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Before this episode begins, I'd like to give a big shout out to Grace Hartman and Angelina Napoleon. Both of them have participated in the NC double A
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outdoor track and field national championship.
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Grace Hartman will finish second in the 10k and fifth in the 5k
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meters races. Angelina Napoleon had the best finish for any NC State athlete and the steeplechase finish in third with nine minutes and 16 seconds. So huge shout out to both of them, they finished with all American honors, no national championship. But that's not, you know, it's not too bad being nationally recognized for a major sports
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all right. So welcome to
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in the den episode three. I think right now, we have a pretty big lineup. We are going to be doing a preview of in of our men's soccer team and how they're going to be looking like this season. We are also doing a
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I don't know what's the middle ground between a basic and a deep dive, because there's not a lot to dive into with the Raleigh both bullfrogs, a former professional basketball team in Raleigh, and I'll be finishing up with an interview from former NC State quarterback Erik Kramer, talking about his performance with NC State and a notable game with UNC. So,
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you know, get buckled in. Let's get to it.
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We're going to start with the men's soccer season preview.
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So looking back on last season, NC State will have a sweet 16 loss to the national runner to Marshall. They finished ranked 14th in the nation, nation, which is six in their powerhouse ACC conference. However, they were ninth in the conference stand ins, finishing with one win, one tie and three losses, but showed strong in the out of conference and schedule, including ranked Georgetown and ranked Hofstra wins.
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They were a strong, well rounded team with about 1.09 goals per game, 40% accuracy on shots and goals, 75% accuracy on saves per game. And while they did have some foul trouble accumulating over, I don't want to say 600
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over. Yeah, around 600 fouls for the whole season, they had no issue scoring and keeping the ball away from their opponents.
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Some of their biggest stars, like Hakim Karimoku, are we even however, Hakeem karamoko In particular, got drafted by DC United, a major league soccer team, and there are 12 seniors, graduates, fifth year students who will be leaving a program this season, including Enrique Santos, the middle fielder, Will Buete midfielder, Yves Tcheuyap Defender Vizumi Plamana, midfielder and Liam Bennett defender, all these guys have gotten very strong minutes over over 1000 minutes in the previous season, which,
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yeah, I mean, that's, that's double digit games.
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Some of the top returning players, however, will be um drew Lovelace, Forward, senior, tag, Taig. Healy, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. He leads the team in the system with one of the team's top
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point scorer, also one of the top point scores. Who will be returning is Junior Donovan Philip, the goalie Logan Erb is also returning. He
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is top five and saves and is one of the best in the conference when it comes to safe accuracy. So with him on the team, the defense will certainly be good Aiden Payne, who is also someone who's gotten some, you know, over 1000 minutes playing West season will be returning. He is a redshirt senior and a notable lower class man who will be returning. Sophomore. Nico Marinovich
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scored a hat trick, and he's a defender. So, you know, that's a it's pretty good overall.
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Some of the new guys will be incoming freshmen, Isaac, Busenze and Gianni Rosario.
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And you know, both of them are three stars. Both of them are from the northeastern I think Isaac is from the.
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Maryland and Gianni is from New Jersey, some income and transfers include Justin McLean, a midfield junior, junior from Georgia State and Carlos SantaMaria
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from Mercer. He plays midfielder as well.
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I believe
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right way to approach this for the team, the right mindset to get into is next man up some productive scores and Taig Healy and Donovan Phillip are taking charge, and while the rest should
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try to fill the big roles left by the massive graduating class, including some production, scoring offensively and provide in strong death overall, players like Aiden Payne, Drew Lovelace, and Isaac Heffess are expected to take on extra minutes and generate more offense from that. Logan Erb and Nico should both continue their positive momentum. Nico in particular, scoring himself,
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part of the all freshmen ACC team, even coach Hubbard, who is in his second year, is showing positive momentum for the team. And there is a big run that is sitting on this team and on this roster. We just need to see it out, essentially. And I think this could be a very good year for that, especially when you look at their schedule, only half of their ACC opponents made the NC double A tournament, Duke Clemson, Virginia pit, those are like the top dogs of the conference, sure.
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However, they also have to play UNC, Boston College, former national champion Syracuse. It's not the easiest conference schedule. But you know, having those Boston colleges, Syracuse and playing too well there should be able to come out
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without a terrible reason. Record is their floor like a
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like winning three of those games, I think is their floor appropriately, none of their out of conference opponents are ranked, and a lot of them are in the bottom half of their mid major conferences. However, one notable opponent is Conference champion Stetson or regular season,
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no, no, no, no, just like champ, champion Stetson, I believe they were in what is their conference?
