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GREENSBORO — Kay Yow gave herself the day off Wednesday, which shocked some people and probably rankled Yow to no end. This is hardly the time of year when basketball coaches get days off.

But this is hardly the kind of year most coaches endure. The thing is, she's not sure how many more days she has before she gives up this nonsense and stalks off into the sunset the way most coaches do - you know, kicking and screaming.

The N.C. State basketball coach is on the eve of the 30th ACC Women's Tournament and a week from her 25th national tournament. She's been at State longer than there's been a conference tournament, longer than there's been an NCAA women's tournament.

Record crowds are expected to pour into the Greensboro Coliseum today for the start of the league tournament, and the very best teams in the nation will be trying to win it. Some of the most boisterous fans in the country will be torn among Duke and Carolina and Maryland, but the most astute fans of the women's game will be pulling for one team and one person.

N.C. State and Kay Yow.

She'll be uncomfortable with the attention, and she'll bristle at the notion that this is about something other than basketball, but that's too bad. This is Yow's tournament and we're pulling for N.C. State.

She's one of our own, a Gibsonville girl who grew up playing basketball like nobody around here had before. She scored 52 points in a game once at old Gibsonville High School and bristled at the way the girls game was played. So she did something no one around here ever thought about doing.

Yow began to reinvent the game, first in the Guilford County dirt itself and eventually on greaseboards and chalkboards and backboards nailed to trees and the sides of barns and garage doors throughout the county.

She taught our girls how to play, coaching at Allen Jay High School in the mid-'60s and later at Gibsonville before going to Elon as the first female head basketball coach in the history of the state.

Yow will return to Greensboro on Friday, walking onto a basketball court not far from the dirt courts where she first drew up plays that transformed the game of women's basketball before we even knew what it was. She'll walk onto the floor surrounded by thousands of fans, predominantly female, who will stand and cheer for the greatest women's basketball pioneer we've ever known.

This is Yow's week, and this has been Yow's season.

The top-ranked team in the nation is here this week, undefeated and undaunted in its run back to Greensboro. Duke made this city its home for an unprecedented run of five ACC championships from 2000-04. The 29-0 Blue Devils are favored to win the title again this week, but they won't be the favorites.

North Carolina is ranked fourth in the country, a 27-3 team believed by many to be the best in the nation. The two-time defending league champion will roll in with a legion of fans who love the Tar Heels. But they won't be the most loved team here.

Maryland comes in with more ACC titles than any other school and the only title that matters right now, the 2006 national championship. But the sentiment for the Terrapins, as deserving as they are, will pale in the face of the sentimental favorites.

N.C. State will be swept in Friday on an emotional wave that has been building all season, since its coach began practice for her 32nd year in Raleigh with four returning starters, a deep freshman class and all the promise in the world for a season to remember for the Wolfpack. And there have been many.

Yow has been building for this year since going to N.C. State in 1975, rejuvenating her program in the face of all the great programs around her, entering the season with this week in mind as a chance to return State to the national spotlight.

Instead, the light shone on Yow in November when she announced she would have to leave the team. The cancer had returned.

Since then, the nation has watched from afar as she bravely dealt with a personal battle bigger than basketball, yet thinking of the day she would return to her team and her season. She came back in January, won her 700th game, saw the court at Reynolds Coliseum named for her, guided her team to eight wins in nine games including a victory over second-ranked Carolina after being carried off Kay Yow Court on a stretcher just the day before.

There have been many tough days since. Wednesday was one of the worst. Yow took the day off and didn't join her team on the floor at the Greensboro Coliseum on the eve of the tournament. She had another session of chemotherapy and a blood transfusion.

The ACC Women's Tournament starts today.

We're pulling for N.C. State.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com