Star junior Kelvin Harmon to celebrate NC State's Senior Day
NC State junior wide receiver Kelvin Harmon is walking on Senior Night on Thursday prior to the game against Wake Forest at Carter-Finley Stadium.
Harmon will have a host of relatives coming down for the occasion, but NCSU head coach Dave Doeren said not to completely read into his actions. Harmon loves the meaning of Senior Day, and didn’t want to miss out in case he entered the NFL Draft at the conclusion of the season. He’ll still go through the process of getting his NFL feedback, but if he ultimately ends up participating in two Senior Day scenarios, they’ll be a lot of happy people in Raleigh.
The 6-foot-3, 214-pounder from Palmyra, N.J., ranks 18th in college football with 831 receiving yards on his 50 catches, plus five touchdowns.
“He is going to go through Senior Day,” Doeren said. “He has not made any decisions. This is a milestone type thing, and he has a lot of family coming, which is very rare. He’ll go through like Ryan [Finley] and [Bradley] Chubb and get the NFL feedback. Sometime during the bowl, we’ll sit down with him and his dad and we’ll decide and he’ll decide.”
NC State has had a busy week, and not just because of Thursday’s game. The Wolfpack checked in at No. 14 in the college football playoff rankings. Doeren appreciates the bump up of seven spots, but knows a loss to Wake Forest will erase the good will created.
“I thought we needed to beat Wake Forest,” said Doeren on seeing the ranking. “We have four games left, and if we handle our business, then it will be a relevant thing. It is not relevant until we do that. You are one poor game from being down.”
Now, keeping the players focused on the task at hand and not day dream about climbing up from a No. 14 ranking isn’t as easy.
“Impossible,” said Doeren. “You have to talk to them. I talked to them after practice today, ‘I said look, you have that going on and you have Senior Day. You have Military Appreciation, and their are all these awesome things, and they are great. But what would be really special is win the game.’ You can’t ignore it.”
The Military Appreciation Day game is always special this season, and playing on ESPN will bring increased exposure to the Wolfpack program. It’s an ideal game for prep recruits to check out NC State.
“Kids want to be on national television and playing in front of an audience,” Doeren said. “This to me, this game is without a doubt the best atmosphere we have at Carter-Finley Stadium — the Military Appreciation game is special.”
The twist this season is that Senior Night isn’t the last home game. NC State added East Carolina on Dec. 1 at Carter-Finley Stadium due to Hurricane Florence cancelling the West Virginia game Sept. 15. The players already had family members make plans for the Wake Forest contest, but Doeren said the team will internally do something unique prior to playing the Pirates.
“A lot of our parents are coming from Arizona or California or New York and had already bought plane tickets,” Doeren said. “We sent a text to the seniors and said ‘Can we do this?’ Half of them could and it just wasn’t worth it.”
One senior may not play Thursday or at least will be a game-time decision. Doeren said junior cornerback Nick McCloud and redshirt sophomore defensive tackle Shug Frazier were healthy enough to practice this week, but senior defensive tackle Eurndraus Bryant was slowed by injury. The trio missed the 47-28 win over Florida State last Saturday.
“E is still not in full practice mode all the way,” Doeren said. “He is running and had his pads on, but we haven’t seen him play. We’ll have to see how he feels in warmups tomorrow. He feels way better.
“We aren’t going to put him out there if the trainer says he isn’t the way he is supposed to be.”
Wake Forest is the third-consecutive game where NC State will face a little bit of a uncertain quarterback situation. Syracuse went with incumbent Eric Dungey over Tommy DeVito and Florida State turned to sophomore James Blackman in light of Deondre Francois’ injury. WFU had true freshman Sam Hartman suffer a season-ending leg injury, and he’ll be replaced by redshirt sophomore Jamie Newman of Graham (N.C.) High.
“We offered him coming out and we thought he was a really good player,” Doeren said. “He was in our camp and a big strong guy, big arm. He was a great kid and his coach thought a lot of him in high school.
“There is not of film of him this year, but you see he runs tough.”
Another terrific event Thursday is that NC State will celebrate the career of former defensive end Bradley Chubb of the Denver Broncos. He’ll have his No. 9 honored Thursday and he’s currently tied for sixth in the NFL with eight sacks.
“Bradley first of all, is the backbone of what we try to build here,” Doeren said. “He built himself into what he is. He took no shortcuts. He did things the right way and treats people with respect.
“He plays harder than everybody on the practice field. He prepares himself to be the best player on the game field. He is doing that now.”
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