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Apologize,
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Atlantic. Sun.
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So, yeah, a sun champion Stetson is part of the schedule. That will be
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September 10, right after the dreaded UNC game. Some other games to look out for. They'll close the regular season. Halloween versus Syracuse, October 10 at Clemson. They're also at Duke and Notre Dame in October, they also have a road trip with UNC Wilmington, Boston College and Pitt. So not the best schedule. There's a lot of intensive just it's not going to be an easy schedule for them. However, I could see him getting 10 wins and seeing himself as a solid contender for a deep playoff run, whether in the ACC tournament
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or in the NC double A tournament, which is, you know, the big dog,
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all right. Um, that kind of concludes a brief little summary of how the men's soccer program is going to look like. I'm going to be doing this for every episode leading up into to start a school year. Next one will be women's volleyball. I mean, we don't have a men's volleyball, but just volleyball in general. They're the next one that will begin a preview look
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coming up next. We'll be doing the deep dive on the Raleigh bull frogs, and then that interview that I promised that is definitely here, time to set the stage for dramatic vet. Dorton arena is a historic Arena on the grounds of the annual North Carolina State Fair. I don't know if you've been it's really nice. Well, it's mostly been used for concerts and political speeches and such. There have been small instances where professional sports teams have taken root in one of our always biggest heartbeats,
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going all the way to 1990s for this one, March, 1991 the global Basketball Association was founded by Ted Stepien,
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the dreaded basketball owner, formerly owned the Cleveland Cavaliers. If you don't know a lot about his time with Cleveland Cavaliers, I recommend you do some research on him, because, I mean, they've made rules based on some of the terrible stuff he's done. That's why you can't have
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Consecutive that's why they can't trade consecutive drafts in the NBA. But I digress, he's seeking a new basketball and endeavor after folding his Toronto tornadoes,
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the second team
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and his fifth time trying to move a team around,
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let's look at the other owner, Mike Storen coming off, running the American Basketball Association into a merger with the NBA, having success, stealing young stars,
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not really much else,
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to join forces, as in taking turns, known into team of being a commissioner. If you know Ted stepie And it's Mike Storen, who starts as the owner Ted stepping who finishes it.
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And they create the global Basketball Association, the biggest Basketball League of the South, slash Midwestern USA. They were called to go global Basketball Association because they wanted to bring in international teams to play with them. You know, teams from, I think, Serbia, or something like the lower tier, Middle Eastern, Middle Eastern, Eastern Europe countries. That idea didn't really work out. So now we have the most national global basketball week in the world.
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There are three basketball teams in this week that were located in North Carolina. Today we're going to be focusing on Rawi bull frogs and bullfrogs. They're in deep trouble from the start. They're able to settle into the Dorton arena, also known as the lily pad. I wonder where the bullfrog thing came from now,
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but their schedule and not only competed with North Carolina State University's men's and women's basketball programs, but this little known minor week hockey team called the Raleigh ice caps,
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Raleigh bull frogs, owner and former computer tech guy, Larry Hall, is determined to make it work. It's one simple thing to help determine their roster and help bring in fans.
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Someone were always with Star Power
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alley oop pioneer Monte Towe, also part of the their national championship team. Played for North Carolina State University from 1972 to 75 and became the head coach Lorenzo Charles nailed the winning lay up to give NC State and 84 national championship he's playing. Chuck Nevitt is the tallest American basketball player in NBA history, even right now. Isn't that crazy, and is coming off a stint with the bulls. He also played for North Carolina State. Welcome aboard.
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Chris Corchiani played for North Carolina State, and this is his first real pro attempt. Mike Morrison is the former Loyola Maryland star coming back from the Philippines. Mike Morrison
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is the first ever person from Loyola Maryland to be drafted into the week.
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And the only other player to have done that, Santi Aldama, I
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don't know why I had to include that.
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Andrew Moten in this the last notable player from that start in five,
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and he was a former Florida guard on his third team trying to make it as a pro
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despite the fact that they brought in a lot of star power to try to create momentum for this team, it did very little to help
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their poor home schedule and uncompetitive team made attendance basically non existent for them. There are two other teams and stayed however, the Greensboro gators and faithful flyers did find success and the playoffs, especially with the faithless flyers making it
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to the champ or either making it to the championship or semi finals. The information is kind of wonky with this week.
