RALEIGH, NC — There wasn’t a lot of Carolina Blue to be found on North Carolina’s bench on Monday night inside NC State’s Reynolds Coliseum.
UNC’s staff all wore black shirts with pink ribbons. On the back was the No. 6 and the last name of associate head coach Joanne Aluka-White. Players wore the shirts during warmups, too, in honor of the Tar Heels assistant coach who has a form of breast cancer.
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So, when the Tar Heels took the floor against their rivals, they were playing for something more — and it showed in the final moments. With less than two seconds remaining and holding onto a two-point lead, Indya Nivar went to the free throw line to take game-sealing shots. Both bounced off the rim, but Nivar outhustled four Wolfpack defenders to corral her own miss and held on to the ball until the final buzzer sounded.
In the 21st Play4Kay game — held annually at NC State to honor Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow, who died in 2009 from breast cancer — UNC won 61-59 behind the gritty play of Nivar, who piled up 16 points, seven rebounds and six assists. Lanie Grant added 18 points for the Tar Heels, while Nyla Harris chipped in 10 points and nine boards.
UNC (18-5, 7-3 ACC) won at Reynolds Coliseum for the first time since 2019. It was the Tar Heels’ first Quad 1 victory of the season, keeping their hopes of a top 16 seed and hosting rights in the NCAA Tournament alive.
And it was all for the person that everyone inside the program simply calls “Coach Jo.”
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“It meant so much to us, like, who we were playing for, the purpose behind the game,” Grant said. “There was never a moment where we knew that winning wasn’t an option for us to do it for Coach Jo. There was a buy-in.”
UNC head coach Courtney Banghart said it took effort to persuade Aluka-White to allow players and staff to wear the T-shirts, publicly acknowledging her cancer diagnosis.
“It did take convincing, because I think what makes Jo special is, it’s not about her. These kids mean the world to her. And so, she wasn’t a huge fan at first,” Banghart said. “And I said, ‘People have to know that all types of people are dealing with this.’ And so she didn’t give me much flack after that. I know it had to have meant a lot to have the team represent the fight that she had, and (she) did it all while staying working. It’s pretty remarkable. Women are superhuman.”
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The No. 6 on the T-shirts, Banghart explained, comes from the military term, “I got your six,” meaning the team has Aluka-White’s back.
Through a UNC spokesperson, Aluka-White said she was diagnosed last year and has had three surgeries since. Aluka-White added she wants to emphasize the importance of early detection. The National Breast Cancer Foundation says, “When caught in its earliest, localized stages, the five-year relative survival rate is nearly 100%.”
In addition to spotlighting Aluka-White, many of UNC’s staffers also wore a pink sticker on their shirts with the letters “DG.” Dana Gelin, the program’s longtime Director of Communications, died last summer of cancer.
The Play4Kay game is always a big night at NC State, where Yow coached from 1975 until her death. The Wolfpack won five ACC championships under her direction and went to the Final Four in 1998. She was also the head coach of Team USA in 1988 when it won the gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Yow was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and used her prognosis to raise awareness and money for research.
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During Monday’s game against UNC, NC State raised $508,715 for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. At halftime of every Play4Kay game, cancer survivors are honored.
“It’s a great atmosphere. Our fans are unbelievable,” said NC State coach Wes Moore, who worked as an assistant under Yow. “It’s a great cause, and I obviously was with Coach Yow and saw her fight for 20 years through it. It’s an important night for all of us here at NC State.”
Banghart has her own memory of Yow. To earn her master’s degree in writing and leadership development from Dartmouth about two decades ago, she put together a final thesis project that was titled, Leaders Speak: An Oral History of Great Collegiate Sport Leaders. For the paper, she traveled and spent time interviewing people across college athletics, from UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma to former UNC women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance. One of the coaches she talked to was Yow, interviewing her for nearly three hours.
As Banghart was getting ready to leave, Yow stopped her and said, “You know, I hope you become a coach. I hope this is a business that you end up staying in.”
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Banghart, still unsure about coaching as a profession, replied, “We’ll see. I’m enjoying it.”
Yow stopped her again: “This business needs good women.”
It was a moment that stuck with Banghart and has persisted long after Yow’s death. And it’s a memory that made winning for the first time on the court that bears Yow’s name special for Banghart.
“Kay Yow would be really, really proud of what women’s basketball has become. She had a huge part in that,” Banghart said. “She was really good to me.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Inspired by coach’s cancer diagnosis, UNC gets crucial win at NC State
