Tar Heels Can Feel Wolfpack's Pain

See if this sounds familiar:

A Triangle team with a fair amount of NFL talent led by a junior quarterback racing up draft boards has the chance for a special season, opens with a disappointing loss to an SEC team but rights the ship until a home loss to the ultimate division champ starts a late-season slide that includes a heart-wrenching road loss to a local rival and leaves fans and the team wondering what might have been.

2017 NC State Wolfpack, meet the 2016 North Carolina Tar Heels. 

The parallels between this year's State team and last year's Carolina team are particularly striking heading into Saturday's regular-season finale. Last year UNC opened with a loss at Georgia in Atlanta, while this year the Pack fell to South Carolina in Charlotte. In 2016, the Heels then won seven of their next eight games, knocking off division rivals Miami and Georgia Tech; in 2017 State reeled off six straight wins, including key victories over Atlantic foes Florida State and Louisville. Carolina dodged a bullet with a come-from-behind win against Pitt; State did likewise at Boston College. Last season's Carolina misery included a loss at Duke where nothing went right; the Wolfpack fell at Wake Forest last week after a goal-line fumble. 

The 2016 Tar Heels ended up dropping three of their last four games, including the bowl game, by a combined 10 points and finished a disappointing 8-5. Having already lost three of four and with the UNC game and a bowl left to go, NC State could face a similar fate, or worse. 

It's been a tough year to gauge for State fans. Before the season, the Pack was generally considered the second or third-best team in the Atlantic Division, behind defending national champion Clemson and perennial power Florida State. The challenge for NC State (and the entire Atlantic) is getting past the TIgers and Noles, as opposed to the wide-open and unpredictable Coastal, which this year has a different champion for the fifth straight season. As it turned out, Louisville was down and Florida State's season was derailed by injuries, leaving State and Clemson on a collision course as the best teams in the division. State fans allowed themselves to become optimistic given that the Pack should have beaten Clemson in Death Valley last year and had the rematch in Raleigh. But NCSU, coming off a tough road trip to top-10 Notre Dame, lost a close one to the Tigers. The Wolfpack still had a chance to salvage a 10-win season by winning out but the loss in Winston-Salem has left State reeling heading into Saturday's big rivalry game. 

It was a similar story for Carolina last year. The Heels lost a bizarre game played during Hurricane Matthew to Virginia Tech in Chapel Hill, but remained hot on the trail of the Hokies until the inexplicable loss at Duke took UNC out of contention for a second-straight Coastal title. Carolina then lost an uninspired game to State in the regular-season finale, dropping UNC in the bowl order to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, where Stanford eked out a win to leave the Heels and their fans scratching their heads about how a great season got away from them in the final month.

The buzz on social media and sports talk radio this week has been how to characterize NC State's season, even with a win over UNC and/or the bowl. A reasonable expectation for State before the season was nine wins, and a win over UNC and in the bowl gets them there. Since ACC play began in 1953, State has only had eight seasons with nine or more wins. Likewise, the Pack has only notched five seasons with six ACC wins, and NCSU hasn't posted six wins in the conference since 1994. It's hard to say that, with a win over the Tar Heels, State's season is anything but a success, despite falling short of a projected win total.

On the other hand, a loss to rival Carolina, especially since injury-riddled UNC is only 3-8 entering the game, would certainly brand the season a disappointment. NC State is already reeling from the missed opportunity to break through when the division opened up for them with an experienced, senior-laden team; losing to the hated Tar Heels in Raleigh when the Pack is clearly a better team would be crushing and may have a certain section of Wolfpack Nation calling for Dave Doeren's head. UNC enters the game winners of two straight and having rediscovered their offensive groove behind third-team quarterback Nathan Elliott, and with the post-season off the table, this is Carolina's de facto bowl game. The Tar Heels will be inspired to spoil State's senior day and crush what remains of their "special" season.

In other words, Saturday looms like a mirror image of last season where the Wolfpack, who were not nearly as good as the Tar Heels on paper, came into Kenan Stadium, ruined senior day, and knocked Carolina down the bowl pecking order from a holiday jaunt to Florida to frosty, remote El Paso. Meanwhile, many bowl projections have State bowling somewhere in Florida with a win, while a loss is expected to send them packing for...you guessed it, El Paso. The similarities between last year for Carolina and this year for State just keep coming. For programs like UNC and NCSU, the margins between an outstanding year and a disappointing one are very, very thin. All this year's State team has to do is ask last year's Carolina team.