NC State's spring football game brings out the crowd

Posted Sunday, April 15, 2007

 E-mail this page    Printer-friendly page

Raleigh, NC - An estimated crowd of over 14,000 Wolfpack fans came to Carter-Finley stadium on Saturday afternoon to see the Red and White teams face off in the annual spring game. They watched the Red team win by a 35-31 score thanks to a couple of late touchdown passes from Daniel Evans to Darrell Blackman.

Red team quarterback Daniel Evans -- who threw the winning touchdown in the final moments against O'Brien's Eagles back in September -- was the best performer as he hit 20-of-34 for 275 yards and three touchdowns. Evans had a 19-yard touchdown pass to John Dunlap in the second quarter. He hit Blackman with a 50-yard score with 2:52 left and the Red team down by 10. He threw an game winning 8-yard pass to Blackman with 16 seconds remaining.

White team starting quarterback Justin Burke was 13-of-24 for 121 yards and a touchdown, but threw three interceptions. Strong safety Javon Walker picked off two of the freshman's passes.

Nebraska transfer Harrison Beck split time with Burke in the first half before moving over to the Red team in the second half. Beck was 7-for-26 for 116 yards. However, he threw an interception to free safety Jimmaul Simmons that the freshman returned 100 yards for a touchdown. Beck's biggest throw hit Koyal George for a 75-yard pass play.

Three NC State running backs surpassed 100 yards each. Jamelle Eugene had 168 yards on 15 carries, Toney Baker had 163 yards on 23 attempts and Andre Brown ran for 112 yards on 11 carries.

New NC State head football coach Tom O’Brien has spent the past ten seasons as the head coach at Boston College, where he won more games than any coach in BC history. A 1971 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, O’Brien posted a 75-45 mark with the Eagles, leading the Eagles to eight straight bowl games. His 2006 squad won nine games for the third consecutive season and the fourth time in five years. It marked the sixth straight year and the seventh time in eight years that BC had won at least eight games.

"At BC, nine or 10 wins a year was about as good as you could do," O'Brien said. "The sky is the limit here. We're not here to win nine or 10 a year. We're here to win more."

Post game quotes from NCSU football coach Tom O'Brien

Opening Statement:
It's a good ending to a day today. Too many penalties, especially the offsides things we've got to take care of. We take care of that, and we compete the way we competed at the end, we're going to win some football games here.

Thoughts on running backs:
When I came in everybody talked about our two running backs. We found that with Jamelle [Eugene], that showed up everyday at practice, he got better and better as spring practice went on. Maybe I'll have to re-think my thing about the wishbone now that we've got three backs.

Thoughts on the quarterback play:
I think the quarterbacks competed well. We're not ready to name a starter. We have a lot of work to do at that position. It's always great to play a game and put them in situations that they are going to have to perform and they are going to have to make decisions.

This is a decision-making position, and whoever makes the best decisions will be the starting quarterback.

They are still fighting for the job... it's an ongoing process.

Did you want to run Toney Baker that often?
I didn't have any participation in calling plays today. That was coach Swepson and that was his offense. That's how they wanted to play the game.

Thoughts on zone coverage:
I think as you saw today, a lot of balls were tipped. We had our hands on a lot of balls... we dropped a lot. If we catch a lot of those balls and intercept them you can return the ball. That was zone that [Jimmaul] Simmons made a play on and returned it down the sidelines.

Zone allows you the opportunity to break on the ball and make some plays. I think we did that today, but we just need to catch them.

Injury situation:
We had some guys that were injured and didn't play today, but there are no major injuries that would keep anyone from starting play in August and that's good.