North Carolina State University Athletics
Amato Looks to Rally the Pack
10/10/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 10, 2004
By Tony Haynes
Raleigh, N.C - Of the many college football teams that suffered narrow heartbreaking losses on Saturday, it would be safe to say that no other club experienced a defeat quite like the one suffered by NC State. The Kenan Stadium scoreboard read "North Carolina 30 NC State 24" at the end. But just moments before time expired, that same scoreboard briefly showed the score tied at 30 apiece. Reacting to an official who had raised his arms indicating that T.A. McLendon had scored the tying touchdown with 24 seconds remaining, the scoreboard operator put points on the board.
But that was before another official stepped in and ruled T.A. McLendon's knee touched the ground before he was able to stretch the football across the plane of the goal line. After the scoreboard went back to 30-24, McLendon and the Pack were denied when the ACC's leading rusher coughed up the football after being hit behind the line of scrimmage.
Ballgame.
"I've never been in a game where six points were taken off the scoreboard," Wolfpack head coach Chuck Amato said on Sunday.
Other than that, Amato, not wanting to risk disciplinary action by the ACC, would say very little about what may or may not have transpired at the end of the game. By rule, coaches are prohibited from publicly criticizing game officials under any circumstances. Proper protocol will be followed, meaning tape of any disputed plays will be sent to the ACC's supervisor of officials, Tommy Hunt.
"We'll talk to the commissioner of officials and see if he'll come over and review some film with us," Amato said. "They're normally awfully good about reviewing film and tape that we send them. It's yesterday's story already. What are they going to say? `We did right, we did wrong.' What difference does it make? The game is over; we lost."
Once order was restored and play resumed, the Wolfpack had the ball third and goal inside the one. With no timeouts left and 14 seconds showing on the clock, the Pack gave the ball to McLendon again. Even had he not fumbled the ball away after being hit for a loss, there would have been no chance for NC State to line up and run another play before time expired. Amato admitted that he and his offensive staff did consider throwing the ball, but decided to run McLendon again with the ball spotted so close to the end zone.
"The ball started on like the half-yard line and before the ball was snapped it was on like the six-inch line," Amato said. "We'd just run for over 300 yards, you'd think you'd be able to get six inches."
NC State did rush for 304 yards with McLendon getting 117 of those yards on 19 carries. Overall, the Pack put together its most productive offensive game of the year with 577 total yards.
But all those yards didn't translate into enough points to win, leaving Amato, his team and NC State's fans utterly devastated when it was over.
"We've got to put this game behind us," said Amato. "It's an emotional game and the finish was emotional. It was draining and it still is. A lot of us haven't gotten a lot of sleep. We've got to put that behind us and go on. That's not going to be easy but we've got to do that."
Next up for the Pack will be an ACC road game at Maryland next Saturday at 3:30. The Terps dropped to 3-2 overall and 1-1 in the ACC with a 20-7 loss to Georgia Tech on Saturday.
Paulsen Picture: Steady left guard Leroy Harris was forced to take over at center in the fourth quarter when regular center Jed Paulsen went to the sidelines with an ankle injury. Amato said Paulsen's status will probably be up in the air until sometime on Monday.
"It doesn't look good," Amato said when asked about Paulsen. "They're going to do some more picture taking on Monday."
