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NC State sports podcast hosted by Griffin Cunningham, Stone Boylan and Patrick Simon of WKNC.
Griffin Cunningham 0:10
Welcome back to light it red 2024 edition.
Stone Boylan 0:14
This is our 10th episode together just stone a Griffin. Yes.
Griffin Cunningham 0:19
Right now what is this episode? Like four of just stone? A Griffin?
Stone Boylan 0:22
Three or four? Somewhere around there? Probably three.
Griffin Cunningham 0:25
Yeah, we took a we took a break, right?
Stone Boylan 0:28
Yes, I mean yeah
Griffin Cunningham 0:29
Christmas break
Stone Boylan 0:30
we're all we're all gone obviously we record this at state. So we're not here, and we kind of need a break anyways because we're both students. So took a little break a lot of stuff happened in between them. But yeah, it's a 10th episode technically, when it was re lit, if you could say relighting it red but I believe you started it. What back in March somewhere around there?
Griffin Cunningham 0:53
Yeah, yeah, it's about to turn one year old. So
Stone Boylan 0:56
Wow.
Griffin Cunningham 0:57
Project got it up and running. And it's been challenging, but like, it's cool. You know,
Stone Boylan 1:04
I'd say pretty successful, to be honest,
Griffin Cunningham 1:06
for the most part more than more than maybe I thought it would be
Stone Boylan 1:09
Yeah.
Griffin Cunningham 1:11
But there's a lot of people with a lot of podcasts. So it's hard.
Stone Boylan 1:14
Yes, absolutely.
Griffin Cunningham 1:16
So I feel like we do an okay job at that.
Stone Boylan 1:18
Yeah. Especially for being students in in, you know, being kind of secluded to one specific right thing, but it's, it's been pretty good. And we're, we still got more to come. We got a whole semester and more. We're not really looking to stop anytime soon. So stay with us. And you'll You won't regret it. I bet you
Griffin Cunningham 1:40
maybe.
Maybe there are some episodes that I regret.
Stone Boylan 1:44
I mean probably Yeah, but you kind of gotta have those.
Griffin Cunningham 1:49
Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But there's only one way to find out, you know, facts. So, what do we do? Formatting wise, I feel like we're sticking to our old routine and our 2023 model.
Stone Boylan 2:02
Partly Yeah, I'd say in the future. We could be staying tuned. You know, for kind of anything, anything's on the table, to be honest. Obviously, the whole premise is going to be sports, but we'll kind of just talk about whatever we're feeling sometimes. You know, I this this episode, though, is definitely more tailored to sports just because you know, we are back after a good break. And there's been a lot of stuff that's happened football season, I believe the last episode we did ended with projecting the UNC game in football. And now Football season is long gone. spring sports are underway. So we do have a lot to dive in. But it'll kind of be a mix of different stuff in the future for new episodes.
Griffin Cunningham 2:49
You've been keeping up with all the sports?
Stone Boylan 2:51
Absolutely. I don't know if you've been I do because we talked about it beforehand. But you're up to date now with all the current happenings at NC State, but obviously with football, definitely followed all that stuff. And then basketball for both men and women. I've been, you know, deliberately following football is kind of my number one I'd say. But basketball is absolutely right there for me. I love following that all the time. Especially college basketball, to be honest. That's my favorite. I think you're more of an NBA guy. Raptors fan?
Griffin Cunningham 3:25
Yeah, it's been tough.
Stone Boylan 3:26
Yeah, I mean, I'm, I still fall NBA a lot. Like, you know, I just, I don't follow through the regular season as much. And I'm a hornets fan. So there's nothing to follow anyways. Yeah, it's irrelevant. But yeah, we are in college basketball season now. And it's fun. It should be good. But we won't start there. We can start off with some other sports just really quick updates on we're not going to go too in depth, but they are happening in the fall. And we just want to bring them or I mean, non fall, but in the spring and we just want to kind of bring them up.
Griffin Cunningham 4:01
You're talking about spring sports or winter sports
Stone Boylan 4:03
or I guess winter slash spring there.
Yeah, theyre technically winter sports. Yeah, technically. Get it right. My bad. We are in January. So it's not really spring. It is winter.
Griffin Cunningham 4:17
Yeah, well, what are our winter sports that? Have I? I'll be honest with you. Like, I've been focusing on a couple of things over winter break, like, career wise and like, social wise, none of them. You didn't really consist you didn't
Stone Boylan 4:38
engage in wrestling or swimming or gymnastics, following you know, over the break. Like I'm sure every other I mean, every other human definitely did, right.
