A day after No. 7 Miami dropped 77 points on Florida A&M on Thursday night, N.C. State put on a historic offensive show on Friday.
The Wolfpack (1-1) beat Richmond 73-0 for the most points in a game in program history since 1936 and the largest margin of victory since 1920. N.C. State scored 10 touchdowns, the most in school history since 1919, and the Wolfpack set an all-time single-game school record of 734 yards of total offense.
The scoring stopped due to a lightning delay with 11:33 left in the first half, when the Wolfpack led 28-0. The delay lasted around 90 minutes, and the teams skipped halftime because of it, and the Wolfpack and Spiders only played a 10-minute fourth quarter.
N.C. State Coach Sent Clear Message During Lightning Delay
Wolfpack head coach Dave Doreen didn’t let his team sit too comfortably with a 28-0 lead as they waited for the sky to clear.
“I told them, we had a lot to prove, and just because we played good for a quarter and four minutes, I didn’t care how long we sat in there,” Wolfpack head coach Dave Doreen told reporters via 247 Sports afterward. “We need to come out hungry. We had a lot of football left. It was 10 minutes left in the second quarter when we were able to start playing again. I’m just thankful that the guys understood.”
“I was very clear during that break about what I expected when we came back,” Doreen continued. “It’s not about who you play; it’s about how you play, and I wanted to see them execute for four quarters and continue to play with that energy and level of fun that we played with. I think that’s really critical for this team to play loose, to play well, and they did that today.”
N.C. State, Miami Far From NCAA Scoring Record
Both Miami and N.C. State had a long way to go for hitting NCAA record scoring numbers.
Fellow ACC member Georgia Tech owns the record from 1916 with 222 points versus Cumberland, a Tennessee school that now plays NAIA. The last FBS team to hit 100 or more came in 1968 when Houston beat Tulsa 100-6.
Miami and N.C. State don’t play each other this season unless the two meet in the ACC championship game. That said, it’s unlikely they would produce a shootout with a college hoops-like score, given the strengths of both defenses.
Running Up The Score Concerns
Amid concerns on running up scores, there are efforts among college coaches not to run up scores, but these lopsided scores occasionally happen when FBS teams face FCS teams. In Doreen’s case he expressed the reality of greeting the opposing head coach, Richmond’s Russ Huesman, afterward.
“He said we have a great team. I told him if there’s anything we could do to help him or his staff, and wished him luck,” Doreen said.
Move Over Miami, N.C. State Puts On Wildly Historic Offensive Show