WATCH: NC State OL Tim McKay: “I’m an NC State Guy. I Hated UNC Growing Up”

NC State Redshirt Senior Offensive Guard Tim McKay met with the media after practice yesterday before the Wolfpack’s game against rival UNC this Saturday. You can watch the video ABOVE, and read the transcript BELOW.

What does this rivalry mean to you?

It means a lot. I’m an NC State guy from Raleigh. I hated UNC growing up. Going out here the last time, my sixth year, just dominating the game.

It was really fun. I’m excited to get out there.

Remember how old you were when you first watched the NC State-UNC game?

Probably middle school.

It’s been a long time. I’m not sure of the age. It’s been a long time, watching Ryan Switzer growing up.

All those guys. It’ll be fun playing them again.

Your record against UNC, with the possibility to win 4 in a row to end your career. 

Oh yeah, that’s exciting. We talked about that in the team meeting yesterday. Getting that four in a row is a legacy thing to talk about.

Seven years from now, just thinking about how we beat them four times in a row right here. It’s big for us. That’s the plan this weekend.

We’re going to do the job.

There’s some new guys who haven’t played in this rivalry in your position group, definitely on the offense. Have you talked to any of the guys about what this rivalry means to all of them?

Yeah, we talked on Monday about going out there and having a dominant day.

I feel like the last year we really dominated them. It’s just going out there again and doing the same thing. It means a lot for us, especially me being here for so long.

Play for me, play for the other seniors in the room. There are going to be a lot of emotions on both sides of the field.

How do you channel that into being productive on the field, as opposed to maybe playing sped up or making mistakes?

You’ve got to breathe and harness the energy. Really just take it out on the guy in front of you. You can’t think about things too much, have high emotions.

It’s going to be an emotional for sure, but just take the emotion out on the guy in front of you, in Carolina Blue.

Is there kind of like a rallying cry that you want your season to go on for four more weeks?

Yeah, of course we want to play more games for sure. This is really important for us to get bowl eligibility.

Especially going against these guys, getting our sixth win against UNC is really important.

Even though Carolina just announced Mack Brown is not returning next season, even though that doesn’t affect y’all, does that make the rivalry itself a little bit more interesting?

Not at all. I feel like it’s just another game.

Head coach has nothing to do with us. We play our brand of football. We play HTT football and go out there and just have fun.

You used the word dominate. How do you feel about the running game coming out of Georgia Tech?

I feel really good about it. I feel like we got some things going.

Hollywood (Smothers) and Jordan (Waters) and all those guys. To continue this momentum to the next week is really important.

What was the key difference in your mind that allowed the running game to get going again? On the road against a really good front defense.

We knew they were really good going in, so just having a different mindset, but we had to really put it on our backs, and just having that dominant day was really important. So we just went out there and really emphasized the running game and it showed. Maybe we didn’t get the win, but we had a good day running.

So we’re going to try to continue the running game to this week.