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RALEIGH -- Pink ribbons draped the tubas, and the old end zone clock was stuck on five minutes past five. On the first night of N.C. State basketball without Kay Yow, time seemed to stand still.

And then it was about basketball.

The band played the old fight songs Thursday night, and the fans stood in the dusty old aisles of Reynolds Coliseum and sang. As the women ran onto the floor to the cheers from a sea of pink, an odd tension filled the place. Stephanie Glance walked from one end of Kay Yow Court to the other, returned to the State bench and sat as a group of cameramen surrounded her.

To her right was an empty chair with a basketball jersey draped over the back. N.C. State lost to Boston College 62-51 in the midst of a tragic week and at the end of an era. Five days after Yow died, the Wolfpack women tried to play basketball again. It was time. And it was as simple as that.

"We're on a journey," said Glance, the State assistant who will coach the Wolfpack the rest of the way. "This was the first step of the journey, to play on Kay Yow Court and to represent her."

She said Yow would've been proud.

Glance sat inside the circle of cameras for as long as she could before the game began, finally standing up and walking around in the surreal moments before the buzzer sounded.

She'd flashed the Wolfpack sign to the crowd as she walked, her staff filing in behind her as the team went through layup drills.

The players were wearing pink and white uniforms with bright pink shoes. Every player had the late coach's name on the back of the jersey. The referees walked in with pink whistles hanging from their necks and even the basketball was adorned with a pink Nike swoosh.

The long ordeal that ended last Saturday with the death of Kay Yow has had a bonding effect on women's basketball. All over the country, teams are wearing pink uniforms, tying their shoes with pink laces, stitching pink ribbons to their jerseys and lapels, a show of support for Yow during her fight against breast cancer and for the thousands of people affected who never played for or against or had even heard of the State coach.

This was how she wanted it, of course, the only way Yow would agree to be swept up in something she knew would potentially take her team's focus away, something that could conceivably take the focus away from the team's only goal. To play basketball.

She made the goals bigger, turning games into causes and seasons into running news conferences on teaching and coaching and fighting cancer and supporting charities and doing service work and spreading the word that fighting the disease is a full-time endeavor for everyone, not just those stricken.

But she always demanded her team focus on basketball once the whistles blew, once the buzzers sounded and the game clock started and the ball went up. Eventually, the women's basketball program at N.C. State will get back to that.

"It was nice to get out there and play again," Shayla Fields, a senior guard, said. "I know if coach Yow were here, she wouldn't want to be anywhere else. So if she wouldn't want to be anywhere else, then I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

Thursday night, in the house Everett Case built as a shrine to basketball, in the house where Jim Valvano coached, the house where Yow coached, they started playing basketball again. A game scheduled earlier this week against Wake Forest will be played later this season.

Boston College led 32-9 with four minutes left in the first half Thursday and by as many as 31 before the Wolfpack began to fight back. N.C. State cut the lead to 11 with about three minutes to play and to nine with less than a minute to play. In the end, with the outcome no longer in doubt, State's players played even harder.

Not until the injured limped off and the final buzzer sounded did they gather at center court to listen to the alma mater and circle themselves into a tight group hug.

"We're going to keep playing through this," Glance said. "We're going to keep walking through this together. We're going to keep getting better on the floor, and we're going to keep grieving and having emotion and doing all things we need to do to heal, and then move on people first and players and coaches after that."

They gathered at midcourt and bowed their heads when the game ended. They prayed as a team, and only then did the tears fall on Kay Yow Court. Only then did basketball season resume in the building where Kay Yow coached.

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