storm impacts affecting N.C. Highway 12 on Hatteras Island—an essential transportation lifeline for residents, emergency services, and the Outer Banks’ tourism-driven economy, stated a news release issued Friday morning by Dare County.

County officials attended the North Carolina Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee meeting to brief state leaders on the ongoing challenges along Highway 12, including chronic erosion, overwash, roadway closures and the associated public safety, economic and quality-of-life impacts. The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) was also in attendance, along with the region’s Rural Planning Organization (RPO), which reinforced the significant regional transportation concerns tied to maintaining reliable access on Hatteras Island.

Following the committee meeting, Woodard, Ballance and Outten met with Senators Bill Rabon and Michael Lazzara to further discuss Highway 12’s needs and potential pathways forward. The discussion also included coastal resiliency priorities such as state beach nourishment funding and the limitations associated with hardened structures.

“These state advocacy efforts build on ongoing work by the Dare County Board of Commissioners to pursue both near-term measures and long-term strategies,” stated the release. “At the Board’s meeting on Monday, the Board hired Greer Beaty Consulting to assist in developing coordinated short-, mid- and long-term strategies to address recurring closures of N.C. Highway 12 on Hatteras Island, including identifying potential funding and implementation pathways.”

In November 2025, Woodard sent a letter to all members of the North Carolina General Assembly outlining Dare County’s concerns and priorities regarding Highway 12, and urging increased state support for sustainable solutions.

“We appreciate the opportunity to speak directly with members of the Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee and to continue these conversations with our state leaders," said Woodard. "Dare County is grateful for their attention to this issue and for the partnership needed to move meaningful solutions forward.”

The issue isn’t losing to Duke. It’s in the upper echelon of men’s college basketball. The issue really isn’t Virginia, either. The Cavaliers aren’t quite to the Blue Devils’ level, but they’re certainly in a higher tier than N.C. State.

The Wolfpack’s biggest problem after losing five of its six last games isn’t even having three losses by 29 points or more. N.C. State’s most glaring blemish on the season is failing to handle business against comparable teams.

“We’ve missed some three-foot putts,” N.C. State head coach Will Wade said after the 93-64 loss to Duke on Monday. “When you miss three-foot putts and then you try to make up for it on 30 footers, it’s hard to do. Our margins are pretty thin right now.”

Wade mentioned his team squandering an eight-point lead against Georgia Tech, the worst team in the ACC, on Jan. 17. The Yellow Jackets haven’t won a game since they upset the Wolfpack at home.

N.C. State blew a seven-point lead to Miami in the final 67 seconds on Valentine’s Day. Then, on Saturday, it blew a nine-point lead to Notre Dame, also one of the weaker teams in the ACC, allowing the Fighting Irish to force overtime and comeback for the upset victory.

Those losses are the problems. Those are the ones that Wade can’t get over. They’re the ones he’ll keep bringing up. Because it’s one thing to lose to Virginia or Duke. They’re whipping almost everybody. It’s much harder to stomach the losses against teams his squad was more than capable of beating.

“We can’t punch in the heavy weights right now, but the middle weights and light weights, you know, we’ve let them knock us around a little bit, too.” Wade said. “We’ve landed our punches in those classes, but we’re just not there right now, and we’ve got to get there quick. This program deserves it. Our fans deserve it, and we’re going to work extremely hard to get there and get there fast … But we’ve got to punch in our weight class better than we have.”

Missing the gimmes

Wade said that’s been the most disappointing part about this season. His previous teams, with many of the same assistants, lost games but rarely lost the games they were supposed to win. They keep missing the three- to five-foot putts.

That turns a great season into a good season. Or a good season into just an OK season, he said.

When it comes to the ACC and NCAA Tournament resumes, the Wolfpack is in a better position than it was a year ago — and even two years ago before its Cinderella run — but the program is certainly not where it wants to be.

N.C. State had a chance to stay in contention for a double bye in the conference championship. It needed to go 2-2 down the stretch with wins over Notre Dame and Stanford, while getting at least one other game to go its way. There were at least seven different scenarios in which the Wolfpack could’ve remained in the Top 4 with wins over the Irish and the Cardinal.

With the Pack going 0-3 and one regular season game left, it will likely land anywhere between the No. 5 and No. 7 seed going into Charlotte next week.

NC State’s NCAA Tournament outlook

The NCAA Tournament resume is also in a somewhat precarious position. Without any sort of miracle, it’s unlikely that N.C. State will see its seed rise. Prior to the loss on Monday, various prognosticators had the team listed as an eight seed. Earlier this season, it had been listed as a No. 6 or No. 7 seed.

“I think we’re fine as of today, but we don’t want to lose Saturday. I think it’ll get a lot trickier then,” Wade said. “We’ve got four Quad 1 wins. Some of our losses have been pretty loud, but still a loss, and our numbers are pretty good.”

The Wolfpack is now 4-8 in Quad 1 games and 7-2 in Quad 2 matchups. Its loss to the Yellow Jackets sits at a Quad 4. It is 2-6 in matchups against AP Top 25 teams, with victories over Clemson and North Carolina. Its other two Quad 1 wins came against SMU and Wake Forest.

N.C. State’s resume also includes wins over potential NCAA Tournament teams Liberty, VCU and Virginia Tech. VCU and Virginia Tech are on the bubble. N.C. State was No. 29 in the NET prior to the loss to Duke. The Wolfpack was No. 31 in KenPom rankings and dropped to No. 35 following the game.

“We’re just trying to win games. That’s it. That’s the main focus. Winning the games,” senior guard Quadir Copeland said. “We win games, no one’s got something to say. When we won them six games, everybody was happy. We’ve been losing, and everybody’s sad, that’s how it goes. … We just gotta win games. We’re gonna stick together and stay with each other and win games, simple as that.”