North Carolina State University Athletics
HAYNES: O?Brien, Pack Shift Focus to ACC
9/28/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Raleigh, N.C. - There were plenty of reasons to expect a lot of smiles around NC State's Murphy Football Center on Monday. Not only is the Wolfpack (3-1) coming off a thrilling, come-from-behind victory over Pitt, its defense is ranked No. 1 in the nation according to the latest NCAA statistics.
Through four games, the Pack is yielding just 201.2 yards per game after holding the Panthers to just 300 yards on Saturday. Pitt came in averaging 380 yards per contest.
But just as he did following his team's victory over the weekend when he said the mistake-prone Wolfpack was far from being a championship-caliber football team, coach Tom O'Brien wasn't ready to allow his defense to get overly satisfied with its national ranking.
"It doesn't really say anything," O'Brien said. "It's only after four games and one month of the season. If we're there after 12 games then it will say a lot about our defense. We know we'll have a big challenge this week defending the Demon Deacons, so we'll see how it goes this week."
Saturday's 3:30 meeting at Wake Forest (2-2) will be NC State's first conference game and its first road test as well.
The Wolfpack's defensive coaches did a tremendous job of adjusting to Pitt's offensive schemes during the course of Saturday's game. After giving up chunks of yardage to tailback Dion Lewis, mainly on draw plays, early in the game, the Pack became more and more stingy against the run as the afternoon wore on. Lewis gained 79 yards in the first half, but didn't do nearly as much damage after intermission, finishing with 95 total yards for the game.
And while Pitt quarterback Bill Stull had respectable numbers for the day (12-of-23 for 206 yards and two touchdowns), he was rendered ineffective when the game was on the line in the fourth quarter.
"It doesn't matter right now to us," NC State defensive tackle Leroy Burgess said, responding to a question about the Wolfpack's defensive ranking. "What matters to us is stopping the opposing team's offense. At the end of the season, if that still stands it will be a great accomplishment."
O'Brien noted that the NC State defense missed more than 20 tackles, just as it had done in the opening night loss to South Carolina.
And though the Wolfpack amassed 530 yards of total offense behind another terrific performance by quarterback Russell Wilson, it did have six pre-snap penalties on offense, and 12 total penalties for the game.
The mistakes prompted O'Brien to give a rather sobering assessment of his team following what otherwise was a very big win over a team picked to win the Big East title.
"I believe we all agreed with him," said NC State tight end George Bryan. "I think there's a lot that could have been improved on from that game. We also agreed with him when he said that we'd learned how to fight for the entire 60 minutes. But there's still a lot we can improve on."
It's hard to believe that Wilson could get much better. Named the ACC Offensive Back of the Week after tallying 413 total yards against the Panthers, the sophomore quarterback has thrown 12 touchdown passes in his last three games. And in his last 13 outings, Wilson has 29 touchdown throws with zero interceptions.
"He played as well as he's played this year on Saturday," O'Brien said. "That was by far his best effort."
Along with going 21-of-35 yards for 322 yards and four scores through the air, Wilson also added 91 yards on the ground. No doubt the key play came with NC State trailing by seven in the third quarter. Facing fourth and 14, from the Pitt 28, Wilson broke outside the pocket and scrambled 21 yards for a first down. He then hit Bryan with the game-tying touchdown one play later."
"That was just Russell being Russell," O'Brien said. "That turned the game around for us. He was able to break contain, they were in man coverage and everybody was run off. He took off down the boundary. That was the key scramble of the football game."
Timing Error: O'Brien confirmed on Monday what was pretty obvious in the final seconds of the first half on Saturday: The Big East officiating crew erroneously allowed the clock to run after NC State was called for a false start penalty. On second and goal from the Pitt two and approximately 25 seconds remaining in the half, Wilson threw an incomplete pass out of the end zone to stop the clock. Before the next play got started, the Wolfpack was called for a false start penalty. But after the penalty was assessed, the clock re-started. Unable to get his team's or the official's attention, O'Brien was forced to call a time-out with five second left. No time was put back on the clock and the Pack was forced to kick a field goal.
"[The clock] wasn't supposed to start," O'Brien said. "It was an incomplete pass, so the clocked was stopped. We had a procedure penalty. It's a dead ball so it's not supposed to start. At the time-out you would have hoped that either [the officials] would have corrected it when asked or that the replay crew would have done something because a timing error is a correctable mistake."
O'Brien said he reported the error to ACC supervisor of officials Doug Rhoads on Saturday night.
