NC State football has plenty to still play for in remainder of season

Whoever won the NC State football game at Wake Forest knew it would control its destiny in the ACC’s Atlantic Division.

The flip side of that is whoever came up short understood it would have to find new sources of motivation for the final two games of the regular season.

Head coach Dave Doeren and his program are in the latter category after falling, 45-42. Doeren described the loss as the type of game that makes “your heart hurt.”

“It’s always hard when you lose a tough game, but as you’ve seen with this football team, they’ve responded every time they’ve had to,” Doeren noted. “And I expect them to do the same again.”

And Doeren can find many reasons why his team should quickly pick itself back up, starting with a 4 p.m. kickoff Saturday at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh. The game will be televised on the ACC Network.

For starters, in his ninth season as the head coach of NC State football, Doeren is searching for his first undefeated season at home. Many of Doeren’s predecessors never pulled that off, either.

Not since Dick Sheridan, who was recently inducted into College Football’s Hall of Fame, led the 1986 team to a 6-0-1 record at Carter-Finley Stadium has the Wolfpack been unblemished at home for a season.

Only once in program history has NC State football won double-digit games, in 2002 when it went 11-3.

With two home games left, Syracuse and then a 7 p.m. kickoff Nov. 26 against UNC, a pair of wins by the Wolfpack secures one of those goals and puts a nine-win Pack team in position to get a 10th win in a bowl game.

“This is an opportunity, as a senior class, from a legacy standpoint,” Doeren added. “They can have something to talk about if we can do that.

“And, as you know, it won’t happen if we don’t win the next one. So it’s got to be where we put all our eggs right now.”

And that goal of winning an ACC Atlantic Division title is not completely lost should the Pack win out.

If NC State takes care of business at home against the Orange and Tar Heels, and if Wake Forest stumbles in road games at Clemson and Boston College, the Pack will be in Charlotte on Dec. 4 playing the champion from the Coastal Division for the ACC title.

“I’m not going to wish ill-will on anybody,” Doeren insisted. “I’m going to cheer for us, and cheering for us means we want everyone to lose that needs to lose. So, I have to focus on what we control on this side of it.

“And Lord knows we’ve had enough bad luck throughout the years. It’d be great to have a little good luck down the stretch here. We’re going to do that on our side and say our prayers and light our candles and do all the different ritual things we can and see if we can get some luck down the stretch.”

Related link: NC State football coach Dave Doeren press conference transcript

NC State football tidbits

• NC State football senior receiver Emeka Emezie was named the ACC Receiver of the Week after he grabbed 10 receptions for 133 yards and two touchdowns in the loss at Wake Forest.

Doeren thought it was appropriate that Emezie would have a big game in Winston-Salem, site of his fumble in the end zone as a true freshman to end a loss in 2017.

“Emeka played a really good football game,”Doeren noted. “He made some great catches, which he always does. He made his routine catches and had some good runs after the catch.”

Wolfpack sophomore running back Zonovan Knight was selected as the conference’s Specialist of the Week. He returned a kickoff 100 yards for a score and also had a 72-yard runback to set up another touchdown.

• Doeren noted fans should not expect to see the Syracuse team that they are perhaps accustomed to watching under head coach Dino Babers, who is in his sixth year at the helm for the Orange.

Syracuse is 5-4 overall and 2-3 in the ACC thus far this fall, and Doeren has been impressed by the job Babers has done.

“They’re impressive,” Doeren said of Syracuse. “I think Dino deserves a lot of credit. They were four-wide and five-wide and 100 plays a game and max tempo.

“Now they’re running the football and controlling the clock. He’s really shifted what they’re doing up there, and it’s helped them.”

• Reflecting back on the loss at Wake Forest, Doeren thought the late onside kick recovery by junior running back Ricky Person Jr. was a call that could have gone either way.

The official ruled that Person touched it before the ball had traveled 10 yards.

“I thought it was a good kick by [junior kicker] Chris [Dunn],” Doeren said. “The ball was played right on the 10-yard mark by Ricky, and I couldn’t see a good enough replay to tell you one way or the other if it’s a good call or a bad call.

“I just know it was a call that probably didn’t have conclusive evidence, either way.”

Doeren, though, regretted electing to go for a squib kick with 28 seconds remaining in the first half that Wake Forest returned to the NC State 49-yard line. That helped set up a field goal as time expired in the half to give the Demon Deacons a 24-20 advantage at the break.

Doeren repeated his postgame comments that the wind played a factor in his decision, but ultimately acknowledged he should have called a regular kickoff.

“We needed to kick the ball in the end zone,” Doeren. “Obviously, wish I would have done that.”

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