When Carrie Moore was browsing through bracket projections late last weekend, she kept seeing Michigan, her previous coaching stop, pop up as a possible first-round opponent for Harvard in the NCAA Tournament.

Close. Harvard instead drew Michigan State, which has its fair share of intrigue, as well.

Michigan State is led by second-year head coach Robyn Fralick, who was a graduate assistant at Western Michigan during Moore’s senior season playing for the Broncos. The two clicked then, and the two will face off Saturday in a first-round game on the campus of N.C. State. MSU is the 7th seed; Harvard is the No. 10 seed. Tip-off is 4:30 p.m.

“I think the NCAA, they like these story lines. They like to have something to talk about, and obviously, that’s something to talk about, other than the teams and the talent,” Moore said before practice Wednesday.

“(Robyn is) awesome and has had such a great career. I’ve been cheering for her from afar for a long time.”

The first-round NCAA Tournament matchup features two of the rising stars in women’s basketball coaching, in Moore, 39, who is in her third season as head coach at Harvard, and Fralick, 43, who is in her second season at Michigan State. The winner between Harvard, the champion of the Ivy League, and Michigan State, which tied for fifth in the Big Ten in the regular season, will advance to face the winner of No. 2 N.C. State-No. 15 Vermont in Raleigh, N.C., on Monday.

Fralick and Moore first met during the 2006-07 season, when Fralick, an Okemos native, was early in her coaching career at Western Michigan, and Moore, a Detroit Country Day alum, was a senior star for the Broncos.

Moore said she doesn’t remember much about that season, even though she led the nation in scoring that year and was named the Mid-American Conference co-player of the year. But she remembers the pregame introductions. When her name was announced, she would always look over to Fralick, who would always have her arms flexed and chest puffed out, trying to pump up Moore for the game.

“It was just kind of a moment we would have before every game,” Moore said.

Said Fralick, in meeting with reporters Sunday night following the Selection Show that pitted her team against Moore’s: “A great player, great person, great coach.”

The two went their separate ways after that season, Moore on to pro ball overseas briefly before joining the Princeton staff as director of basketball operations in 2008 and then starting her coaching career in 2010 at Creighton, while Fralick moved on the following season to the staff at Toledo.

Fralick eventually became the head coach at Ashland in 2015, then Bowling Green in 2018, and finally Michigan State in 2023, taking over for longtime head coach Suzy Merchant. Fralick led the Spartans to the NCAA Tournament last year, as well, and is the first coach in program history to make the NCAA Tournament in each of her first two seasons.

Moore’s coaching journey took her back to Princeton and then to North Carolina, before she returned home to Michigan in 2021, joining Kim Barnes Arico’s staff at UM.

That season, the Wolverines made their first-ever trip to the Elite Eight. It was a year Moore learned a lot about herself, and gained a lot of confidence in her coaching abilities, thanks to Barnes Arico.

“Kim is just somebody I really admire,” Moore said, adding she sees a lot of herself in Barnes Arico. “She’s fiery, she’s passionate, you can see it on the sidelines, you see it every day in practice. She holds players accountable and holds them to a certain standard.

“And I felt like the year I was there almost gave me permission to, ‘OK, you can do it this way, you can win this way, you can be successful this way’ (and), ‘OK, you can be a head coach and you can be successful just as you are.’”

“That was my biggest takeaway from that year, outside of just the consistency with which she prepares. You see the success it continues to have for her. I can only hope we can continue to build this thing as a consistent competitor.”

After her one season on staff at Michigan, Moore was hired as head coach at Harvard, replacing the legendary Kathy Delaney-Smith, who had been the program’s head coach for 40 years. Moore is just the program’s fourth head coach.

Harvard last was in the NCAA Tournament in 2007, before earning a bid by winning the Ivy League tournament last weekend. Barnes Arico texted Moore after the semifinal win over Princeton (70-67) last Friday, and again after the championship-game win over Columbia (74-71) last Saturday.

Asked if Barnes Arico has shared a scouting report with Moore on Michigan State (Michigan and Michigan State split the regular-season series), Moore laughed and said, “She’s got her own game.”

Michigan, a No. 6 seed, is playing No. 11 Iowa State at 11:30 a.m. Friday at Notre Dame.

“That’s a friendship and a mentorship that will always mean a lot to me,” Moore said of her one season at Michigan with Barnes Arico. “And I’m glad we’re not playing them.”

Moore, a Lathrup Village native, is among the most-accomplished basketball players in Michigan history after a four-year career at Western Michigan in which she was named first-team All-MAC three times, in 2005, ’06 and ’07. As a senior, she was an All-America selection after averaging 25.4 points, becoming the first MAC women’s basketball player ever to lead the nation in scoring. Moore finished her WMU career as the program’s all-time leader in points (2,224), and she was inducted into the athletic department’s Hall of Fame in 2022, six months after landing the Harvard job. (It is noteworthy that WMU’s women’s head-coaching job is currently open, and WMU surely will gauge Moore’s interest.)

In her first year at Harvard, Moore led the team to the Ivy League tournament championship game, falling to Princeton (54-48), but made it to the WNIT Great Eight and finished 20-12. Last season, Harvard was 16-12, before going 24-4 this season, setting a program record for wins. Harvard is led by senior guard Harmoni Turner, who averages 22.5 points a game, good for ninth in the nation.

Saturday’s game is a matchup between the nation’s No. 6 defense (Harvard, at 52.5 points) and No. 14 offense (Michigan State, at 79.5). It’s also a matchup between Moore and her history, her home state. Often, such story lines can be a distraction at a time of year when distractions can be deadly. But Moore is embracing the opportunity and opponent. She was excited Wednesday to see that a Detroit reporter was on her Zoom press conference.

“Who would’ve thought that our two teams would be playing each other?” said Moore, who grew up a Michigan State fan, and especially of MSU men’s head coach Tom Izzo. “Small world.

“I think everyone knows the story and is just excited.”