Griffin Cunningham 4:47
I I've been watching a little bit of wrestling. Yeah. A
Stone Boylan 4:51
little bit some different wrestling involving many people. They're called micro micro micro wrestling. If you don't know Griffin went to a micro wrestling meet, I believe what was that yesterday? Two days ago?
Griffin Cunningham 5:06
It was Saturday Saturday. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, it was. They got, um, big Jamaican Joe fan. Really? He did not win who won. This guy named a little show like the big show. But the little show
Stone Boylan 5:27
that's fitting to be honest and
Griffin Cunningham 5:30
this guy Hot Rod one. He goes, it's your boy. Have you ever seen that? Tiktok? No, ironically, no. Yeah, I don't have tick tock. Well, if you're on tick tock, look up micro wrestling Roll Call. Because that's like my new favorite thing right now. Micro wrestling. Yeah, there's this one guy. His name is micro Tiger. He goes micro Tiger meow. That's my favorite. i He's my favorite. He's like a Lutra door. He wears a mask They have a show on Discovery. Under the Discovery Channel, I think or discovery plus. Big Little Brawlers. Big Little Brawlers. They have their own show. It just got launched. Yeah. I wonder how long it'll last? Probably a long time.
Stone Boylan 6:19
Do you keep watching? I'm sure it'll last a long time
Griffin Cunningham 6:20
never seen it. But I might. Because I like micro Tiger.
Stone Boylan 6:27
Is he on there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So
Griffin Cunningham 6:31
that's the wrestling that consumed? Well,
Stone Boylan 6:33
if that's what you know, clearly, you've been interested in that. So getting off your little, little people tangent with your interests? What has been going on in wrestling? Has there even been any wrestling in the past month or so?
Griffin Cunningham 6:47
I think in WWE, they're coming to PNC in March. So probably go to that.
Stone Boylan 6:56
Yeah. What about? What's the thing? What? Maybe the hope? Whats the whole point of this podcasts? NC State? What about NC State? Wrestling? What's
Griffin Cunningham 7:06
going on with them? are not going to be at PNC. Do you know
Stone Boylan 7:11
NC NC State? Maybe they should have a little people team.
Griffin Cunningham 7:15
I don't think we have that many little people at NC
Stone Boylan 7:18
maybe you could recruit them and be like the coach. You can be the coach for it.
Griffin Cunningham 7:22
I'm not that's not my circus. Well, I don't watch. Do you watch NC State wrestling?
Stone Boylan 7:29
I mean, not necessarily. But we still cover it. Right? Yeah. You know, is
Griffin Cunningham 7:37
that the way the guy was? Like, grab his pick and twist it?
Stone Boylan 7:41
That where that meme was from? Yeah, I think it was a wrestling match. Yeah. But oh, well, we just did.
Griffin Cunningham 7:52
Well, that's what I would say if I was at a wrestling meet.
Stone Boylan 7:56
Nice. Well, that's probably a wrestling coverage. Anyways, I don't even think they've been doing anything to be honest. Now I
Griffin Cunningham 8:02
wrote down what they mean, they're 10 and two, they lost Ohio State and Oklahoma State. Those were the two losses. But like, I don't, I should probably go. Like because I'm the sports editor of the yearbook. So I probably might be a good I'll go to the one against Carolina on the second. That's my plan. My editor in chief Jermaine, he's all over that. I just, it's so weird how some people get in. I don't think he wrestled. But like he's just really into it. Kind of like I got into gymnastics last year, for no reason. Like, I've never done gymnastics. I just kind of got stuck with it. And I was like, Okay, well, you know, so yeah,
Stone Boylan 8:41
I did gymnastics when I was a kid.
Griffin Cunningham 8:42
Did you actually yeah. for like,
Stone Boylan 8:44
two years.
Griffin Cunningham 8:45
What did you do? That was pretty good. Like, what did you do?
Stone Boylan 8:48
I mean, it was just like, training stuff that we did. We didn't go to meats or anything. It was like a separate training thing. And if you wanted to you, you would do that. And then it'd be like, if you want to join some sort of like group or whatever that does go on meets. Then you'd be like, Oh, I went to this whole training thing. I'm prepared or whatever. But I'm, you know, I never did anything, but it's fun. Did did all the balancing stuff and jumping cool kind of I always viewed it as just like being at like a park. Like an inside Park. That's kind of
Griffin Cunningham 9:21
maybe you'd like parkour? I probably would. seems fun. They have gyms like for that. Really? Yeah.
