Marc Hubbard built ‘belief’ in first season as NC State men’s soccer awaits first NCAA bid since 2019

NC State coach Marc Hubbard’s track record preceded him when he was hired in Raleigh last December. He was known for being able to turn programs around — and the coach had a history of accomplishing that in one season. 

Hubbard inherited a 5-8-5 squad at Division II Southern New Hampshire in 2008, a program he won 12 games with in year one and it didn’t lose more than four games in any of his seven seasons with the Penmen. He then took that same mindset at New Hampshire, where he took a 6-10-1 team from the year prior, and guided the Wildcats to seven NCAA Tournament appearances and four America East Tournament titles in a nine-season stint. 

So when Hubbard took over the Wolfpack program following a 6-9-3 campaign, including just one ACC win, it seemed like he had a tall mountain to climb. But Hubbard was able to reach the summit this fall. 

The Pack, which has not reached the NCAA Tournament since the 2019 campaign, is in prime position to return to the pinnacle of the sport this season. NC State is 8-4-5 with a .619 winning percentage, its highest since the 2009 season — its second to last under legendary coach George Tarantini. 

“You got to build the belief, which I think we did,” Hubbard told TheWolfpacker.com. “Prove to yourself and others that we belong and that we can do it. … We are right there with everyone else. We definitely have a belief that we can go into the NCAA Tournament and beat anyone.”

NC State, which sits at No. 32 in the most recent RPI rankings, will have to wait until the selection show — which is set for Monday at 1 p.m. on NCAA.com — to find out whether or not its season will continue as a part of the 48-team field. And this is an uneasy feeling for Hubbard to be in. 

He’s not used to watching the NCAA bracket being revealed without knowing his squad was firmly in as of recently. Hubbard’s New Hampshire squad was the No. 8 national seed last season and it was safely in the field over the past five seasons, all of which the Wildcats finished atop the conference table at the end of the campaign.

“It’s not a normal position for me, so it’s a little unnervy,” Hubbard said. “You go through all the range of emotions of why you’re currently in this situation. But I feel like our resume is really, really good. … We have a top-12 win. We have a really strong case to be in.”

The Pack, which blasted current-No. 12 SMU 5-1 on senior night, believes that win could be enough to send its resume over the top. But that isn’t the only quality result on the Wolfpack’s slate. NC State holds a win over No. 26 California, while it also has draws with RPI No. 4 Hofstra and No. 9 Stanford.

While Hubbard seemed confident in his team’s body of work this season, a three-game span in late-September proved to him that the rebuild was going well. NC State lost at then-No. 6 North Carolina, its first loss of the season, before it returned home and dropped a tight match to Duke, the current No. 8 squad in the RPI. 

The Wolfpack could have folded, packed it in and let those two losses spoil its game at Stanford, who was the second-ranked team in the country at the time. Instead, NC State made the cross-country flight to Palo, Alto, Calif., and played the Cardinal to a scoreless draw. 

Hubbard believed that was a defining moment for his squad, who finished the regular season 3-1-2 after that Friday night against one of the ACC’s newest programs. 

“The message is all the adversity and things we’ve gone through, it continues to build strength,” Hubbard said. “It puts us in a good position with the chips on the table to really go after it because we have that belief and confidence in each other.”

The Wolfpack’s first season under Hubbard has been headlined by a trio of players with double-digit point totals: Hakim Karamoko (seven goals, two assists), Taig Healy (five goals, three assists) and Donavan Phillip (four goals, two assists). Karamoko is a budding star as a sophomore that was an ACC All-Freshman Team selection a year ago, while Healy followed Hubbard from New Hampshire and Phillip transferred in from Oakland.

But NC State’s strong start in Hubbard’s first season with the Wolfpack is just that: a start. The coach, who is used to competing for national titles and he believed that it is possible to play for one in Raleigh, thought this season was important to lay the foundation for the future. 

Hubbard installed his culture with the Pack as he featured a squad full of 15 new faces, and it worked right away. The Wolfpack’s success, he said, will help on the recruiting trail to help create a solid young core that can help the program stay on its current trajectory. 

That, however, will not be an easy task, he admitted. Hubbard was able to pull the Wolfpack out from the bottom of the ACC, but getting the team to be a top-10 national contender will take even more consistency and work from the players and his staff. 

But that’s a challenge Hubbard is up for. 

“I think going from where we were to where we are right now is a lot easier than going from where we are right now to the top 10 consistently,” Hubbard said. “I think after this year, we’ll make some incremental changes to get from top 30 to top 10. You have to build that depth and have similar personalities playing with one another for a certain amount of time. It can’t be a changeover every six months or that’s not going to lend to that long-term success that you want.”

While the Pack is focused on the next few seasons to continue its upward trend, NC State has a chance to keep playing this season. The team will have to play the waiting game until Monday to see if its quest to make even more waves on the national landscape will continue in the NCAA Tournament later this month.