WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Missed opportunities, plays left on the field, injuries, turnovers. There is plenty of blame to go around but, ultimately, the No. 16 NC State football team simply beat itself in a gut-wrenching, though riveting, 45-42 loss to No. 12 Wake Forest in one of the biggest games in recent program history.
Fourteen penalties for 119 yards. A miserable 3 for 14 third-down completion rate. Three turnovers. NC State (7-3, 4-2 ACC) kept finding ways to kick itself while it was down and yet, none of those are as heartbreaking as junior kicker Christopher Dunn’s missed 33-yard field goal attempt or the team’s decision to go for a squib kick right before the half, which essentially gave Wake (9-1, 6-0 ACC) three points. It’s hard not to think about what could have been, considering those two plays would have swayed the game in the opposite direction if they had gone the Pack’s way.
“We just weren’t good enough tonight in certain areas and our kids fought hard and gave us a chance there at the end,” said head coach Dave Doeren. “But really the story of the night, we couldn’t get off the field on third and long. That hurt us. And our third-down offense hurt us. And those two things accumulated throughout the game. So there were some really, really good efforts in the game. But, can’t give up 45 points and win. And offensively, [it] just took us too long to get going.”
NC State’s two sides of the football played two very different games. The Pack defense, matched up against a potent Demon Deacon offense, put up a formidable performance. Wake Forest quarterback Sam Hartman, who was named a Davey O’Brien Award semifinalist earlier this week over redshirt sophomore QB Devin Leary, finished the game with just 290 passing yards and a 43% completion rate.
Hartman, who had 2,873 passing yards, 27 touchdowns, just five interceptions and a 62.5% completion percentage entering the game, looked quite the opposite of the calm, poised quarterback he usually is. 37.5% of Hartman’s interceptions on the season came in tonight’s game.
If you had a nickel for every time NC State picked Hartman off immediately after Leary threw an interception in this game, you’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice.
While NC State’s defense certainly played into Hartman’s off night, the opposing quarterback outright missed several throws to his receivers. A.T. Perry, one of Hartman’s most prolific receivers, had five catches on 22 targets. Only one of those targets was credited as a drop. Though Hartman did miss several throws to Perry, who was fresh off a four-game stretch where he had over 100 yards per game, Perry made several errors on the field and was stopped by the Pack defense.
The game took a defensive toll on the Pack, to say the least. Several players went down with injuries, including graduate end Daniel Joseph, who went down on three separate occasions. Despite allowing 45 points, it was a gutsy performance, and the defensive corps finished the game with three sacks, three interceptions, five tackles for loss and six pass breakups.
Graduate defensive tackle Cory Durden and redshirt freshman corner Shyheim Battle looked particularly effective in the loss. Battle came away with Hartman’s first interception of the game and had a crucial breakup in the end zone to prevent a Wake Forest score in the second, though he was ejected in the second half on a targeting call and will miss the first half of next week’s matchup with Syracuse.
On the other side of things, NC State’s offense blew several opportunities to take the lead over Wake throughout the matchup. As stated, the third-down offense was terrible. In a game where the Demon Deacons converted on 55% of their third and fourth-down attempts, it was disappointing to see Tim Beck’s offense fail to respond.
“Hurting ourselves,” Leary said of the reasons for the loss. “We had a good amount of penalties, that isn’t really like us. Making those plays on the perimeter. Me doing a better job making better decisions, getting the ball out a little bit faster. It comes down to the last couple plays, as you can see, and they made those plays, and we didn’t.”
Leary wasn’t bad by any means, converting on 63% of his 59 pass attempts, a career-high number of attempts. The third-year signal caller ended the game with four touchdowns and two interceptions. However, it was slightly bizarre to see NC State abandon the run at times, especially considering the fact that sophomore back Zonovan Knight looked rejuvenated in the game.
The matchup was certainly a back-and-forth affair. NC State struck first with a deep ball to redshirt sophomore receiver Devin Carter, which put it in position for a field goal to take a three-point lead.
From there, Wake Forest quickly picked up a 21-6 lead with just over two minutes remaining in the game. But then, Knight had a 72-yard kick return that put the Pack in position to quickly strike and cut into the deficit. Shortly after, Leary hit Carter for another touchdown to put the Pack within one. That was when Doeren and the coaching staff elected to go for a pooch kick that put Wake in prime position to hit a field goal before the end of the half, a decision that would later prove fatal.
“We were kicking into the wind and felt like we could deep squib it and keep them from getting a return,” Doeren said. “Unfortunately, the ball bounced one time right to the guy. And so, just a bad bounce, man. And again, we could have kicked it deep and hoped it would have gone in the endzone. Usually, in a situation like that, you’re trying to get them away from being able to run their return the right way and screw up throwing off the timing of it and we were hoping that [the] ball would bounce multiple times down the field not one time right to him.”
For a moment in the third quarter, it seemed like the night could go the Pack’s way when Knight had yet another impressive kick return, this time taking it all the way to the house for a 100-yard touchdown return to put NC State in front. However, Wake quickly returned the scoring favor and didn’t look back.
The two ranked teams traded blows for the rest of the third and into the fourth. Wake went up by 11 midway through the fourth but NC State almost immediately responded. The same scenario played out again later in the quarter, despite the defense’s best efforts, but it was too little, too late for the Pack to have any hopes of a comeback.
Though the loss is certainly heartwrenching, it technically isn’t the end of the Pack’s ACC title hopes. Both Clemson and NC State are theoretically alive if Wake loses out and either team wins out the rest of the way.
In order for that to happen though, the Wolfpack will need to take care of its own business first. The Pack returns to Carter-Finley on Saturday, Nov. 20 when it takes on Syracuse at 4 p.m.
“But right now, we got some disappointed and upset coaches and players,” Doeren said. “And it’s okay to feel that way. You feel that pain and that hurt tonight and we’ll get back to it tomorrow and get these guys back to where they need to be and get ready for the next one.”