Stone Boylan 9:28
I've seen like, tag tournaments. Have you seen those? Yes. You know, like play tag and to like, jump and dive through like all these bars and stuff. Looks pretty cool. Yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 9:37
seeing that. Yeah. I have a friend. I went to I went to I didn't go to high school with him but I was friends with him while I was in high school. He does parkour and he's pretty good at it. Really? Yeah. He's like it's like a really big deal to him. Like I don't know I like I can appreciate getting into it.
Stone Boylan 9:53
Is it just a hobby or money or record themselves
Griffin Cunningham 9:56
He records himself on like, tick tock and stuff?
Stone Boylan 9:59
Is he popular
Griffin Cunningham 10:03
that's a good question.
Stone Boylan 10:05
maybe
Griffin Cunningham 10:06
one day he will be I think, I think he puts a lot of effort into it and he he probably has a couple of videos that have a lot of views. I should probably do them. I don't know. I should probably my friend's college and we stop the hanging out as much. Yeah,
Stone Boylan 10:22
I get that like that happens.
Griffin Cunningham 10:24
I don't know. I thought it was like funny at first like parkour, but some people take it pretty seriously. Yeah,
Stone Boylan 10:30
I mean, think of the office Yeah, a lot of hobbies people do you know the office? Yes, of course. I love the role and
Griffin Cunningham 10:35
do parkour opens the refrigerator door, closes it. Parkour. backflip gainer into the trash can.
Stone Boylan 10:45
Maybe we should do that. Just like you did gymnasts? I'm sure. Yeah, I'll be like, boom, backflip gainer. I can't do it back. These girls can no the actual gymnastics team or DJ burns doing parkour. Oh
Griffin Cunningham 10:59
my god, DJ burns doing or like the tag thing chasing?
Stone Boylan 11:04
I feel like I've been smoking if I did that. Yeah. Wouldn't be close.
Griffin Cunningham 11:09
I feel like he Yeah, I don't know. No. Wouldn't be close. Imagine he's just like really? Like, athletic and flexible. That'd be
Stone Boylan 11:16
insane. And I'd be like, Why are you not doing this? As much on the basketball court?
Griffin Cunningham 11:21
We're wrestling. To be fair, though. He
Stone Boylan 11:22
has been I mean, we'll get into basketball soon. But he has been like in this episode. He's not been bad. He's been pretty good. Yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 11:29
I haven't seen him. You know that. That meme though. Where the bald guys like staring at the guy or staring at the screen like
Stone Boylan 11:37
yeah, whose eyes are like that song or whatever. It's like ---. Yeah.
Griffin Cunningham 11:42
Pet guy. Work as a wrestler. Is Yeah, I was looking it up. I was in. I was at work looking it up. And he's like, no, like, you're a wrestler like, like, like real wrestling. Like oh, not like fake like a Olympic. What? Like really? Yeah, I didn't know that. He won like a gold medal in the Olympics. Is
Stone Boylan 12:03
that like a known thing?
Griffin Cunningham 12:04
No, no, I looked it up. I was like bald guy staring meme. And Kurt Angle came up.
Stone Boylan 12:11
Is it a name Kurt Angle Kurt Angle? The name sounds familiar, though.
Griffin Cunningham 12:14
Well, if you look it up, the first thing that comes up is WWE. Because he did Wow. After he won the Olympics.
Stone Boylan 12:22
What does that mean? From a village is a video of him. Like the meme? Yeah. What is it from?
Griffin Cunningham 12:27
I think it's from a tick tock that he recorded and put on his tic tock. Where like the guy forgot to stop recording.
Stone Boylan 12:36
That's what it was. Well, it's it's pretty much been the biggest theme the past like yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 12:42
some random WWE?
Stone Boylan 12:46
I mean, any I don't quite anything could be a meme at this point. I don't question it at all. It's
Griffin Cunningham 12:51
I don't know. I've got it's just seems to keep coming up. Really wrestling? You know? Like, they're getting the world. Yeah. PNC And in my life. Oh, and your life? I don't know. It keeps getting brought back to me.
Stone Boylan 13:04
Well, we brought it back to you here with NC State wrestling or you should
Griffin Cunningham 13:08
do you want to go to the March thing the WWE show.
