© 2011 NCSU Student Media
A horde of State defensemen, including redshirt junior safety Earl Wolff and redshirt sophomore cornerback Rashard Smith, take down the Central Michigan player attempting to run the football during the game on Saturday, Oct. 8 in Carter-Finley Stadium. Photo by John Joyner.
N.C. State (3-3, 0-2 ACC) takes on Virginia (4-2, 1-1 ACC) in a must-win fixture for the Wolfpack if they are to labor any hopes of playing a bowl game this season.
The Pack travels to Charlottesville, Va . to take on the Cavaliers who are currently on a high after not only stopping the Georgia Tech offense last week, but by also ensuring the Tech defense had no answer to its rushing offense and style of play.
Injuries, which have single-handedly been the most important reason for the Wolfpack having a far from satisfactory start to the season, much to its fan’s dismay, were responsible for bringing another bit of bad news when the leading rusher from last year, Mustafa Greene, was declared out for the season and has subsequently been red-shirted .
Tom O’Brien, who spent many of his formative years as offensive coordinator for the Cavaliers, gave his due respect to Virginia’s coach Mike London, who worked under him during his tenure at Boston College and felt their opposition on Saturday would be quite a formidable one.
“[Mike London] is a really good coach. He’s passionate, he’s really enthusiastic,” O’Brien said. “This is a big, powerful football team on both sides of the ball. Nine of their 11 guys on defense are juniors or seniors; a lot of experience.”
Despite having a bye this past week, O’Brien felt the team had come to terms with having numerous injuries and felt they would have to accept the situation and try to do their best with what they have on hand with more people going out injured than coming back.
“Time always helps. Time is a great healer. The way we are set up now is probably how we’re going to have to play the rest of the year,” O’Brien said. “This is who and what we are. We’ve got to find a way to make this work.”
Audie Cole, who is currently leading the team in tackles, was aware of the Cavalier’s impressive performance that downed GT last week but felt it will be a different story altogether playing the Pack as they both have totally different styles of play.
“I am not really worried about that; I mean, Georgia Tech is a good team, but they don’t play our kind of team, they don’t play our kind of offense, so it’s a whole different game,” Cole said. “We’ll be playing a different kind of a game than they played against Georgia Tech.”
The offense, which ran for 272 yards for the Cavs last Saturday, according to Cole, would be an exciting challenge for the defense to try and stop.
“It’s going to be fun for the linebackers, we get to go down hill and make some tackles,” Cole said. “We know they are going to run the ball at us and that’s what we have got to try and stop.”
Earl Wolff, who has been one of the star performers for the team on the defense this year, felt it has been challenging playing with a new-look defensive line every game but felt that was something the team could get past with a little bit of effort.
“It changes a lot, playing with different people; everyone brings different things to the table, so it’s kind off complicated,” Wolff said. “Luckily we practice four times a week so we can adjust.”
Wolff, who is a redshirt junior and has been around for quite sometime, feels the senior players are playing an important role in helping the younger ones adjust and are preparing them for the big games, which is crucial, especially with the injury situation.
“We are all trying to help people in their respective positions. Sweezey and Markus Kuhn are there for the linebackers and telling them what to do,” Wolff said. “We just try to coach those young players up and prepare them for Saturday.”
Defensive coordinator Mike Archer, who was once the linebacker coach at Virginia, felt that David Amerson , who currently leads the nation with interceptions, was one of the most important players for the Pack not only because of his numbers but because of the important job he has been fulfilling over the season.
“We have put him on the best receiver, he played against Liberty, played their best receiver, versus Georgia Tech he went against Steven Hill, in other games we have always matched him with our best receiver because of that,” Archer said. “He is our best corner so I think we will try to do that each week.”
Archer also observed that the Cavs offense had really developed over the season and that the team knew what it had to do to stop them.
“Their offense has really evolved, you watch them from the William and Mary game, and then against North Carolina and now you see last week has been by far their best performance,” Archer said. “They ran the ball very effectively, controlled the line of scrimmage, threw the ball and made big plays in the passing game, and we figured that’s what they are probably going to trying to do.”
N.C . State takes on Virginia on Saturday, Oct. 22 at 3:30 p.m . in Charlottesville.