The most shocking part about what happened to N.C. State on Wednesday was how predictable it turned out to be. Over the past three seasons, the Wolfpack has almost unerringly lost to above-average teams while beating below-average teams. This year, its record was perfect in that respect.
It literally started on the very first play from scrimmage where NC State’s Matt Canada called a play pass play in a torrential downpour that the Pack must’ve run more than two dozen times this year and resulted in a Mississippi State interception. Dave Huxtable’s defense then did what his defenses do best — allowed a touchdown (on the way to giving up 51 points on the day) and the route was on.
The way the loss came about was puzzling on many fronts. State started the day announcing that Reggie Gallaspy would not play due to injury, leaving the obvious conclusion for everyone being that spark-plug and crowd favorite, Jaylen Samuels, would lead the rushing attack and be supported by Nyheim Hines and maybe a little more Dakwa Nichols than we’re accustomed to seeing.
Instead, Jacoby Brissett seemed to get more of the rushing load (26 carries on the day) while ‘JaySam’ touched the ball at total of FOUR TIMES for the entire game, resulting in 53 yards on three carries and two touchdowns to go along with one catch for minus-2 yards. In addition to Samuels, Jacoby Brissett ran 26 times, Nyheim Hines rushed 13 times, Dakwa Nichols 6 times and Bra’lon Cherry once. In his post-game press conference, Coach Doeren said that State tried to get Samuels more involved in the offense but Mississippi State took away the option. I honestly don’t know what to say.
Prescott threw for a bowl-record 380 yards and four touchdown passes. It was N.C. State’s first loss in three trips to the Charlotte bowl and fifth straight loss to an SEC team.
In the run-up to the bowl game, N.C. State coach Dave Doeren lamented about his team’s mistakes and hiccups in critical ACC losses to Louisville and Virginia Tech.
The Wolfpack spotted Mississippi State a 21-0 lead, after a pair of interceptions in the first quarter by quarterback Jacoby Brissett, but in the simplest terms, Mississippi State’s offense was just better than N.C. State’s defense.
“We just weren’t able to stop them at the end,” Doeren said.
Dave Huxtable's defense doing what his defense does – – – letting up points. Showing Manny Diaz on MSN sideline was salt in my wounds.
— statefansnation (@statefansnation) December 30, 2015
The following is a little of ESPN’s perspective from last night:
There’s no excuse for such a slow start by NC State. After all, the Belk Bowl was practically a home game for the Wolfpack. To fall behind 21-0 early in the second quarter was inexcusable and ultimately too big of a hole to climb out from. But it’s nothing new for NC State, which ended the regular season the same way by giving up 35 points to North Carolina in the first quarter. While coach Dave Doeren appears to have the program pointed in the right direction overall, he might want to take a long look at the fact that entering the Belk Bowl, the Wolfpack was minus-1 in scoring margin in the first half of Power 5 games.
Dave Doeren is now 1-1 in bowl games at NC State. NC State has now lost five in a row to SEC teams. For this season, the Wolfpack went 0-6 against bowl eligible teams and 7-0 against all of the other teams. Put another way — State was 0-5 this season when taking the field as an underdog and 7-1 where we were favored. Additionally, I’m pretty sure that State failed to cover a single point spread in games where we were underdogs. These statistics led to pretty straight forward conclusions and analysis in this article by Luke Decock.
The most shocking part about what happened to N.C. State on Wednesday was how predictable it turned out to be. Over the past three seasons, the Wolfpack has almost unerringly lost to above-average teams while beating below-average teams. This year, its record was perfect in that respect.
The Wolfpack fell to 0-6 against bowl-eligible teams after going 7-0 against the dregs, with a 51-28 loss to Mississippi State in the Belk Bowl on Wednesday that left N.C. State’s fans with raindrops falling on their heads and cowbells ringing in their ears.
“We underachieved a little bit,” N.C. State defensive back Juston Burris said. “We could have done better. We hold ourselves to a very high standard. Seven wins, that’s not the type of team we are. We’re not a seven-win team.”
That is, unfortunately for the Wolfpack, what the only metric that matters says about the season. When you only beat bad teams and don’t beat good ones, you unavoidably end up in the neighborhood of .500 – 8-5 last season, 7-6 this season. Whatever the Mendoza Line of college football is, the Wolfpack is astride it.
[snip]
“We were competitive in every game that we played in the regular season this year without a doubt, which we weren’t the year before,” N.C. State coach Dave Doeren said. “We need to be better. We need to win some of those competitive one-possession games and be a four-quarter team. We’ve been able to do that in some games but not consistently. To take the next step, that’s our goal. Being in Year 4 with several returning starters, we have an opportunity to do that.”
If you want to dive deeper into a conversation that is tangentially related to this post, then you should also click here.
Chuck Amato won a bowl game in Charlotte.
Tom O’Brien won a bowl game in Charlotte.
Dave Doeren is going to need another try.
