{"id":372,"date":"2010-11-03T08:40:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsports.us\/?p=372"},"modified":"2010-11-03T08:40:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T15:40:00","slug":"obrien-says-me-first-attitude-hurt-state-his-first-3-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=372","title":{"rendered":"O’Brien says ‘me first’ attitude hurt State his first 3 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>N.C. State is 6-2 this season, and a critical reason for the Wolfpack\u2019s success is a change in the mentality of the players, coach Tom O\u2019Brien said Wednesday.<\/div>\n
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In his most in-depth comments on the issue yet, O\u2019Brien said his first three teams lacked enough players with the leadership and team spirit needed to win. O\u2019Brien said \u201cthere weren\u2019t enough guys\u201d who were putting the team\u2019s success first.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt was all about me. It wasn\u2019t about team,\u201d said O\u2019Brien, now in his fourth season. \u201cNothing was going to change in their minds. That\u2019s who they were. Thirty-one, 32 guys aren\u2019t here because they didn\u2019t want to conform to the team concept.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe had great kids when we got here \u2013 the Evans twins, I can go go down the list. But there weren\u2019t enough of them. They couldn\u2019t overcome the \u2018me\u2019 and the ego problems we had when we got here. If you have an ego, you have no chance to be a teammate.\u201d<\/div>\n
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In particular, O\u2019Brien raved about the leadership qualities of junior quarterback Russell Wilson. \u201cHe has a tremendous amount of confidence in his own ability,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cThat\u2019s where it starts. That confidence oozes to the football team. Not only his confidence, but his ability to make plays. He\u2019s a leader by example and with his words.<\/div>\n
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\u201cYou have to have all the characteristics people want to follow as far as integrity, honesty, commitment to the goal. He has all those qualities.”<\/div>\n
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But O\u2019Brien went on at length to say one player, or even a handful of players, is not enough to set a tone for a team. He said assistant coach Dana Bible pointed that out when they were together on the staff at Boston College, that a winning team had to have enough players with what Bible called \u201cthe want-to factor.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cThey want to do the right things. They want to do what it takes to win within the rules and regulations of the game,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cThere has to be that want-to feeling from the majority of guys. It can\u2019t be three or four or five guys.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N.C. State is 6-2 this season, and a critical reason for the Wolfpack\u2019s success is a change in the mentality of the players, coach Tom…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}