Thursday, February 5, 2009

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

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spoken by the Herb Sendak of college football. Keep drinking the kool aid State fans. Your bowl game will be against the other NC schools while UNC and Wake play real bowl games.

Anonymous said...

haha the herb sendek of football, that is good, but the last time i checked he had a 2-0 record against your tarholes. The real kool aid drinkers are the unc fans who really think butch will last there more than 2 more years. And sorry to say but the meineke car care bowl doesnt put you into the upper bowl tier just yet.

41-10 GO PACK!! Cant wait for football next year, TOB keep up the great work, you are by far the best coach in the triangle!!

Anonymous said...

Blah, blah, blah...you guys are always the best on paper. We'll see you on the field. Tom 2 Butch 0.

Anonymous said...

Looking at the above comments makes me wonder why children are allowed to post.

Anonymous said...

Nothing new....tarheel football is always at it's peak in Febuary.

Anonymous said...

any "great" recruiting class unc (aka "brokeback mountain university") gets will be offset by the poor coaching staff they have! They got the name, but we have the coach!

Jeffrey said...

I know its amateur to jump on posters for their grammatical errors but, we're talking about institutions of higher education here.

You can definitely win without a top notch recruiting class. The Herb Sendek of football may be a good name for O'brien. He'll keep them treading at 6-6, Pack fans will call for his head, he'll leave, and then you'll sink.

Anonymous said...

Hey rabbit last time i checked the reason herb was run off was because he didnt take the idea of rivalries seriously. As a former state student I can say that, and honestly he didnt do anything to help his job situation here, he never tried anything different.

TOB has done a great job of getting the team and fans pumped for each game, and then even more so for the usual rivalry games (i.e. UNC, ECU, DUKE, WAKE, pretty much the local teams). He also did a great job with adversity this year (losing your starting quarterback at times, changing systems to adapt to Russell wilson, losing numerous starters...), next year will be the true sign of how good he can make this team, with a lot of players returning all pack fans are really looking forward to next year.

Anonymous said...

Can't wait for another wolfpack football season with TOB! Let's go pack!