North Carolina State University Athletics
Tim Peeler: Wolfpack Shaking off Post-Exam Rust
12/16/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Dec. 16, 2005
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH -- Shaking off the rust of three weeks of football inactivity - and eight days of final exams - NC State's football team has begun its practices for the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte on New Year's Eve.
"When you don't do anything, football-wise, for three weeks, there is going to be an awful lot of rust," Wolfpack coach Chuck Amato said. "The last practice we had of any kind was three weeks ago Thursday before the Maryland game.
"But that's how things go with a bowl game. I didn't want them to have any practice at the same time they were having final exams. I wanted them to spend all their time on finals."
Apparently, that worked out pretty well. Two players, freshman running back Andre Brown and junior placekicker John Deraney, learned Friday that they have made the Dean's list for the fall semester.
But exams ended on Tuesday, and now Amato has his team's full attention for the bowl.
"Now, we are going to spend all our time on practicing," the coach said.
The Wolfpack had a simple walk-through on Wednesday and practiced indoors during Thursday's rain. But Friday was the first of three two-a-day practices that the Wolfpack (6-5) will have before taking off at the end of next week for Christmas.
They will reconvene the day after Christmas to go to Charlotte, where they will work out for five days before facing South Florida (6-5) at 11 a.m. on New Year's Eve at Bank of America Stadium. It will be the first bowl game in the history of South Florida football.
Ticket sales to the bowl game picked up on Friday, a day after it was announced that NC State's basketball game against George Washington was being moved ahead one day so that it would not conflict with the bowl game. As of late Friday afternoon, the school has sold about 21,000 tickets to the game, said NC State assistant athletics director Dick Christy. The basketball game is now slated for 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 30, at the RBC Center. The football game will be the next morning at 11 a.m. For information about ordering tickets to the football game, click here.
Amato said his team, which won four of its last five games to become bowl eligible, will work on fundamentals during its pre-Charlotte practices. He's even added some eight-play sequences to practice, designed purely to get younger players more involved.
But he was also quick to point out following Friday morning's practice that this week-long practice period is not a changing of the guard. He's not ready to discard his senior class just yet.
"This is not next year's team yet," Amato said. "This is the 2005 football season and we have one more game to prove that we can finish it up right."
And one more game to give the senior class that includes first-team All-ACC defensive end Manny Lawson, linebacker Oliver Hoyte, cornerback Marcus Hudson, wide receivers Brian Clark and Tramain Hall, quarterback Jay Davis and tight ends T.J. Williams and John Ritcher, among others, one last time to play for the Wolfpack.
"This is a great chance for us," said junior defensive end Mario Williams. "We know we have to go out and make things happen and make it as sweet as possible as a going away present to our seniors."
You may reach Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
