North Carolina State University Athletics
A Spring Revival
4/7/2001 12:00:00 AM | Football
By Tony Haynes
To get a feel for the type of excitement that surrounds the state of NC State football right now, one needs to look no further than this year's spring football game, which was conducted on Saturday, April 7.
In previous spring games, you could have counted the fans in the stands on just a few hands. But on Saturday, several thousand Wolfpackers showed up at Carter-Finley to watch Chuck Amato's second edition wrap up its spring practice period.
Riding the crest of an exciting 8-4 campaign that included an amazing comeback victory over Minnesota in the MicronPC.com Bowl last December, the Wolfpack-and its fans-have high hopes for the 2001 season.
Amato has high hopes as well, which is exactly why his appraisal of spring workouts took on a cautious tone.
"We had a good spring," Amato said following Saturday's game. "We got a little better fundamentally, and that's what spring is all about. I thought we did a poor job of tackling out here today. There were some times when some hits could have been made and were, but we didn't wrap up. We've just got to keep working on that. Defense is tackling and offense is blocking."
Early in his first season as the Pack's head coach, Amato expressed many of those same complaints. Naturally, the tackling improved dramatically as the season progressed.
Missing from Saturday's spring game were Norm Chow, Koren Robinson and Adrian Wilson. Chow, the cerebral offensive coordinator who was given a lot of credit for NC State's success last year, now has the same job at Southern Cal. Robinson, the record breaking receiver, will have his name called in this month's NFL Draft after leaving school early. Wilson, a second team All-ACC safety last season, also gave up his final year of eligibility to make himself eligible for the draft.
But most importantly, Philip Rivers WAS there on Saturday. As usual, the reigning ACC Rookie of the Year was accurate, poised and productive in the spring game.
"I try to keep pushing myself," Rivers said. "You can get complacent and that's when you start going down hill. You're never going to stay the same, either you're going to get better or you're going to get worse. I've tried to take it upon myself to get better every day."
Now there's a quote that won't be terribly comforting for opposing defensive coordinators.
Without Koren Robinson in the mix, Rivers will likely choose to spread the ball around more, just as he did in Saturday's spring game. Anyone who was listed as an eligible receiver on Saturday needed to be ready for a football flying his way.
"Not that last year we didn't spread it around because we did, but everybody was concerned about Koren," Rivers said. "This year we'll have some good wide receivers. Bryan Peterson has stepped it up and kind of taken a bigger role. The ball probably will get spread around more this year. I think that's good for us because it makes the defense cover the whole field."
Peterson was among a whole host of receivers to catch the football on Saturday. He was joined by tight end Willie Wright, sophomore Troy Graham, sophomore Jerricho Cotchery, along with impressive walk-ons Chris McKinney and Jeremy Mebane.
And though Chow is gone, the offense is just as dazzling and imaginative as ever. New offensive coordinator Marty Galbraith, who will continue to hold down the offensive line coaching duties this season, showed on Saturday that he is willing to call any play at any time.
"We didn't make a lot of changes in the offense," said Galbraith, who was also the offensive coordinator at Marshall before coming to NC State last year. "The only thing we tried to do during the spring was improve. We simplified the terminology a little bit just to make it easier for the kids. But for the most part, it's pretty much the same."
That to is bad news for opposing defensive coaches. But on the flip side, it's exactly what NC State fans wanted to hear.
