WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina State University

Liberty coach familiar with NCSU's O'Brien, challenge still great

By Aaron Schoonmaker

Aug 30, 2011

Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina State University has never played Liberty in football. Head coach Tom O’Brien has never led a team against the Flames. But Liberty head coach Danny Rocco believes he has a beat on the Wolfpack and their head man - even though the challenge will be great.

Rocco is a Wake Forest graduate. He was an associate head coach at Virginia from 2001-2005 and an assistant 1991-93 at Maryland when O’Brien was at Boston College. Rocco spent six years as an assistant at Wake Forest and Boston College during the years that O’Brien was an assistant at Virginia. He is well versed in the ACC and in O’Brien's style.

“Always very disciplined, always very physical, always play hard and smart,” Rocco said of O’Brien’s teams during an interview with Mark and Mike, The Insiders, on 620 The Buzz Tuesday morning. “Those are four things right there that are going to give you a chance to win.”

Rocco is no slouch of a coach himself. He has amassed a 40-16 record in five seasons at Liberty after taking over a team that went 1-0 the year before his arrival. He has won four consecutive conference titles in that stretch and now he thinks he has his best team yet.

“When we got here, this thing didn’t have a whole lot of energy or enthusiasm or momentum,” Rocco said. “We have pretty consistently built this thing up to the point that we have our best football team.”

Even with Rocco’s success at Liberty, he said he didn’t need to look at tape long to see an impressive NC State team this year.

“There seems to be a little more team speed; that jumps out at me,” Rocco said. “That gets my attention in terms of the speed they have at the skill positions; the speed that they have on defense.”

O’Brien has not lost to an FCS team, but it’s hard to find a match-up of head men with such knowledge of each other in a cross-division matchup.

Liberty Leaders

For Rocco and the Flames, there are two key guys that O’Brien’s Wolfpack need to be wary of on Saturday evening.

Senior quarterback Mike Brown took over as the full-time signal caller last year, but in his time with the Flames has returned kicks and punts and continues to line up at wide receiver. Brown is a three-time captain, two-time Big-South preseason offensive player of the year, Big-South All-Conference and preseason Walter Payton award candidate.

The bigger concern for NC State, in stature and game effect, will be 6-foot-5, 280-pound Asa Chapman. The middle man in the heart of a 3-4 line is expected to be a game changer.

“He is a Taylor-made nose tackle,” Rocco said. “When you have that type of size and athleticism, you have the ability to sit in the middle and anchor this defense.”