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Friday night lights, again: NC State gears up for unbeaten Louisville

Wolfpack (3-1) will look to slow undefeated Cardinals

Published

September 27, 2023

Julian Gray and the Wolfpack will look to tame the unbeaten Louisville Cardinals on Friday night. (Photo courtesy GoPack.com | NC State athletics)

Louisville’s offense has been humming along at a pretty good clip so far this season, while North Carolina State is still attempting to hit its stride.

The teams face off in Friday night’s Atlantic Coast Conference game in Raleigh.

Louisville (4-0, 2-0 ACC) is off to its best start in conference play in seven years. The offense has been performing so well that numerous players have emerged as threats.

“When there’s one ball and you’ve got multiple weapons, I can’t predict where the ball is going to throw, you’ve got to kind of gain the confidence of your quarterback,” Cardinals coach Jeff Brohm said. “You’ve got to just stick with it. You never know when your number is going to be called.”

NC State (3-1, 1-0) might need to get its offense cranked up if it intends to keep up with the Cardinals.

The arrival of quarterback Brennan Armstrong to the Wolfpack was supposed to be accompanied by a dynamic offense. But that hasn’t panned out. The team punted eight times last week at Virginia.

NC State coach Dave Doeren said cranking up more rushing yards would be a good step.

“I think getting a consistent run game — right now it’s been inconsistent,” he said. “We got to narrow some things down. Being consistent and efficient with the run game. I think this offense has a lot of parts to it.”

The Wolfpack will be playing on a Friday night for the second week in a row after last week’s 24-21 escape at Virginia on a last-play field goal. This will be NC State’s first night home game of the season.

Freshman receiver Kevin Concepcion made two touchdown catches in the Virginia game and seems to be emerging as a key playmaker.

“He’s really hard to cover man-to-man,” Doeren said. “There’s a reason his numbers are what they are and he’s targeted 10 times (catching six) for 116 yards (in the Virginia game).”

For Louisville, transfer quarterback Jack Plummer has been rolling. He threw for five touchdowns and ran for another in last week’s 56-28 romp past Boston College.

“Sometimes, he wants to do so well, I think he presses,” Brohm said. “So we just worked on relaxing and trusting what you do in practice every day and throw with conviction and standing on balance and trusting their protection.”

Plummer has thrown for 10 touchdowns with four interceptions, averaging 280 yards per game in the air.

“I think we saw glimpses of that in all the games we’ve played where we’ve put stretches of football together as an offensive side of the ball where it looked really good,” Plummer said.

–Field Level Media