11/15/2018 football Edit

Louisville has not been a good destination for Wolfpack football

Tim Peeler

The Wolfpacker contributor

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So far, NC State football has not had much luck going to Louisville.

The Wolfpack has been roughed up in all four of its previous trips to the city of Louisville Slugger baseball bats, Churchill Downs race track and Muhammad Ali.

In fact, it’s been a Hot Brown mess.

(If you don’t get that joke, head over to the Brown Hotel on Fourth and Broadway in downtown Louisville this weekend and order that local favorite menu item. And, in either celebration or consolation, try one of the 44 bars on Louisville’s Urban Bourbon Trail.)

NC State’s first two trips to the Bluegrass State (1951 and 1994) were non-conference affairs. Saturday’s 12:20 p.m. game at Papa John’s Stadium will be the third time the two teams have met in Louisville as ACC foes, with NC State losing 54-13 in 2016 and 30-18 in ’14.

The Wolfpack’s first trip to Louisville featured two NFL greats. John Unitas, in his second career start for the Cardinals, threw three fourth-quarter touchdown passes to lead his team to a 26-2 upset victory against the Alex Webster-led Wolfpack.

The second trip, however, was probably the most disappointing. On Oct. 8, 1994, the undefeated and 18th ranked Wolfpack (4-0) of second-year head coach Mike O’Cain traveled to face Howard Schnellenberger’s 2-2 Cardinals, coming off wins over Arizona State and Pittsburgh.

The Wolfpack was carried by its nationally fourth-ranked defense, which featured linebacker Damien Covington and defensive end Carl Reeves. However, because of an injury suffered the week before, Reeves was limited in how much he played that afternoon.

State’s offense was unsettled throughout the first half of the 1994 season. Junior quarterback Terry Harvey suffered a broken cheekbone in a 31-14 victory over Clemson three weeks earlier. He missed the Pack’s victory over Western Carolina and was pulled from the lineup after throwing interceptions on the team’s first two drives against Georgia Tech his first week back. Senior Geoff Bender came off the bench to lead the Pack to wins in both games.

The backfield was a combination of junior tailback Brian Fitzgerald and true freshman Tremayne Stephens, fullbacks Carlos King and Rod Brown, and wide receiver Eddie Goines finished that season as NC State’s all-time leading receiver. Fitzgerald filled in at starter for the first two games, while Stephens recovered from turf toe.

Against, the Cardinals that afternoon, however, things did not go well for the Wolfpack offense in a game of significant importance. O’Cain’s team lost a school-record six of its seven fumbles and threw an interception.

Louisville wasn’t much better, with five turnovers of its own. Two of those were because Reeves came off the bench and intercepted a screen pass and forced Louisville’s quarterback to throw an errant pass that was intercepted by Duan Everett and returned 66 yards for a touchdown.

The fourth quarter was the Wolfpack’s downfall. Trailing 21-14, the Pack had driven all the way to the Louisville 13-yard line. However, Bender bounced an option pitch off Stephens’ facemask, and the Cardinals recovered to end the Pack’s final offensive threat of the game.

“It was an audibled play at the line of scrimmage,” Bender said after the game. “Tremayne and I didn’t run the same play, and I did the stupidest thing I could have done at the time by pitching it to him. I should have just dropped on the ball and taken the loss. It was a mental mistake on my part.”

Schnellenberger’s team secured the 35-14 win by scoring touchdowns on two more Wolfpack fumbles in the game’s closing minutes.

The six fumbles lost in the game matched the total number of fumbles lost in Dave Doeren’s inaugural season of 2013, the fewest in school history.

The 1994 team bounced back after the loss, finishing the season with an 8-3 overall record, thanks to dramatic Harvey-led comeback wins at Maryland, against Duke and at 13th-ranked Virginia. The other two blemishes were losses at North Carolina and at home to No. 8 Florida State.

The 6-2 ACC record put the Wolfpack in sole possession of second place in the conference standings, and the season’s overall outcome earned the Pack an invitation to the Peach Bowl for the fourth time in nine seasons.

A 28-24 upset win over No. 16 Mississippi State at the Georgia Dome gave O’Cain’s second squad a 9-3 final record, the best of his seven-year tenure as head coach. The Pack was ranked No. 17 in the final Associated Press poll, one of 10 times in school history it has finished in the Top 20.

Stephens, who ended the season with 791 yards on the ground, earned second-team All-ACC honors and a starting role for the next three seasons. He still ranks third on NC State’s all-time career rushing list with 3,553 yards, behind Ted Brown and Joe McIntosh.

All in all, it was a stellar season for O’Cain’s Wolfpack, despite the dismal day against the Cardinals midway through the regular season.

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