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One particular game saw the bull forks. We 70 to 57 heading into halftime only to lose 114 113
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and be eliminated front of playoffs thanks to the
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Greesnboro Gaters,
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the team found failure wherever it can be found the
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city heavily preferred to hockey ice caps, which, if you compare, we can't find attendance numbers for
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the Raleigh bullfrogs, but estimates on ice caps attendance were four to 5000 With the bullfrogs
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most likely being closer to 1000
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and the owner couldn't afford to keep the bullfrogs in Dorton, resulting in bankruptcy. The team will eventually have to disband and fold, and the entire league only lasted one and a half seasons, and.
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Because anything Ted stepie and touches turns to cry.
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Oh, I can't, I can't curse. Crud, a
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lesson. I mean, you know, Ted sapians involved, don't touch it. Can't help but wonder what it would have been like for Raleigh to have a professional basketball team, but Greensboro
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has the G league team, the Greensboro swarm, and Charlotte has, of course, the Hornets, so we probably would never see one. And plus
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NC State plays at p NC arena. So why bother with a professional team?
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You know, I'm thinking about doing a blog, or even, like, a group of videos that kind of goes deeper into
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bullfrogs, the Gators, the flyers,
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or any other kind of like smaller level North Carolina professional sports teams. If y'all are interested,
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well, I guess I don't know how you'd contact me, but you know, just watch out all right time for the moment you were waiting for the interview with Eric Kramer Dun, dun, dun,
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and he came back and was amazing. I don't know what age he was, but he was damn good, even then. All
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right, awesome. I guess my next question, kind of writing off of that is, you know, when you're coming into NC State, the team was coming off, like, three big losing seasons, and, you know, there's a new head coach, and it just felt like the whole culture kind of needed to change. Did you see yourself going into it as like being able to be the one to change the culture there.
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Well, it wasn't me that changed the culture there. It was coach Sharon, and I shouldn't say it changed the culture. He just he and his staff came in, and
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clearly from the day they arrived on campus.
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You could see that, you know they were they knew what they were doing. And it was evident, because the year before they killed us.
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And so it was kind of, it was very, I feel very blessed to have been able to play for Coach Sheridan and his staff,
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and just the, just the way they,
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you know, you could tell the way they treated everybody, players, staff, whoever, and
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I we, I think we all knew, even though we hadn't played a game yet, after spring practice, we knew we're going to be pretty good, and just didn't know how good. But I think once the game started happening, we could see that this was a whole different game than what we'd been playing
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in the NFL. You got the nickname brass Kramer for you know your boldness coming in as a backup. Did that ever come out with the kind of disciplinarian style of coaching Sheridan had?
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Let's see, I'm trying to think here. I don't ever remember
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doing anything like going against, anything he said to do.
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But certainly,
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you know, he,
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he left, he and that staff, he and his staff left a lot of room for, you know, we were, we're very well, fundamentally drilled, and then when the practices happen and the games happen, it was just an extension of that. And so it kind of made you able to think on your feet and improvise a bit and still within the context of the offense. So I think that's what stood out to me
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in that in my last year there was,
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you know, we had various ways to
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take advantage of whatever the defense did.
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Yeah, um,
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you know. And I'm sure while that came into um,
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into the UNC game that I wanted to talk about, I know that coming into that game, UNC had a really big win streak against NC State, and they had, you know, Mark May and coach Crum, I forgot his first name, I apologize. Um, what was kind of the mindset going into that game, especially since, you know, I think the previous week, you had a rough loss against Georgia Tech, and it's a historic rifle. Even though you were from California, you may not feel that rifle as much.
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Did that? Um.
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Team kind of rivalry have any effect on how the team is going into the game.
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I don't know if the rivalry did as much, but certainly it's an in state rivalry, and
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you definitely know, you know that week who you're playing, and I just think that
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as every week, you know, like you said, we came off a big loss against Georgia Tech, but every week, we felt prepared going into the game. And UNC was no different, and I think rightfully so. I mean, we moved the ball against some kind of at will for the most part, and
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but,
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yeah, I think that it's certainly a heightened sense of
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in intensity when you're playing you know your rival from down the street. So I
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guess I'm kind of jumping a little bit just closer to the end of the game. I know that it was,
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you know, NC State, they were down, I think six head into the two minute warning. And I know that a lot of practices there are that two minute drill. And
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now how did it feel, kind of going into that
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two minute drive basically,
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yeah, I think we're pretty confident. And, yeah, you know, we we were,
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I didn't think we'd have an issue getting down the field.
