Trips to Charlottesville, Virginia, have been increasingly rare for NC State Wolfpack football, an odd circumstance for old rivals in a series that goes back nearly 12 decades.
Virginia is one of NC State’s oldest, yet most infrequent rivals, given the proximity of the two schools. They began playing in 1904 – with five consecutive games in Charlottesville and Norfolk – then took a three-decade break before World War II forced them back into each other’s arms.
They parted ways before the Marshall Plan was implemented, and began playing each other again when Virginia — then guided by former NC State football and basketball coach Gus Tebell — finally joined the ACC six months after the seven charter members broke away from the Southern Conference in 1953.
Even then, they played only once in the 1950s, a 26-14 Wolfpack victory in Charlottesville on Oct. 4, 1958.
From 1958-82, the Wolfpack won 21 of 22 games in the series, including 12 consecutive victories in Charlottesville. Beginning in the 1980s with the arrival of head coach George Welsh, Scott Stadium is where many of NC State’s championship dreams went to die, especially under head coach Dick Sheridan, whose only win in seven attempts against the Cavs came in his final season of 1992.
In 1986, fresh off its miraculous victory over South Carolina, the Wolfpack went to Scott Stadium with the opportunity to secure at least a tie for the ACC title. But All-ACC quarterback Erik Kramer was injured on the final play against the Gamecocks — a 35-yard pass to Danny Peebles with no time left on the clock — and could not play the following week. That left freshman lefthander Cam Young under center for his first and only career start for the Wolfpack.
Perhaps the Wolfpack’s greatest Monticello-adjacent trip was in 1994, when all the 13th-ranked Cavaliers needed was a day-after-Thanksgiving win over the Wolfpack to secure a bid to the Fiesta or Sugar Bowls, invitations that would have been worth up to $3 million for the ACC postseason payout pool.
The Cavs entered the game as a two-touchdown favorite, but something went wrong in the final game ever played on the Scott Stadium artificial turf. Three different Wolfpack offensive players threw touchdown passes for a 30-27 upset victory that the News & Observer called “one of the most memorable and significant in the program’s history.”
The game was decorated with big plays by the Wolfpack. Receiver Adrian Hill had touchdown catches of 62 and 69 yards, one from injured quarterback Terry Harvey, the other from Geoff Bender, who came off the bench in the second half to relieve the sore-shouldered starter after Harvey threw a pick-six that gave Virginia a 19-7 lead. Harvey was hit hard on his second interception of the day and was forced to leave the game.
On his second play, Bender suffered a broken throwing hand, but pushed through the injury to lead the Wolfpack to the stunning upset. State’s offense didn’t always need a big pass to score — fullback Carlos King threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to Mike Guffie and freshman running back Tremayne Stephens broke free on an 84-yard draw for the final go-ahead score against a Cavalier defense that entered the game ranked No. 1 in the nation against the run.
The young runner called it the greatest thrill of his life — at least up to that point.
Still, the Cavaliers got within a field goal by intercepting Bender’s two-point conversion pass on Stephen’s touchdown and running it back to make the score 30-27.
Even though State’s defense gave up three touchdowns and 506 yards in total offense, it stopped Virginia three times on critical fourth-down attempts, including twice in the final seven minutes. Linebacker Damien Covington, who still ranks No. 3 on NC State’s career tackles list, intercepted a Virginia pass on the game’s first play and finished with 17 tackles. He also was the enforcer who stopped each of Virginia’s fourth-down plays, once making a solo tackle and twice more forcing Virginia runners into the arms of waiting teammates.
With 3:13 remaining and Virginia facing a fourth-and-one at the State 19-yard line, Virginia fullback Charles Way tried to go up the middle against Covington, but was met at the line by nose tackle Eric Counts and linebacker Duan Everett, with Welsh deciding for the second time in his team’s last two possessions to go for the win instead of a game-tying field goal on his home field.
“It was only one yard,” Welsh said, “and I thought we could get it.”
The win was especially sweet for the Wolfpack, which had been picked to finish sixth in the conference and seemed destined for the Poulan/Weedeater Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana.
“We proved the critics wrong,” Covington said after the game. “This game was chalked up as a loss for us, and our luggage was already in Shreveport. If we hadn’t have won today, there were no opportunities for other, bigger bowls.”
The victory guaranteed the Wolfpack its third second-place finish in four years in the ACC final standings and knocked rival North Carolina out of the Peach Bowl.
Instead, the Wolfpack went to Atlanta, beat Mississippi State 28-24 for its ninth win of the season and finished ranked 17th in the final AP rankings. (Virginia ended up in Shreveport, and North Carolina lost to Texas in the Sun Bowl.)
Since 2003, the unbalanced scheduling caused by ACC expansion has kept the neighboring schools mostly apart. Saturday’s game in Charlottesville is just the fifth meeting in the longtime series since Virginia Tech and Miami joined the league, and head coach Dave Doeren’s first ever trip to Thomas Jefferson’s old grape-stomping grounds.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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