The night, Nov. 9, 2001, before NC State faced No. 10 Florida State at Doak Campbell Stadium, Wolfpack head coach Chuck Amato brought out a copy of late basketball coach Jim Valvano’s oft-replayed speech from the 1993 ESPY’s and showed it to his team.
The Wolfpack listened to the cancer-stricken coach, just a few weeks from his passing, go through his inspirational litany about not being intimidated by overwhelming odds and not giving up. Not a word was spoken in the darkened hotel ballroom.
Fifteen years ago, there was no more intimidating place for an Atlantic Coast Conference football team to be than FSU’s home field. No team from the league had ever won there before. The Seminoles, in fact, had only lost two games to ACC opponents in its first decade of competition after joining the conference in 1991: a loss at Virginia in 1995 and one at Carter-Finley Stadium in 1998.
Certainly, much has changed in the years since Amato took his team to his old stomping grounds in Tallahassee. The Seminoles, who visit Carter-Finley Stadium on Saturday at 7 p.m., are still great, but hardly the infallible program it seemed to be back then.
It’s a lesson the league learned from NC State.
Back then, Philip Rivers was still a childless newlywed, a talented sophomore quarterback whose career was still in its infancy.
The Wolfpack’s program was on the upswing under Amato, a former NC State linebacker and a two-time graduate of the school who learned his lessons about big-time football under Lou Holtz, Bo Rein and Bobby Bowden. He wanted so badly to build the same kind of successful program at his alma mater.
And after an unlikely 34-28 victory over the Seminoles on Nov. 10, 2001, the Wolfpack seemed to be on its way. It didn’t last, of course. Amato didn’t maintain his success after Rivers’ career ended in 2003, and he was fired following the 2006 season.
But on that night a decade and a half ago, there were no prouder papas of a fledgling program than Amato and Rivers.
Amato, who had spent 18 years learning under Bowden, couldn’t believe what his team had done to his longtime mentor and father figure.
“There’s no way to fathom this, to beat a man like Bobby,” Amato said at the time.
The game started with a big break, when center Derek Green fell on a Cotra Jackson fumble in the end zone for the Wolfpack’s first touchdown.
Rivers had a good evening, completing 26 of his 33 passes for 245 yards with no interceptions. But FSU freshman quarterback Chris Rix threw touchdown passes of 33 and 63 yards and ran in three yards for another score.
Rivers, wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery and senior tailback Ray Robinson had answers. Robinson, who gained 106 yards on 21 carries, rushed for two touchdowns, including a 24-yarder early in the fourth quarter that gave the Wolfpack a 10-point lead.
Rix answered with his rushing touchdown with 10 minutes to play, giving the Seminoles plenty of time to pull out the victory.
That’s when Rivers put together one of the best clock-chewing drives of his career, 17 plays that took 7:11 off the clock before kicker Adam Kiker booted a 32-yard field goal for the Wolfpack’s final points.
It was, however, the defense that pulled off the upset in the game’s final minutes. The Seminoles marched down the field on a 14-play drive in an attempt to prevent the upset. Florida-native freshmen Marcus Hudson and Greg Golden both started in the Wolfpack secondary, buoyed by veterans Brian Williams and Terrence Holt.
The Seminoles advanced as far as the 16-yard line, but freshman Lamont Reid had back-to-back pass break-ups to halt the Seminoles progress. In the final seconds, Rix had one last chance, but both Williams and Holt were there to knock away the pass in the end zone as time expired, completing the Pack’s second goal-line stand of the game.
“Nobody in America thought we would win this game,'' Amato said afterwards. "But we were all believers.''
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
