‘Winning ugly’s OK’ for the Wolfpack, which cements place among ACC’s first division
There are haves and have-nots in the ACC in this exceptional season, a clear line drawn down the middle of the conference, those who have managed to maintain their football edge amid the peaks and valleys of the pandemic and those who have not.
While it was long ago left behind those still with designs on a spot in the ACC championship game, N.C. State has put itself squarely among the fortunate this season, navigating the ups and downs and avoiding the missteps that have tripped up much better teams -- even if, Saturday, it couldn’t have been by a narrower margin.
The Wolfpack avoided a historically embarrassing loss that would have doubled the win total of woeful Syracuse -- the least-havingest of all the ACC’s have-nots -- when the Orange historically embarrassed itself instead, third-string quarterback Rex Culpepper taking a Payton Wilson sack with no timeouts in the final minute within sight of the N.C. State goal line, then spiking the ball to stop the clock … on fourth down.
“He really just spiked it on fourth and goal,” Wilson said. “Whoa.”
Syracuse’s end-of-game collapse trumped N.C. State’s own bizarro gift of first-half points, first a Bailey Hockman fumble as he dived for the pylon to score, the ball going out the back of the end zone to wipe six points off the board, then Hockman’s no-look heave out the back of the end zone as he was being sacked to give Syracuse a safety, among others.
Even with those eight or nine points moved to the wrong side of his ledger, Hockman had plenty on the other side. He connected three times with Thayer Thomas for touchdowns, threw a fourth to Emeka Emezie for the game-winner and recorded the first 300-yard passing game of his career.
It was far from pretty, but it did highlight the divide between teams like N.C. State that have somehow found their way in an unfamiliar world, and those like Syracuse that haven’t. It has nothing, or at least very little, to do with how schools have dealt with COVID-19 itself; no one has done a better job than Duke or Boston College keeping things negative, but neither has seen corresponding success on the football field.
But the Wolfpack has chugged along, especially after what may have been the most difficult of starts, with the start of its season delayed and Hockman forced to deputize for Devin Leary, then forced back into that spot again after Leary was injured. He has struggled at times and excelled at others, this game -- despite the turnovers -- firmly among the latter.
There have been bafflers (Virginia Tech) and thumpings (North Carolina) and heartbreakers (Miami) but the Wolfpack has found ways to bounce back and regroup, although if there was one game on N.C. State’s schedule that wasn’t supposed to come down to the final play, this was the one, not that there was any less satisfaction in it.
“Happy to win a game,” N.C. State coach Dave Doeren said. “Winning ugly’s OK. It’s a lot better than losing, I’ll tell you that.”
N.C. State has certainly made the most of the reconfigured schedule; of its five wins coming into Saturday -- in eight ACC games, the “normal” workload -- three were against Coastal Division teams. This was against an Atlantic opponent, a familiar one, in a venue where the Wolfpack failed to close out a win in its last visit. This time, in keeping with this season, it did.
This story was originally published November 28, 2020 at 4:33 PM.
