There is no joy in land of the Wolfpack, after NC State squanders rare opportunity

“There is no joy in Mudville,” goes one of the most enduring lines in American sports writing — or sports poetry, as it were. Saturday night, the same could be said for Players Retreat, the old restaurant and bar across the street from the N.C. State bell tower.

There are parallels between Mudville, the hard-luck fictional town in “Casey at the Bat,” and PR (as it’s better known), the old-school, real-life gathering place for many a supporter of the hard-luck Wolfpack. In the poem, the good people of Mudville put all their faith in “mighty Casey” coming through at the end, only to be let down.

And at Players Retreat — where every seat was full Saturday night; where all 15 of the bar’s televisions were showing the same thing — dozens of red-clad fans put all their faith in the Wolfpack somehow finding a way to win at Clemson, only to be let down. No joy in Mudville. No joy in PR.

“Man, it’s hard being a Wolfpack fan,” Scott McNally said in the final minutes of State’s 30-20 defeat. He’d spent the previous four hours or so standing or sitting at the bar with a group of friends, hoping against hope that in a place that’s seen so much misery over the years, there might be shared joy; that this night, of all nights, might be different.

But it was not. As a wise man once said — and this isn’t the exact quote, but close enough — it’s not the losing that’s most painful. It’s the hope that you might actually win, after so much losing. It’s coming close enough to see it, to taste it, even, only to be unable to seize it.

For N.C. State, this was a special kind of moment. The Wolfpack, ranked 10th Saturday night, had never played in a game between top-10 teams. It hadn’t been ranked as highly in 20 years. State was playing on national network TV, in prime time, with ESPN’s A-team of Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit on the call, narrating the drama. No better a time, literally ever, for the Wolfpack to take a step forward.

And it just ... couldn’t.

It wasn’t as though State played terribly. It just wasn’t perfect, which is probably what it needed to be. The stretch at the end of the first half and start of the second turned out to be a killer. There were too many penalties, too many drops, not quite enough defensive stops. And that was that. So continues the so-close-but-so-far tortured history of N.C. State football, but it has company.

Since 2000, in-state teams are now 1-5 when ranked in the top 10. State is 0-2; North Carolina 1-2; Wake Forest 0-1. It’s not often that any North Carolina school ascends to such a lofty place in college football, and it’s even rarer that they win when they do.

Perhaps in some alternate reality fantasyland, the Wolfpack got it done Saturday night. The crowd rushed from Players Retreat to the bell tower to celebrate with students. Dave Doeren lit a cigar. State changed the narrative. In the real world, though, those who’d gathered at PR began to clear out midway through the fourth quarter. The place emptied. The script repeated.

“It’s hard being a Wolfpack fan,” McNally said, a blank look of despair coming over him, and when he walked out he left his bottle of beer half full. Or perhaps half empty.

ONE BIG THING

A week after suffering heartbreak of its own against Clemson, Wake Forest put the past in the past and asserted itself as the ACC’s second-best team — at least until anyone else proves otherwise. The Demon Deacons’ 31-21 victory at Florida State was Wake’s first win in Tallahassee since 2008.

More significant, for this Wake team, is that proved the Demon Deacons’ resilience and mettle. Rebounding from the kind of the loss Wake suffered the week before isn’t easy, but at times it made it look that way in an impressive victory against the previously unbeaten Seminoles.

THE HOTTEST TAKE*

To the Tar Heels of North Carolina: Welcome to the driver’s seat of the ACC’s Coastal Division.

(But no, really, we might actually mean this one.)

* a take in which we sarcastically poke fun at a real, actual take. Not meant to be taken seriously.

THREE TO LIKE

1. Speaking of the Tar Heels — have they found a defense? Yes, OK, disclaimer: Virginia Tech entered Saturday about as bad offensively, and perhaps worse, as UNC had been defensively. Still, some glimmer of hope in Chapel Hill that perhaps UNC’s defense is salvageable. The Tar Heels delivered, by far, their most competent defensive showing of the season during a 41-10 victory against the Hokies. Now the question becomes: Can it last?

2. Don’t look now, but Coastal Carolina just might be on the verge of becoming a national darling again. Happened before, you may remember, when the Chanticleers won their first 11 games in 2020. Coastal got off to a bit of a questionable start this season, what with a narrow victory against Gardner-Webb in Week 2, but things have (mostly) smoothed out since. Suddenly, Coastal is 5-0, with the latest victory coming courtesy of C.J. Beasley’s 24-yard game-winning touchdown run in the final minute against Georgia Southern on Saturday.

3. Is it too early to start Mike Elko’s ACC Coach of the Year campaign? Maybe, and Dave Clawson might have something to say about that. Even so, Elko has infused a lot of life into what had become a lifeless Duke program. The Blue Devils’ rather easy victory against Virginia was their first ACC win in almost two years. And their first one at home since Nov. 30, 2019. If only more people had come out to see it (and more on that in a bit).

THREE TO ... NOT LIKE AS MUCH

1. Kudos to the ACC for finally scrapping football divisions starting next season, but this season will be remembered as Exhibit A for why it should’ve been done a long time ago. If one were to rank the ACC’s 14 teams, when would the first one from the Coastal appear? Certainly no higher than fourth, behind Clemson, Wake and N.C. State. And arguably no higher than sixth or seventh, behind Florida State and Syracuse. It’s a shame, indeed, that Wake And State are all but eliminated from the ACC title game, while a lesser Coastal team will have its shot.

2. We know it has been tough sledding at Duke in recent years — and, if we’re being honest, the football atmosphere at Wallace Wade Stadium has always left something to be desired — but really, Duke fans? The announced crowd of a little more than 15,000 for the Virginia game was a bad look for the ACC and a bad look for Duke. It’s illustrative of the challenges Elko is facing, and the broader ones confronting the league.

3. For the second consecutive year, the experts locally and even nationally got it wrong. Last season, the college football punditry rode the UNC hype train despite the fact that the Tar Heels had lost a ton of offensive production from the year before. Sound familiar, N.C. State fans? As it turns out, it takes more than the return of a high-level quarterback for an offense to succeed.

CAROLINAS RANKING

1. Clemson (have the Tigers already secured their place in the ACC title game?); 2. Wake Forest; 3. N.C. State (can the Wolfpack do what Wake did and bounce back vs. FSU?); 4. North Carolina; 5. Duke (Blue Devils rising); 6. Appalachian State; 7. Coastal Carolina; 8. South Carolina; 9. ECU (and there’s probably not a ton of difference between 4-9 here); 10. Charlotte.

FINAL THOUGHTS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

▪ At what point does the Heisman campaign start for UNC’s Drake Maye? We’re kidding. Sort of. But maybe not? Five games into his freshman season, Maye is seventh nationally in passing yards per game (318.8), tied for first in touchdown passes (19) and fourth in QB rating. And he’s only thrown one interception. That’ll do.

▪ Speaking of UNC, you get the sense that its trip to Miami will dictate the rest of the season. Win down there and the Tar Heels really might ascend to the proverbial driver’s seat of the division. Lose, and it looks more and more like another one of those one-step forward, two back kind of deals.

▪ N.C. State in 2004 was probably a decent quarterback away from being a national contender. It was the year after Philip Rivers left, and State had the best defense in the country that year. This Wolfpack team? It’s probably one receiver away. Say, a guy like Emeka Emezie. One player. That’s the difference right now between good and great for the Wolfpack.