Last season, N.C. State handled Cincinnati at home 30-19 in a game that wasn\u2019t that close. But this season the Wolfpack must travel to Cincinnati for an ESPN Thursday night game this week, and State coach Tom O\u2019Brien expects the Bearcats to be better.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien notes that Cincinnati has the quarterback, receivers and most of the line back on offense and 10 of 11 starters back on defense. \u201cThe difference is they\u2019ve played for a year in that system so now they\u2019re more into Coach (Butch) Jones\u2019 style of play,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was his third game last year where now he\u2019s been there for a year. They\u2019re much more aggressive up front on both sides of the ball at the line of scrimmage coming off the ball than they were a year ago. They\u2019re attacking more on defense. They\u2019ve made big strides. \u201c <\/p>\n
The Bearcats are 1-1 after being beaten 45-23 by Tennessee while State is 2-1 after defeating South Alabama 35-13.<\/p>\n
But the Pack is beat up.<\/p>\n
Linebacker Terrell Manning injured his knee last week and will be out at least three weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a tough season to play defense,\u201d said O\u2019Brien, a Cincinnati native. \u201cWe lost a corner to start the year, we lost our captain and best defensive lineman, we lost the next-best defensive lineman, we lost the back-up middle linebacker, lost a corner, lost a linebacker.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the game being on Thursday, it will be a short week for the Pack to prepare shorthanded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re a veteran team it\u2019s better rather than if you\u2019re in our situation where you have some young guys that we\u2019re trying to get locked in, in case they have to go in the game,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last season, N.C. State handled Cincinnati at home 30-19 in a game that wasn\u2019t that close. But this season the Wolfpack must travel to Cincinnati…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,81,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-stories","category-n-c-state-wolfpack","category-uncategorized","wpcat-79-id","wpcat-81-id","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2212,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions\/2212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}