Mission accomplished as Pack smacks Duke
N.C. State at Duke on November 8, 2008.
Nov 9, 2008
N.C. State coach Tom O’Brien, a strait-laced former Marine, is not noted for forays into irreverence. True to form, he found several conventional spurs to motivate his Wolfpack for the final third of the football season, which began Saturday as it renewed a venerable rivalry with Duke. But O’Brien was not above a little arch humor too as N.C. State sought its first ACC victory in five tries.
The coach started by reminding his team that, with four straight wins, the Pack could even its record and become bowl-eligible. Finishing .500 is rarely cause for reward in sports, but the much-maligned bowl system gave N.C. State something to shoot for even after losing six of its first eight games.
O’Brien also offered the chance to capture what linebacker Nate Irving, leader of the defense, called “the mythical state championship.” N.C. State is the only school that plays Duke, East Carolina, North Carolina, and Wake Forest this season. A win at Duke, and a previous overtime victory over ECU, would get the Wolfpack halfway to that goal.
But the coach was not content with strictly conventional approaches. Preparing his team to play David Cutcliffe’s Blue Devils, who already had four wins, matching their output over the past four seasons combined, O'Brien turned to Hollywood for inspiration. As game day approached, he showed his squad a snippet from the rollicking 1980 film “The Blues Brothers,” a humorous tale of car chases, hard drinking, rock-n-roll, and perverse altruism that featured John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
“Can’t nobody touch us,” the characters declared, as quoted by Irving and several teammates. “Were on a mission from God.” Quarterback Russell Wilson said he “definitely laughed” when the coach conflated the cimematic declaration with the notion the Wolfpack’s mission was divinely inspired. “He smirked a little bit too,” Wilson said.
O’Brien simply looked pleased after watching his squad defeat Duke 27-17, essentially cruising through the fourth quarter as it improved its record to 3-6. The coach tried to shrug off mention of the “Blues Brothers” by his players, but couldn’t help adding, “We’re still on that mission.”
Wilson was the star as the Pack continued to show overall improvement on both sides of the ball. Poised and patient, Wilson completed 13 of 25 passes for 218 yards and two touchdowns. “I went up and shook his hand after the ballgame, and he isn’t as tall as I am,” Cutcliffe said of the 5-11 signalcaller. “The guy is a ballplayer. He made every single play and his receivers made every single play.”
The freshman quarterback repeatedly eluded Duke’s rush, darting for yardage when necessary. N.C. State had realized Duke’s defensive backs tended to play their man without looking for the ball, so Wilson threw high and allowed tall receivers like 6-6 tight end Anthony Hill and 6-4 wideout Jarvis Williams to maneuver to make catches.
"Once again, he didn’t turn the football over, which is huge in a game like this,” O’Brien said of Wilson, who ran his string of throws without an interception to 142, second in school history.
Wilson drove the Wolfpack to a field goal the first time they touched the ball. Duke responded in kind, then kicked off to T.J. Graham. The dangerous return man rushed for four yards, then handed off on a reverse to J.C. Neal, who ran 89 yards down the right sideline for a touchdown. That gave N.C. State a 10-3 lead with 1:22 remaining in the opening quarter. Duke never caught up again.
The Pack’s 24-10 halftime margin marked its largest output in a half this season.
The Blue Devils, now 4-5 and 1-4 in the ACC, moved the ball with some efficiency, winning many statistical battles. But four times the Wolfpack defense stiffed Duke in fourth-down situations, twice in scoring position, and that proved crucial.
The key stop came on the Devils’ first possession of the second half. Quarterback Thaddeus Lewis, who completed 37 of 52 passes for 317 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions, drove his team to a first and goal at the Wolfpack three. But three straight inside rushes failed to bull closer than the 1-yard line. On fourth down, Lewis faked a handoff and threw to tight end Brett Huffman, wide open in the end zone. But Lewis was rushed, his pass fell short, and the threat died.
“I think the goal line stand really jacked up the defense and made us believe even more that we could play football,” said the dreadlocked Irving, recovered from an ankle injury that cost him three games. Duke would not score again until 1:26 was left and the contest already decided.
The desultory ending was a bit of a letdown for what once was the most entertaining series in ACC football.
This area being something short of a football hotbed, most local commentary on ACC expansion focused on the effect the change had on basketball. But largely missed in the discussion was the suspension of the football series involving Duke and N.C. State.
More often than not in modern times, games between the Big Four rivals were closely contested, high-scoring affairs. From 1982 through 2003, 14 of 22 contests matching the Wolfpack and Blue Devils were decided by a touchdown or less. Fourteen times during that span the teams combined to score at least 50 points.
Duke’s most recent victory in the series, and the last win of coach Barry Wilson’s four-year tenure, came in 1993. The Devils scored the game’s first 21 points at Wallace Wade Stadium, then held on for a 21-20 victory. The Pack missed an extra point and then a 2-point conversion with 2:19 remaining. N.C. State followed with 10 straight wins over the Devils before the series was suspended due to the advent of expansion, which saw the programs placed in different divisions.
Saturday the Wolfpack extended the winning streak in impressive fashion before 31,964 fans at Wallace Wade, where the game began in warmth and sunlight and ended in the chill dark. The win concluded a run of four consecutive losses by N.C. State, and offered evidence it will be a formidable opponent for the remainder of the season.
Certainly the Pack bore little resemblance to a team rated 95th in Jeff Sagarin’s national power ratings, easily the lowest among ACC squads. And Duke, which Cutcliffe said was “sick” over the loss, hardly looked like a squad rated 26th, one of six ACC members in Sagarin’s top 30.
