Brett Davis/USAToday sports
Too Little, Too Late for Wolfpack's Bowl Hopes
ATLANTA -- The NC State football team played as though its bowl hopes depended on it in the second half against Georgia Tech on Thursday.
Which they were.
The problem is, the Wolfpack played so poorly in the first half that those desperate final 30 minutes only added to the frustration of a season-crushing 28-26 loss to the Yellow Jackets at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
Coach Dave Doeren's team played by far its best half since early in the season, combining a physical defense with an offense that finally found its rhythm to outscore Tech 23-7. But it was too little, too late as a decisive two-point conversion play failed with 5:17 remaining to send State to its fifth straight defeat.
At 5-7 (1-6 in the ACC) with one game remaining -- next week against rival North Carolina -- the Wolfpack is now mathematically eliminated from postseason consideration for the first time since 2013.
"I'm proud of the way our guys fought in the second half," a somber Doeren said afterward. "Obviously (we) didn't do enough in the first half for our players to have an opportunity to be in a much better situation."
That first half was an extension of the past four weeks for the Wolfpack, in which it consistently hurt itself with turnovers, missed opportunities and explosive plays allowed.
'All three of those things factored into the 21-3 halftime hole State dug for itself on Thursday, starting on the game's opening kickoff -- when it failed to come up with a loose ball knocked free from Yellow Jackets returner Juanyeh Thomas.
Had the Wolfpack recovered the fumble and scored, it might have gotten Tech thinking about the 45-0 drubbing it took at the hands of Virginia Tech last week.
Instead, the Yellow Jackets (3-8, 2-6) were able to build some early confidence and momentum when quarterback James Graham burned cornerback Malik Dunlap deep for a 54-yard completion to Malachi Carter on the game's first snap. Two plays later, Tech was in the end zone for a quick 7-0 lead.
The Wolfpack squandered a scoring chance of its own on its opening possession when Doeren decided to go it instead of kicking a field goal on fourth-and-two from the Tech 11. It turned out to be a bad decision when Zonovan Knight was stopped for a loss after taking a direct snap.
And it got worse before it got better.
The Yellow Jackets made it 14-0 early in the second quarter on the strength of another big play, this one a 48-yard run by Jordan Mason.
But as poorly as State played over the opening two periods, it was still within striking distance after settling for a Christopher Dunn field goal just before halftime. It appeared as though it might get a chance to score again when it forced a three-and-out with just over a minute remaining.
But Thayer Thomas muffed the punt, Tech recovered and scored on Graham's third touchdown of the half to put the Wolfpack into an all-too-familiar hole.
"This whole year we've been up-and-down," graduate wide receiver Tabari Hines said. "We've been through some things. At halftime we were just thinking in our heads, like, why us?
Hines had four catches for 88 yards.
"We realized we had another half to play and that this team, Georgia Tech, was 2-8 coming into this game," he said. "We felt like we're a better team than we showed in the first half. In the second half we knew we could hit them on certain plays we didn't hit in the first half and that's what we did. We just hoped we had one more play here to win the game."
As Hines suggested, the Wolfpack was a different team in the second half.
It out gained Tech 278-149, held the Yellow Jackets to just nine yards passing, averaged 7.1 yards per play, actually forced a turnover -- its second of the game, ending a seven-game drought without a takeaway -- and outscored its opponent 23-7.
Freshman quarterback Devin Leary finally found some rhythm while completing 10 of his 16 second half passes for 163 yards. He finished the game at 19 of 31 for 227 yards and a touchdown, cashing in on the rare takeaway by hitting tight end Cary Angeline for a four-yard score early in the fourth quarter.
State also ran the ball effectively, with Knight posting his third 100-yard game of the season, Jordan Houston gaining 89 yards and Ricky Person junior leaping into the end zone from a yard out that led to the one play to which Hines referred earlier.
It was a two-point conversion attempt on which Leary overthrew Angeline in the end zone under pressure, leaving the Wolfpack two points short.
It turned out to be State's last gasp when Graham -- who rushed for 97 of his 122 yards in the second half -- played keepaway for the final five minutes to run out the clock on both the game and the Wolfpack's bowl hopes.
"It's obviously frustrating," sophomore linebacker Isaiah Moore said. "We felt like we left it all out there in the second half. We played some good football in the second half. We just couldn't overcome our first half woes. We've got to live with that."
