Pack's O'Brien not concerned about rankings

N.C. State coach Tom O’Brien has little use for the national recruiting rankings.

Rivals.com placed the Wolfpack’s signing class Wednesday at No. 10 in the ACC, behind even Duke’s.

“It (ranking teams) is important because a lot of people pay attention to it, I guess,” O’Brien said. “But that’s never been one thing that’s been of great importance to us. If we like a guy, we like a guy. I don’t care if you like him or not.”

This class should help the Wolfpack in a lot of ways. O’Brien said there were times last season when N.C. State was perilously thin on the offensive and defensive lines because of injuries.

With 12 linemen in this class, O’Brien is building a foundation that should be more solid at the line of scrimmage in future years. The class also has speed with skill players such as Bryan Underwood and Morgan Alexander that should add to the team’s big-play ability.

Quarterback Everett Proctor of Fayetteville received an impressive endorsement from O’Brien.

“He’s a bigger, maybe faster and better arm than Russell Wilson,” O’Brien said. “Stronger arm. He’s a raw athlete we see a tremendous amount of potential in.”

While rival North Carolina grabbed the headlines on signing day with a top-10 class, O’Brien seemed comfortable in the background. He didn’t get a bunch of highly ranked players, but he said he got recruits he and his staff can coach.

“We’re best at bringing in players that we can develop,” O’Brien said. “There’s certainly a lot of very, very good players here. But they’re players that we like a lot of things about. Especially on the line, their abilities one way or another. We think we can coach them into being, like I said a couple years ago, we don’t care what they come in as. But they’d better leave as five-star guys.” – Ken Tysiac