Stone Boylan 13:11
But sure. I've never been to anything like that.
Griffin Cunningham 13:14
It's like kinda cool. Yeah. Some people would be like, You're lame for going to that? Maybe.
Stone Boylan 13:22
But who cares what people think? Yeah, you know, it's it's why we're doing this podcast, right? You don't care what other people think that's why we even do it. Exactly. But uh, after our tangent on memes in wrestling, we're bringing up gymnastics this gymnastics team I did gymnastics but I'm not as good as any of the girls that are here. Unfortunately, though, they are. Oh, and for in their past for me, it's yeah. Not great. But their recent loss. They normally do like quad meets or shows. Sorry, if I don't have the correct terminology. They do quad
Griffin Cunningham 13:52
meets like towards the end of this season. What's crazy about quad meets is when I first started covering it, like, if you do a quad meet and you place first you get three wins on your record, really. But if you get last you get three losses. Wow. Yeah. So it's like you're not even really competing against the other team. You're competing against yours?
Stone Boylan 14:12
Yeah, well, I mean, we've been relatively close. The most recent one we did. We lost the three colleges that were in the top 25 in the gymnastics rankings. One of them was cow who was ranked number two ACC Yeah. So future ACC Yeah. So that that was kind of hard. But our next matchup is an individual one just for UNC. They're currently ranked 45th And we are 37th So we are favored. We are six and four and our last 10 matchups vs them it's going to be at UNC. The last 10 times we've been at UNC were five and five. So I feel like we could have some potential hope to win that game and maybe get or I don't say game but meet meet. Yeah, and get our first first W on the board there for gymnastics team. But that is the quick update on other sports and other random crap that we brought out. Well, ants, we forgot swimming and oh yeah, swimming, whatever swimming? Do they have anything going on? They
Griffin Cunningham 15:13
have a swim meet on the 26th. So two weeks, and they're hosting Texas. Other than that, I don't really know if, like, if you like swimming and diving, hit us up at light it Red NCSU Yeah, our Instagram, we have an Instagram. Because I don't know, like what's going on with that? Or like the scoring. I don't know how the scoring works. So like, I'm not, I'm not gonna like speak on it and say like, they're good or bad. Because yeah, no clue. So it and if you're on the team, we got to get, you know, athletes on here, too. So if you want to, like promote your sport, then yeah, hit us up. So we can talk about swimming and diving. Yeah, we
Stone Boylan 15:59
want to cover anything and everything to do with NC State. So if there's some stuff that we're just not as familiar with, oh, there's not some, I feel like NC State sometimes doesn't do a good job of like, getting other sports fully out there. Like they make a little bit confusing. Even if you just go on the website. Like, it's kind of hard to really be like, Okay, why are they doing what are they doing something next? Where is it? How does the scoring work? I don't know. I feel like they could do a better job of that. But maybe that's just us not not knowing enough. Who knows. But yeah, as Griffin said, if you have anything to do swimming or anything, let us know. Let us know. But there will be as you said, going against Texas on the 26th Do you know how to swim? Yes. Why would I not know?
Griffin Cunningham 16:44
I don't know. Yeah, I do look like you wouldn't know how to.
Stone Boylan 16:48
Not no. That makes no sense. Of course I know how to swim. I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good swimmer.
Griffin Cunningham 16:54
You think you could be on the swimming? No, I can be pretty good
Stone Boylan 16:57
at something but not be like on a collegiate level thing. I'm pretty good at Smash. But if I could have smashed tournament, I'm gonna get smoked. Smash Bros like yeah, I just can't.
Griffin Cunningham 17:08
One of my roommates my freshman year. I think he's on the swim team at UNC Charlotte. Really? Like, maybe a club team? Oh, sure. I don't know, maybe I don't know what the deal is with that school. They don't promote their athletics. Charlotte talked about schools
Stone Boylan 17:23
the most, like basic, like, whatever school to me, you know, like all the people who like, can't get into relatively higher up, like I would consider NC State in that because their acceptance rate is below 50% like NC State, Unc, all that kind of stuff. But like, you're not trying to go to like ECU. You know, they're like, right, like, right there. Like a little bit below the median. Like, you know, no offense anyone that goes there. But that's that's kind of what they feel also, like,
Griffin Cunningham 17:54
it's a safety school. Yeah, it
Stone Boylan 17:55
is none other programs either. Like, like, I have friends. I have a lot of friends that go there. Probably the most, at least, like in terms of my friend group, the most amount of people go to Charlotte. Some of them don't follow sports, but even the ones that do. I mean, they follow it, but it's not like oh my gosh, like we're dedicated like this is it's kind of just like, you know, whatever. I will say they, I mean they had a they've had I think they beat or almost beat FAU in basketball which FAU is a ranked team because they obviously made it to the final four last year. So that's good for them. But I think they are kind of a revolving door in a lot of other sports.
