RALEIGH - The quarterback N.C. State coach Tom O'Brien had recruited but mostly kept on the sideline met him briefly Saturday on the field after the game at Carter-Finley Stadium.

Chris Crane, a fifth-year Boston College senior who once toiled anonymously behind Matt Ryan, had ruined O'Brien's day.

Crane passed for 428 yards and ran for 42 more in a 38-31 defeat of N.C. State. He ran for three touchdowns and threw for two more.

After the Wolfpack rallied from a 14-point, fourth-quarter deficit to tie, Crane drove Boston College 70 yards in seven plays and ran 13 yards for the winning touchdown.

"Heck of a game," O'Brien said he told Crane afterward. "He did a great job."

After the first play of Boston College's final drive, N.C. State freshman linebacker Dwayne Maddox saw Crane hesitate a moment. Carter-Finley was rocking.

N.C. State's Russell Wilson had thrown a 61-yard touchdown pass to Owen Spencer, then tied the score at 31-31 when he skidded over the pylon on a 2-yard keeper with 3 minutes, 33 seconds remaining.

Despite Crane's brilliance, N.C. State had a chance to win because it forced three turnovers and scored on freshman T.J. Graham's 100-yard kickoff return. The momentum of the comeback seemed to propel blitzing Maddox toward Crane.

After knocking him to the turf as Crane threw incomplete, Maddox looked back at him.

"He kind of took a deep breath and sat there a little bit," Maddox said. "I figured it was a good sign."

It wasn't. On the next play, Crane passed 37 yards to Lars Anderson. Crane capped the drive with a keeper to his left for 9 yards and another for the winning TD with 22.8 seconds remaining to ruin homecoming for N.C. State (2-4, 0-2 ACC).

So far this season, Crane hadn't appeared capable of this kind of performance. He had passed for 461 yards in four games and was booed at home.

He supposedly was going to rotate with redshirt freshman Dominique Davis on Saturday. Davis never got in the game.

Crane was 34-for-51, led Boston College in rushing and performed the way O'Brien knew he could, even though Crane hadn't yet.

"They told me going into this game that they were going to put it on my shoulders, that this game was either going to make or break my season pretty much because we had to throw the ball to be able to beat them today," Crane said. "So I prepared all week, and I just got the right mind-set."

He helped Boston College (4-1, 1-1) make its record 16-4 since O'Brien left for N.C. State. O'Brien is 0-2 against his former team.

O'Brien was proud that N.C. State came back. Wilson passed for 218 yards after returning from a one-game injury absence and delivered a fourth-quarter comeback as he had two weeks earlier against East Carolina.

This time, the defense disappointed O'Brien because it couldn't get off the field and force overtime.

Although O'Brien had said it would be easier facing Boston College the second time, N.C. State's players said this game was special to him. He congratulated his former players after the game.

N.C. State's players would have preferred to see him congratulating them on a win in their locker room.

"Just the way his attitude was, the way he presented himself, I don't really know how to explain how he was," Graham said, "... but we really would have loved to give him a win."

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