Got to tell you that some of the recent quality this site is producing and the progress that we are making as a wider community has been been very energizing.
You may have noticed that we have had just a slight decrease in activity on the front page of the blog in recent weeks as we have tried to shift more daily and topical ‘conversations’ to our growing message board community. That has left a little more space and time to focus on even higher quality blog posts, and I think our two most recent entries are prime examples:
(1) On the Basketball front, it doesn’t get much better than this “Cheap Seats Introspective” from LRM.
(2) On the Football front, resident stat guru, West Virginia Wolf stepped up with some interesting numbers highlighting the amazingly support the NC State fanbase continues to provide relative to home-field performance and records.
So, if you want to easily take a look at some other of our recent ‘top shelf offerings’ – try clicking on the “Popular†or “Editor’s Picks†tabs to the right of the page. They will take you to some of our best entries of the recent past.
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So, Wolfpack Nation now turns our attention to a phenomenally important weekend match-up with Boston College that is being labeled “The Shinskieing” at Backing the Pack. Absolutely hilarious. (Link)
Last season, Boston College took a cue from South Florida’s game plan and decided that they too would make a point of exploiting the Pack through the air. This seemed a great idea to me at the time, what with the way the Eagles appeared to be so openly inviting disaster. To that point in the 2008 season, the Eagles had struggled to find any sort of passing game, even against the likes of Kent State, Central Florida, and Rhode Island. Y’all bring that shit on, I thought. (As it turned out, it was similar to that time in ’04 when I screamed at Devin Hester to bring that shit on; his response was to teleport from one end zone to the other.)
True to their word, the Eagles fired away. The surprising part was how incredibly successful they were. Their impenetrable offensive line gave Crane all sorts of time and opportunities, and for the most part he did not miss. And so: season-highs in attempts, completions, completion percentage, yards, yards per attempt, and passing efficiency were set.
Which is not to say the Eagles will throw the ball 50 times on Saturday, but just as they no doubt saw what Duke did last week, they no doubt remember what they themselves did last year.
Their passing game has been up-and-down (to put it mildly) in conference play so far–good against bad defenses (Wake, FSU), terrible against good defenses (Clemson, VT). Those performances against Clemson and Tech are evidence enough that if you can get Shinskie and his various backups out of their comfort zones, they will crack. I suppose we might manage to do that somehow. But my money is on The Shinskieing.
The N&O has a 2 and a half minute podcast dedicated to State’s trip to BC this weekend that is really interesting and can be seen by clicking here.
In it, Caulton Tudor has some interesting criticisms of State’s defense and offensive play calling last week. (You really have to give tvp1 some kudos for these observations about our offense much earlier in the week; see why you should be making our message boards a major part of your web surfing pleasure?).
Tudor also goes on to predict that NC State will win Saturday’s ‘bowl elimination game’ in Chestnut Hill by 2 or 3 points. Heather Dinich, however, is going with BC in a close game due to their home field advantage. (Link) And, nobody can complain about that.
Even though he won’t link to us anymore, we’ll happily share EagleinAtlanta’s thoughts on the game
BC is in trouble if…
They cannot stop Wilson early. Wilson is every bit as good as Skinner or Ponder. Both of those QBs had fourth quarter comebacks against BC. BC needs to slow NC State early and build a lead before Bible decides to scrap his gameplan and let Wilson be Wilson.
