After beating Boston College 3-1 at home Wednesday night for its first ACC Tournament win since 2011, the NC State men’s soccer team will head to No. 1 Wake Forest Sunday afternoon for a quarterfinal matchup.
The eighth-seeded Pack (9-5-3) went to Spry Stadium in Winston-Salem earlier this season, and was dismantled 3-0 by the top-seeded Demon Deacons (16-1). Wake has lost just one affair all season, on the road against a tough Syracuse team, and is definitely the cream of the crop in undeniably the nation’s toughest conference.
“I love it,” NC State head coach George Kiefer said. “It’s Wake Forest. They’re the best team in the league. They are an exceptional team. We need to go there, we need to be rested and get after it. That’s why anyone that’s in our locker room has come to NC State. To play these types of teams and we look forward to the match.”
The Wolfpack traveled to play the Deacs for its first ACC match of the season back on Sept. 7, and it didn’t go well for NC State. Wake Forest controlled the game from start to finish, putting three goals past Pack sophomore goalkeeper Leon Krapf while NC State managed just one shot on target.
Omir Fernandez netted two goals for the Demon Deacons in that game, and has continued to be one of the ACC’s biggest scoring threats all year. Fernandez, along with teammate Bruno Lapa, is tied for third in the conference with 10 goals.
Fernandez and Lapa helped push Wake Forest past NC State in that early matchup, and the Wolfpack will have to do a better job of containing the duo if it wants any chance of winning come Sunday.
The other goal in that game was a Pack own goal from sophomore midfielder Brad Sweeney, who knows his team didn’t put in the performance it was capable of. However, heading into a matchup Sunday with the nation’s top team, Sweeney says the Wolfpack knows what it will take.
“I’ve played against Wake twice now,” Sweeney said. “We’ve all got good experience playing against them. We want to go back there and put in a good performance. We know we went there last time and didn’t play well. We wasn’t ourselves. I think we can go in there.”
Sweeney is one of the Pack’s two leading goal scorers with four tallies on the season, along with junior midfielder Gabriel Machado. Sophomore midfielder David Loera is next with three goals and also leads the team with six assists.
That midfield trio for NC State has propelled the Pack all season, and was particularly dangerous in the win over Boston College. That group will have to be at its best Sunday for the Wolfpack to be able to challenge the Demon Deacons.
Another very capable player for the Wolfpack is sophomore midfielder Manny Perez, but NC State will be without him Sunday. Perez has spent a good portion of this season with the United States Under-20 National Team, and is with them now.
He missed the Boston College game, as well as the game against Wake Forest earlier in the year. The Pack is learning to live without Perez this season, but not having one of its most dangerous creators will hurt NC State as the postseason progresses.
With big wins this season over then-No. 1 UNC-Chapel Hill and then-No. 4 Akron have helped boost the Wolfpack’s resume, and an NCAA Tournament bid is all but guaranteed for the Pack at this point. However, just making the NCAA Tournament won’t satisfy NC State.
“We’re here to win every single game in the ACC and hopefully win the championship,” Loera said. “We’re here still to win. We’re not complacent. We still want to keep going.”
The journey will continue Sunday at 5 p.m., and beating Wake Forest will be the Pack’s biggest hurdle if it does want to reach that goal of winning the ACC Tournament. The Demon Deacons are the best team in the NCAA, but the Wolfpack isn’t afraid of the matchup.
“We’ve got nothing to fear,” Sweeney said. “They’re No. 1 in the country, so we’ve got nothing to fear. We just need to go in there and express ourselves and play like we did [against Boston College].”
