Chattanooga's Madison Hayes doing ‘a lot of things’ in second season at N.C. State

East Hamilton grad embraces role as star defender

AP photo by Charlie Neibergall / N.C. State guard Madison Hayes, right, drives around Iowa forward McKenna Warnock during an ACC/Big Ten Challenge game on Dec. 1 in Iowa City. Hayes, who is from Chattanooga and was a prep star at East Hamilton, is in her second season at N.C. State after playing her freshman year at Mississippi State.
AP photo by Charlie Neibergall / N.C. State guard Madison Hayes, right, drives around Iowa forward McKenna Warnock during an ACC/Big Ten Challenge game on Dec. 1 in Iowa City. Hayes, who is from Chattanooga and was a prep star at East Hamilton, is in her second season at N.C. State after playing her freshman year at Mississippi State.

ATLANTA — Madison Hayes came out of the visiting locker room Thursday night at Georgia Tech, dejected by No. 15 North Carolina State's 68-62 loss to the Yellow Jackets.

The former East Hamilton standout, two-time Tennessee Class AAA Miss Basketball winner and 2020 McDonald's All-American has played well overall in her first season in the starting lineup for the Wolfpack, but the 6-foot guard's attempt at a tying 3-pointer just inside the final minute of the Atlantic Coast Conference matchup was no good. From there, N.C. State struggled with turnovers, the home team made its free throws and Georgia Tech won for the third time in four games after losing six in a row.

Hayes had finished the game with five points — she made a layup and a 3, both in the second quarter — and a team-high 10 rebounds, and she had also been a primary defender on Cameron Swartz, who is the Yellow Jackets' leading scorer this season but shot just 4-of-14 from the field Thursday.

The Wolfpack were nine points better when Hayes was on the court, in part because she has not only accepted her role with the team — to provide stellar defense and make open shots — but become comfortable in it during her second season in Raleigh.

"Madison plays hard," said veteran N.C. State coach Wes Moore, who left the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2013 after 15 seasons and nine NCAA tournament appearances. "She guards the other team's best perimeter player; she rebounds; her 3-point shooting has improved tremendously.

"She does a lot of things for us."

Of course, it was just a couple years ago that Hayes' basketball career was in a bit of limbo.

She had signed with Mississippi State as a high school senior, but before she graduated, Bulldogs coach Vic Schaefer left the program he had led to a pair of Southeastern Conference titles and two NCAA tournament runner-up finishes to take over at Texas. Hayes pledged to give new Mississippi State coach Nikki McCray-Penson a shot, but she wound up leaving after a year to joins Moore's program.

Hayes had enjoyed some early success at Mississippi State, earning SEC All-Freshman recognition, but in her first year with the Wolfpack she had to take a back-seat role last season on an experienced team that won 32 games, swept the ACC regular-season and tournament titles — winning the latter for the third straight time — and advanced to the Elite Eight for just the second time in program history. The only deeper NCAA tourney run by the Wolfpack was to the 1998 Final Four.

"I learned a lot last year," Hayes said. "We had a lot of veterans come back, and that helped us get a ring, and they taught me a lot.

"I know my role. I'm going to be a defensive stopper for the other team's best player, and then rebound and do the little things — plus score. Coach Moore already knows I can score, so that's a plus, but defense is my main thing."

She's shooting 44% from the field, 36% from 3-point range and 70% from the free-throw line this season while averaging 7.5 points and 3.9 rebounds for the Wolfpack (16-6, 6-5).

Moore's tenure has raised the standard for the program, which ascended to No. 1 in the country just a season ago, but N.C. State has had its share of rough spots in 2022-23 despite being ranked throughout. The six losses are the Wolfpack's most since the 2018-19 season, but their inconsistency has been equally frustrating. Two days prior to the loss to unranked Georgia Tech — which improved to 12-10, 3-8 — they had beaten No. 7 Notre Dame in Raleigh.

Their ACC schedule ensures they'll have more opportunities to prove themselves this month before tournament time, including their next game, against No. 13 Virginia Tech (18-4, 8-4) at 6 p.m. Monday on ESPN2. In the moments after the loss to the Yellow Jackets, Hayes was already reviewing what went wrong and how to fix it.

"We've got to box out. We've got to rebound," she said. "I feel like I could have made that shot in the corner. I'm always hard on myself when it comes to stuff like that, because I could have tied the game and maybe things would have been different, but there was a lot of other stuff that led up to it."

But as she trudged up the stairs, that couldn't matter. A crowd of 70 or so people from Chattanooga had made the trip of 100-plus miles, many of them from the Brainerd Recreation Center where Hayes grew up playing.

That group of fans had enjoyed themselves, with a whole section of McCamish Pavilion painted in red. A number of them were caught on the jumbotron "Swag Surfin'" during a timeout late in the game because — well, that's what you do when the song comes on.

"It was pretty cool," Hayes said. "Seeing the AAU team I started with, my high school, the rec center I went to, it was really fun to see them here supporting me and the team, because that brings more fan base to our team as well.

"I want to thank all the fans who came down. That was a big road trip."

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.

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