NC State men’s soccer earns NCAA at-large bid, to face Charlotte in first round
NC State waited five years for this moment. Wolfpack Athletic Director Boo Corrigan hired Marc Hubbard last December with this in mind. Finally, Pack men’s soccer will play in the postseason again.
The Wolfpack (8-4-5, 3-3-2 ACC) earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament as it will host Charlotte in the opening round, the team learned during the selection show Monday afternoon. The Pack and 49ers will clash on Thursday night at 6 p.m. on the Dail Soccer Field.
NC State, which hadn’t seen its name pop up on the screen since 2019, returns to the NCAA Tournament with a newfound belief that it can hold its own in the 48-team field.
“You got to build the belief, which I think we did,” Hubbard told TheWolfpacker.com last week. “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.”
The Wolfpack, which blasted current-No. 15 SMU 5-1 on senior night, believed that win was what helped its decorated resume take another step forward with its No. 36 ranking on the RPI. But that wasn’t the only quality result on the Wolfpack’s slate. NC State also beat RPI No. 33 California, while it also drew with No. 5 Hofstra and No. 11 Stanford.
Even though those four outcomes were what propelled the Wolfpack into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in half a decade, Hubbard believed a three-game stretch in late-September was the defining moment of the team’s season.
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NC State lost at then-No. 6 North Carolina, its first defeat of the season, before it returned home and dropped a tight match to Duke, the current No. 10 squad in the RPI.
Instead of packing it in, the Wolfpack responded with a scoreless draw at Stanford, a perennial threat to win the College Cup each season. Hubbard thought that response proved not only was his rebuild of a 6-9-3 (1-5-2 ACC) squad a year ago was progressing well, but the team had a shot to be special this fall.
“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.”
Now, NC State can continue its quest to keep turning heads on the national stage with a home date against the 49ers.
