Road Not Kind to N.C. State

Philip Rivers swears No. 14 North Carolina State wasn’t looking past Wake Forest to a showdown at No. 2 Ohio State.

Maybe not, but there had to be some sort of excuse after Wake Forest stunned the Wolfpack, 38-24, on Saturday at Winston-Salem, N.C.

“I thought we were ready for Wake,” said Rivers, who threw for three touchdowns and a career-high 433 yards passing in the loss. “There was a lot of hype that we wouldn’t be, but we were. We can make a ton of excuses, but the bottom line is we are a good enough football team that we should have won this game.”

Wake Forest (2-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) thought otherwise, jumping on North Carolina State (1-1, 0-1) early and building a 25-point first half lead that put the Wolfpack on their heels.

“We knew that they might have come in unfocused and looking ahead to Ohio State,” Wake Forest Coach Jim Grobe said. “That challenged our guys.”

Rivers made every effort to bring the Wolfpack back, but came up too late with two fourth-quarter touchdown passes.

He went 38 of 49, but was also intercepted twice. He has 9,746 career yards passing and moved ahead of Jamie Barnette on the school’s all-time list.

As soon as the game was over, Rivers was already focused on Saturday’s showdown with the Buckeyes.

“We better get ready to go because we can’t throw it into the tank,” he said. “If we do, it will be a long day next week at Ohio State.”

Demon Deacon fans failed after the final gun in an attempt to tear down a goalpost.

*

No. 11 Florida State 35, Maryland 10 -- Greg Jones ran for two touchdowns and Chris Rix passed for two more as the Seminoles erased a 10-point deficit and defeated the Terrapins in a conference game at Tallahassee, Fla.

Florida State (2-0 in the ACC) is 14-0 against Maryland (0-2, 0-1).

The 35 points were the fewest the Seminoles have scored in seven home victories over the Terrapins.

The victory was Coach Bobby Bowden’s 334th, leaving him three behind all-time leader Joe Paterno of Penn State among Division I-A coaches.

*

Syracuse 49, North Carolina 47 -- Walter Reyes ran for a career-high 191 yards and Kelvin Smith came up with a huge defensive stop on a two-point attempt as the Orangemen rallied to win in three overtimes at Chapel Hill, N.C.

The Tar Heels (0-2) lost a school-record eighth consecutive home game.

*

Clemson 28, Furman 17 -- Charlie Whitehurst threw for 301 yards and Kevin Youngblood tied a career-high with 10 catches for 100 yards as the Tigers rebounded from an opening loss to Georgia and defeated the Division I-AA Paladins (1-1) at Clemson, S.C.

*

Duke 29, Western Carolina 3 -- Adam Smith came off the bench to throw two touchdowns to Reggie Love and run for a third at Durham, N.C., as the Blue Devils (1-1) defeated the Division I-AA Catamounts (0-2).