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Obviously, you have to take everything one play at a time, but I think we're pretty well schooled going in thinking, you know, we're going to be alright. And you know, we had three, you know, pretty good receivers back then in Haywood, Jeffries and nasmar then, and Danny Peebles, and couple pretty good tight ends, couple good running backs. And so, you know, offensive line was solid, and
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things seem to be, you know, kind of working out pretty well for us on that drive.
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You know, head into, like, the end of that drive, another real, like, two big passes to nest Wharton to help get that touchdown and secure the lead.
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Did you know like going into the drive that that was going to be like your guy for those big passes, or is it just kind of like right place, the right time situation? I think those things just kind of play themselves out. You don't break the huddle thinking, Oh, I'm definitely throwing this one to Naz, or particularly anybody, but
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just the way the defense, you know, takes shape once the plays, once the ball snapped,
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and you work out, you know, you kind of try to move whatever defenders you need to move while you're in the act of reading what you're doing. And you know, Nas was a great route runner and had great hands and could do a lot with it after he caught the ball. So
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not surprising that now is on the receiving end of a couple notes.
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Alright, I think that's
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that's about like, most of the time. I got, I guess. Do you have any like, anything you want to say, like, about NC State or football in general?
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Well, I'll say this from that last about that game itself was that,
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thank God that the defensive line got a little pressure on Mark man that two point play throw, yeah, had he been able to put a little more air on it. There was nobody within 10 yards of that receiver, yes, sir, yeah. And he would have walked in the end zone. So thankfully, he had a couple of defenders in his face and had to kind of throw the ball falling away. But I think it, it just goes to show you the resilience of
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our team, and I think specifically the coaching staff, how, you know,
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I mean, we played some really good teams that year, and we were, you know, one high ankle sprain away from beating Virginia, which we would have won the ACC, like conference or League, and then
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most likely played in January, 1 bowl game. And
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so I just think it's a tremendous
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tip of the cap, I would say to coach Sheridan, you know, I got to know him
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more. I got to know him quite a bit, quite, quite well, really, when I was there playing for him, then I got to know him over the years even better. And there was a time when
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his son, Bobby, had put.
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Together
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a DVD, few DVDs, really, of
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our season that also had coach Sheridan's same offense at Orangeburg High School, same offense at Furman.
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And it's amazing to sit and watch with him.
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You could just see that, you know, defenses are constructed in a way where
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you're supposed to be disciplined and you're supposed to have your gap, and so if you're running a play, let's call it a trap and inside and the outside linebackers making that play, that tackle for, let's say, three yards, all right. Well, you can see coach Sheridan is going to make that one particular player pay for it later, at some point. And the way he called plays to me was phenomenal. I remember a game we played against Wake Forest, and it was at home, and it was and back and forth game, and I think they had Mike, forget his name, the quarterback they they were pretty good offensively, and we're coming down, there's about maybe 30 seconds to go,
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and I think we're on about the 20 ish, 25 yard line going in. There wasn't a whole lot of time left, and we had a play where the outside receiver ran to the post, and the inside guy runs a wheel route, and he goes, Okay, he called Time out, and he goes, Okay, we're going to run this play. And he goes, Eric,
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we're going to put Danny Peebles in the slot and I and he's going to be wide open, just make sure you don't overthrow it.
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So there's a guy that saw what was going to happen before it ever did, and called planes that way. And he was it taught me a lot about just what a class, not only class person he is, because I don't think there's a day in his life where he ever said a curse word. I don't ever remember him talking over the level I'm talking at right now. But he just commanded so much because a he knew what he was doing. He treated people with like his own kids. This with the utmost respect, and therefore you felt very honored to be on the team he was coaching. And then I think to this day, a number of us off of that team get together once a year, and we gather up down at a big house in Myrtle Beach watch a little football over the weekend, and
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all because of him, all because of his of his influence on all of us.
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Yeah, that that's all really great to hear. You know, thank you again for agreeing to do this interview with me. I really, really appreciate it. You got it? Logan, my pleasure. Thanks for reaching out the way you did. I'm glad I worked out. Thank you. Yeah, okay, talk to you later. All right, have a good one. You too.
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Well, that's all with Eric Kramer. Make sure to check out his book co room with William Croyle, called The Ultimate comeback, surviving a suicide attempt, conquering depression with and wife with a purpose, kind of a
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dark- twist, but some very powerful, very important stuff that people should read if they are feeling that way. And that's all for today's episode of in the den. Thank you very much for listening. Have a good day and go pack you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
