VMI coach Danny Rocco: ‘It was uphill the whole stinking game’
The Virginia Military Institute entered Saturday’s game at NC State without an FBS win since it beat Virginia Tech in 1981, which marked an 0-39 record against those opponents.
But with a first-year coach and the backup quarterback in the game, VMI didn’t snap its losing streak to FBS opponents against the Wolfpack in a 45-7 loss at Carter-Finley Stadium.
“I give North Carolina State a lot of credit. They are a good football team, and they didn’t play down today,” first-year VMI coach Danny Rocco told reporters postgame. “I spoke all week about starting fast and striking early, but they did not allow that to happen. It’s a talented team, it’s a good team and they came with the right mindset today that they were going to set the tempo of the game.”
The Wolfpack dictated almost everything in the game, which included four straight scoring drives to open the game — three touchdowns and a field goal.
For Rocco, that put his team in too deep of a hole to play their way back into the game.
“[N.C. State] kind of put us in a place early that we were just having to play catch-up, and it was uphill the whole stinking game,” Rocco said. “So, that was difficult, and certainly not the way we wanted this thing to play out.”
NC State didn’t allow VMI to get comfortable with its offense for much of the game, which resulted in the Wolfpack holding the Keydets to 191 yards of total offense — just the second time in the past two seasons that the red and white held an opponent under 200 yards (UConn in 2022).
While the Keydets found some success through the air in the third quarter, which allowed backup quarterback Collin Shannon to connect with wide receiver Egypt Nelson for a 22-yard touchdown pass, VMI struggled to run the ball against NC State’s front seven.
The Wolfpack held the Keydets to just 15 rushing yards on 21 attempts — 0.7 yards per carry — and they were paced by Rashad Raymond’s 29 yards on the ground, though a trio of sacks hurt VMI’s overall rushing total.
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And while NC State’s run defense was stout, the Wolfpack was able to rush for 234 yards, paced by freshman running back Kendrick Raphael’s 85 yards on 18 carries.
As NC State took a commanding lead into the fourth quarter, Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren played a number of his reserves, which Rocco was appreciative of as the red and white didn’t try to run up the score on the Keydets.
“They were well-coached,” Rocco said. “I think Coach [Doeren] showed a lot of class late at the end of the game. There’s a lot of different ways you can finish a football game leading by a score like that, but I just felt like he made big-picture decisions and I admired the way the game finished on his end.”
While NC State allowed a lot of young players and reserves to get game action against VMI, the Keydets were grateful to have a number of their players play in front of the sold-out crowd in Raleigh. That, paired with VMI’s touchdown drive in the third quarter, were positives that Rocco was able to take away from the lopsided score.
“Well we played a lot of guys,” Rocco said. “As the game went on, we had a lot of guys get their first real taste of Division I football. Our guys never stopped playing hard. It’s a never-say-die attitude and that’s something you can take away from that.”
