North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Mature Pack Ready to Shine, Eugene says
7/27/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Editor's note: NC State director of ticket operations Brian Kelly says 2009 NC State season football tickets will be mailed by Aug. 8. Season ticket holders look for tickets to arrive shortly thereafter.
BY TIM PEELER
GREENSBORO, N.C. – As a competitor, NC State senior tailback Jamelle Eugene wants to be the best.
In fact, he and his roommates are so obsessed by being the best that their apartment is decorated with larger-than-life images of themselves in the living room.
D’Andre Morgan and Eugene started it. Before long, all available wallspace was covered with self-designed, extra-large Fathead-like portraits of Eugene, Morgan, Wayne Crawford and Ray Michel.
“I’m only 5-9” Eugene said. “But the mural of me is about 6-6. It’s kind of big.”
And in his bedroom, there is a six-by-five-foot collage of pictures of himself in action, including one of him running over an NFL defender that he refuses to identify.
But self-adulation ends when the roommates leave the complex. Outside, they play for NC State, not for themselves. And they are all focused on making sure the Wolfpack is worthy of some of the preseason buzz that they have been hearing, especially from the questioners at the 34th-annual ACC Football Kickoff, which began Sunday at the Grandover Resort.
“As a competitor, I feel like we are ready to live up to the expectations that people are talking about,” Eugene said. “But as members of this team, we are not focused on it. If you start listening to that, you will start getting into trouble and feeling pressure and pressing.
“Our goal this year is to come out and do what we are capable of doing and maximizing our talents and listening to the coaching staff, not predictions that are being made about us.”
Both Eugene and defensive end Willie Young – the two players representing NC State here this weekend – believe the Wolfpack is a more mature football team as it enters its third season under head coach Tom O’Brien. The trials and tribulations of the first two years – with an unusually large number of injuries and misfortunes and questions that come from coaching transitions – certainly made the team grow up in a hurry.
But, Eugene and Young say, it also helped them realize they can overcome any hurdle. That’s what happened last year, when the Wolfpack went on a four-game winning streak at the end of the regular-season to become bowl eligible.
“At the beginning of last season, we had a lot of young guys,” said Eugene, who missed the team’s first three games with an ankle injury. “I don’t think they were ready to be men and step into the task we had last year. This year, we are not looking at [the season opener against South Carolina]it as Oh, this is a big SEC team we are going in to play. We are looking at it as an opportunity to win a game against an SEC team.
“There were a lot of insecurities going on. Now, I feel like as a team we are much more confident.”
That confidence came from the success the Wolfpack late in the season, when it beat, in succession, Duke, Wake Forest, North Carolina and Miami to qualify for the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, Ala.
And it should carry over, even though O’Brien and his squad lost to Rutgers 29-23 in the post-season game.
“What happened was we had more consistency at the end of the year,” Eugene said. “We went through a lot of injuries at the start of the season. The end of the season wasn’t very different – we still had the injuries, but they weren’t as significant. We had young guys who got more reps and matured. Then the older guys who were injured started coming back.
“It helped us be more consistent.”
If they make it through preseason unscathed, both Eugene and sixth-year senior Toney Baker should give O’Brien a capable rushing attack. Both have led the team in rushing yards at some point in their careers.
“Toney Baker is 100 percent,” Eugene said. “He is about as good as I have seen him since I have been here. He’s worked hard. He’s going to be a great player and make a lot of plays.”
While the team is still reeling somewhat from the loss of junior linebacker Nate Irving, who suffered serious injuries in a car accident in July, the players say they have had experience with dealing with similar losses the last two preseasons. They believe they are ready for whatever comes at them.
“We are more mature and able to handle it,” Eugene said. “We have a lot more young men as opposed to young boys out there.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
