NC State Suffers a Gut-wrenching Loss to Wake Forest, 30-24

NC State let the chance of a truly special season slip through their hands in Winston-Salem tonight, falling to their in-state rivals Wake Forest 24-30.

With 1:51 left on the clock, true freshman receiver Emeka Emezie caught a 10-yard pass, and looked to be heading into the endzone, before Wake Forest’s Demetrius Kemp knocked the ball out of his hands literally inches in front of the goal line, and the ball was recovered by the Demon Deacons in the endzone. He tried to extend the ball across the line, which ended up being a freshman mistake. Had he just tucked the ball, he probably would have ended up in the endzone. Even if he didn’t, NC State would have had a first down on the 1-yard line.

For a split second, it seemed like a dream come true. After B.J. Hill blocked Wake Forest’s PAT, the Wolfpack was going to win by one point at the end of the game.

Yes, the Pack forced Wake to punt after this, and Ryan Finley ultimately threw an interception at the end of regulation, but everyone will remember the play that should have been.

(For what it’s worth, the fact that an ESPNU game doesn’t have a pylon camera is STUPID. This is 2017. RIDICULOUS.)

But this wasn’t all about one play. Don’t you dare hang this loss solely on Emezie.

NC State had more total yards than Wake Forest (502-334). They won the time of possession battle (41:07-18:53). The Wolfpack was 14-23 on 3rd down and 3-4 on 4th down.

And they lost.

There are a variety of reasons, but one stat line that can mark out all of the above is the fact that NC State turned the ball over 3 times, which was uncharacteristic for this 2017 squad.

There were the dropped passes by Harmon.

There was Finley missing on a wide open Emezie at the end of the first half that could have gone for 6.

There was Defensive Coordinator’s strange decision to start true freshman Chris Ingram at Nickel, and move Shawn Boone (who had been starting all year at Nickel) to Safety. Why he chose to make this personnel change in this game on the road, I do not know. The result was disastrous. Ingram was picked on something fierce, and Wake Forest scored at least 14 points at his expense.

Then there was the factor that you can’t control, and that is Nyheim Hines missing pretty much the entire second half due to concussion protocol.

Really, NC State dominated the second half, but they have an L to show for it.

With the numbers the offense put up, they should have put more points on the board. Period.

You can’t drop passes. You can’t miss open receivers. You can’t make rookie mistakes.

What separated this game from being spectacular for NC State wasn’t a few more spectacular plays, but just a few more normally executed ones.