If you haven’t already, check out Monday’s Miscellaneous.
Rashard Smith’s emergence (Fayetteville Observer):
Rashard Smith arrived at North Carolina State as a cornerback, fought back from a knee injury that cost him more than a year and then converted to receiver only to earn a reserve role.
Now, he’s poised for much more in the Wolfpack’s new offense under first-year coach Dave Doeren.
“I took it as, there’s an opportunity to show other people what I can do,” Smith said of the coaching change. “It’s a chance for myself to make the coaches believe in me, so I had to buy into the system early so we could build a successful offense.”
Under Tom O’Brien last season, Smith managed 19 catches and played fewer than 30 snaps in 10 of 13 games while also handling punt return duties.
But the 5-foot-11 senior from Dublin, Ga., had a big performance in the Wolfpack’s spring game, which was the team’s first chance to run Doeren’s no-huddle scheme under game situations. And Doeren, who left Northern Illinois to take over here, is expecting a lot from Smith.
“He’s a playmaker and he’s hungry and he’s got a chip on his shoulder,” Doeren said. “Those things usually equal what you want: production. I haven’t seen anything that we’ve asked him to do that he hasn’t been able to do yet – knock on wood. I hope he keeps going that way.
“I like the guy, man. I wish I had a lot more guys that understood how important it is to practice and play the way he does with the energy he has every day.”
Talking about some questions surrounding Gottfried’s third season ( Greensboro News & Record):
Mark Gottfried knows that all 14 of his players — 10 scholarship, four non-scholarship — for next year’s Wolfpack are on campus and ready to start supervised summer workouts.
Beyond that, he doesn’t know much about a strikingly different N.C. State team from the one that bowed out to Temple in the second round of the NCAA tournament to end a disappointing 2012-13 campaign.
“There are a ton of questions about our team,” Gottfried said at his summer press conference Tuesday. “It’s kind of a blank slate. We’re not real sure who can do what yet.
“It’s going to be hard. But it’ll be fun.”
You know what’s really fun? Winning.
State launches a College of Sciences(Triangle Business Journal):
Replacing the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (PAMS) with a more comprehensive program offering, the College of Sciences will house six departments, 4,000 students and 575 existing faculty members, staff and postdoctoral researchers.
Dr. Dan Solomon, former dean of PAMS, takes the helm of the new College of Sciences as the school’s inaugural dean.
“The convergence of the sciences is the key to addressing many of the world’s greatest problems in health, energy production and environmental sustainability,†said Solomon in a statement. “These problems are incredibly complex, but by working together across disciplines we improve our ability to solve them.â€
