8/21/2019 football Edit

East Carolina is the rare back-to-back opponent

Tim Peeler

The Wolfpacker contributor

Former Pack running back Reggie Gallaspy Jr. and NC State ran over ECU to end last season, 58-3. (Ken Martin/TheWolfpacker.com)

Admit it: You’re wracking your brain trying to remember the last time NC State football opened the season against the same team it ended the previous regular season against?

Maybe not, but it is a rare curiosity that has only happened once since 1900.

Before then, in the earliest days of football, it was downright common to play the same opponent multiple times a year. Playing that team at the end of one season and at the beginning of the next happened three times in the school’s first decade.

The North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts faced North Carolina in 1895-96 and 1898-99 and Guilford in 1896-97. After that, travel got easier and opponents became more varied.

In less than two weeks, when the Wolfpack hosts East Carolina on Aug. 31, it will be the first time since 1973-74 that football faces its final opponent from the previous regular season in an opener.

That time, head coach Lou Holtz led his team to back-to-back victories over Wake Forest, 52-13 in the 1973 ender at Carter-Finley and 33-15 in the 1974 opener in Winston-Salem.

In both that and this year’s case, the games were broken up by postseason bowl games, a 31-18 victory over Kansas in the 1973 Liberty Bowl and a 52-13 loss to Texas A&M in the 2018 Gator Bowl.

Last year’s situation was an oddity because the Pirates were a last-minute replacement after Hurricane Florence wiped out September games for both teams. A hastily arranged contest between the two old rivals was tacked on at the end of the regular season so both teams could have 12 regular-season games.

The Wolfpack won in the biggest blowout in the 30-game series history, 58-3 at Carter-Finley.

This year’s opener is part of a long-arranged series with the in-state next-door neighbor. More games are planned for 2022 and ’28 in Raleigh and ’25 in Greenville.

State and Wake played in back-to-back contests after South Carolina left the ACC, and schedules had to be completely rearranged. It was a situation that Holtz really wasn’t fond of.

Then again, Holtz wasn’t fond of much.

“It’s very unusual to open with the same team you closed the season with, but this year such is the case,” Holtz said before the ’74 opener.

“Unfortunately, they are not going to be exactly the same team.”

The ’73 Demon Deacons, under first-year head coach Chuck Mills, won all but 10 games that season, finishing 1-9-1. They had higher hopes for the coach’s second season, after going overseas to play two January exhibition games in Japan, something Mills had first done when he was at Utah State.

The Deacs beat the West Japan College All-Stars 28-3 at Amagasaki City Stadium in Osaka, followed by a 35-0 victory over the East Japan College All-Stars in the Yomiuri Rice Bowl, played at National Stadium in Tokyo, which was the primary venue for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Mills and his team was fairly brimming with confidence when the defending ACC champion Wolfpack opened the 1974 season at Groves Stadium in Winston-Salem. Wake’s new split-six defense held the Wolfpack’s high-powered offense to just a field goal in the first half, depressing Holtz.

“We played so poorly I began thinking — what a lousy time of year to sell a house,” the coach said after the game. “The way things were going I thought I’d be driven out of Raleigh.”

Things changed dramatically in the second half, with junior quarterback Dave Buckey rushing for a touchdown and throwing two scoring passes and freshman Johnny Evans coming off the bench in the second half and leading the Wolfpack to a touchdown early in the fourth quarter.

The Pack won its first six games that season, lost back-to-back contests to Maryland and North Carolina, and then beat South Carolina, Penn State and Arizona State to finish with a 9-2 regular-season record and tie UNC for second place in the league standings. Holtz took his team to the Astro Bluebonnet Bowl to face Houston in the Astrodome.

Trailing 31-17 with 3:38 to play, the Wolfpack tied the game, using only 71 seconds of clock time, thanks to a 9-yard run by Tommy London, a 1-yard quarterback sneak by Buckey and a two-point conversion by Stan Fritts. The game ended in a 31-31 tie.

Much has changed for both the Wolfpack and the Pirates going into next weekend’s season opener. State will be crowning a new quarterback to replace NFL-resident Ryan Finley, while the Pirates are welcoming a new coaching staff after hiring Mike Houston from James Madison to replace the fired Scottie Montgomery.

Even though the same two schools will be playing each other in a rare back-to-back matchup, it will hardly be the same two teams on the field.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.