ATLANTA — Coming into the game, Georgia Tech was considered a bad matchup for NC State football. The Yellow Jackets entered the game ranked in the top five in the ACC in rush yards per game and rush yards allowed per game. The Wolfpack came in with one of the league’s worst rushing offenses and had allowed over 141 rush yards per game.

Based on those numbers it seemed like this would be a game Georgia Tech could control at the line of scrimmage like it did in its upset win over then-No. 4 Miami less than two weeks ago. In the win over Miami, the Yellow Jackets rushed for 271 yards and held the ball nine minutes longer than the Hurricanes.

But on Thursday night at Bobby Dodd Stadium, the Wolfpack flipped the script on the Yellow Jackets, rushing for 253 yards while holding Georgia Tech to a mere 119 on the ground. Despite beating the Yellow Jackets at their own game, the Pack still lost 30-29, making the game next week at UNC-Chapel Hill a must-win to qualify for a bowl game.

“I thought we played outstanding complimentary football,” said head coach Dave Doeren. “Guys played with heart. I was proud of them and you don’t get the win. There’s a lot of teams that wouldn’t fight the way we fought, with all the things we battled through this year. And they wanted that game. They wanted it bad, and they showed that.”

That’s why this game “hurt,” as Doeren put it. The Wolfpack dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball but still somehow left the stadium with their heads down. Freshman quarterback CJ Bailey ran for 83 yards and three touchdowns against the 16th-best rushing defense in the country.

Bailey said he didn’t come into the game thinking he’d be able to take advantage of Georgia Tech’s defense with scrambles but noticed the Yellow Jackets were running a lot of zone blitzes, leaving running lanes open for him.

“I noticed that as the game went on, we didn’t really plan on just using my legs this game,” Bailey said. “They were dropping a lot of guys in coverage, so I took advantage of it.”

Along with Bailey, redshirt freshman running back Hollywood Smothers and sophomore running back Kendrick Raphael combined for 157 yards on just 16 carries, good enough for just under 10 yards per carry.

It’s those numbers that made the first part of the game so confounding. NC State averaged five yards per carry in the first half but only ran it 11 times compared to 14 pass attempts. And three of those runs were not designed as they came via scrambles on Bailey dropbacks.

For a quarterback who was clearly struggling to throw the ball in the first half, evidenced by two interceptions and a sub-50 percent completion percentage, it was befuddling the Wolfpack didn’t go to the run more.

On the first drive of the second quarter, Smothers ripped off a seven-yard rush on the first play. But then the next two plays, offensive coordinator Robert Anae called back-to-back passes that fell incomplete, forcing a punt.

The next offensive drive, Raphael had a six-yard run on second-and-10 but Anae decided to call passes on third and fourth down that once again fell incomplete, resulting in a turnover on downs.

Running the ball was working in the first half, but Anae refused to stick with it. There’s no way of knowing if NC State would have scored on those drives if it kept the ball on the ground but it at least would’ve given the defense more time to rest and wear down Georgia Tech’s defense.

At the same time on the other side of the ball, the Pack defense held the ACC’s third-best rushing offense to 2.8 yards per carry in the first half even though its offense wasn’t giving it much time to rest.

All 11 players rallied to the football to contain a team that had just run for over 200 yards the week before.

“That was the whole emphasis this week, to stop the run, trying to make them pass,” said senior safety Bishop Fitzgerald. “We loaded the box and did our best to stop the run. I think we did a pretty good job of that tonight.”

It wasn’t until the second half and really the fourth quarter when NC State was down two scores that it figured out it could run the ball. In the last 30 minutes, the Wolfpack ran for 198 yards but not without trying to air the ball out first.

On the opening drive of the second half, NC State attempted three consecutive passes and then punted. On the first play of the next offensive drive, graduate running back Jordan Waters took a carry six yards but after that, not a single run play was called the rest of the drive and that possession also ended in a punt.

It wasn’t until the Wolfpack was down 16-7 entering the fourth quarter that Anae decided to pound the rock. When NC State cut the deficit to 16-14 at the beginning of the fourth, six of the seven plays were runs, albeit two of them were Bailey scrambles, including a 28-yard touchdown run.

But after establishing the run that drive, Anae called just one run for the next two drives and Bailey threw an interception that set up a Yellow Jackets touchdown to give them a 23-14 lead. Then all of a sudden, down two scores, the Wolfpack ran the ball five of six plays to cut the deficit to 23-21.

When NC State got the ball back with a chance to take the lead, NC State kept it on the ground, resulting in a Smothers 53-yard touchdown run to take a 29-23 lead with a minute and 30 seconds left.

It took almost the entire game to figure out, but NC State looked well on its way to an upset victory because of its rushing attack.

“We were blocking,” Doeren said. “Guys were busting through and there were broken tackles, making people miss, and the offensive line, tight end group, doing a good job against a lot of movement and pressure.”

Only if NC State would’ve noticed that earlier in the game. Maybe there would have never been the potential for a Georgia Tech game-winning drive because the Wolfpack dominated the line of scrimmage and controlled the game from the jump. Maybe Bailey wouldn’t have thrown three interceptions that led to 14 Georgia Tech points. But instead, NC State found its offensive identity too late.