Griffin Cunningham 18:35
When I went there. They beat Duke in football the first week. Oh, yeah, that's right. and proceeded to
Stone Boylan 18:40
lose every single.
Griffin Cunningham 18:42
And then the next year, they had one of the worst records in college football and
Stone Boylan 18:46
Duke. Yeah, they ended up doing much anyways. But yeah, so there, you get to ride on that high. Yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 18:51
it was cool. I didn't even go to it though. Because I was like depressed. What am I doing here? Well, you're
Stone Boylan 18:58
happy doing light at Red? Yeah, exactly.
Griffin Cunningham 19:00
There's a, I would say that, you know, I'm not gonna bash UNC Charlotte. But I would say that there's a bit of a culture issue. Really, with like, I mean, if you want to talk about like school spirit, and like sports and stuff you don't think they have? I think that it's a I mean, it's a newer school. But there's not like an established like, culture
Stone Boylan 19:22
is great that if you don't know Griffin did go there. For over a year or two year a year. I have a lot of friends that been there. I've been there a few times. They have some, some of their buildings are like, cool, because they're just trying to make more amenities there, I'd say and get more people to go there, which is probably why they're building a lot of cool stuff. So that's a pretty big bonus. Unfortunately, I feel that people that go there like aren't being able to, like they're trying to establish the culture immediately. And if that happens, which it could, it won't be in full effect and like until like eight years or four years down the line or those people be like oh yeah like Go Niners, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, not like the fall in that wolf. I mean, if you've ever even driven that you can, by the way drive by on an NC State Saturday when they have football, like it's insane. It's absolutely insane. The amount of even just a lot of it's not even all just students like returning people, you know, parents, all that good stuff tailgating, right. It's unmatched in terms of just know the state of North Carolina, let alone the East Coast. I think NC State's up there.
Griffin Cunningham 20:28
Yeah, I don't think Charlotte will ever be what we have here on in the triangle. Yeah. You know, with with, I mean, Duke and Carolina and NC State are the big three. And I mean, yeah, it's like we you got the Panthers and the Hornets over there. It's, it's hard for people that really, that's I think there's that's a reason why we don't have pro sports in Raleigh, is because college sports are just so more dominant. Yeah. So
Stone Boylan 21:00
I mean, we do have the hurricanes, which has a pretty good following as well as hockey
Griffin Cunningham 21:04
But we don't have college hockey now. So it's like, there's the trade off, you know,
Stone Boylan 21:09
yeah. Which works pretty well. I think they did a good job. But in Charlotte, yeah, it's like you follow the pro teams in downtown. And they're both crap. So I guess that goes to show and then the how much, just not based on the level of cache or power that we do. But enough dogging on them, sorry, Charlotte, but we can get into our best moments of 2023. That being NC State, we're going to do the fall 2023 semester, kind of when we that being Griffin and I like both came together and we're doing the podcast. We wrote down a few things here. And then after that, we'll get into NC State men and women's basketball. They're kind of currently escaped because we haven't really been able to fully dive into them. Because obviously last episode, we were ending on the you know, the football season was still going on. But the first one if you want to go over, I think was one of the few times we actually did you know, like the tower read for volleyball, like like physically actually doing it at NC State. And it was a pretty great library. I think probably one of their best wins in program history. No. Yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 22:25
I think when we walked away that day, from that game over
Stone Boylan 22:31
against Louisville, sorry, I didn't say what it was. But we beat Louisville, which Louisville was ranked. I believe in the top 5/3 third in the entire country. Yeah.
Griffin Cunningham 22:40
Yeah. What was the date? Do you remember? It was
Stone Boylan 22:44
October? It was sometime in October? I believe so. Yeah. So
Griffin Cunningham 22:47
that was I had been to a couple of volleyball games. And I think this season. I mean, the the biggest moment from their season came that night in October against Louisville, who I think ended up making the postseason anyways. But did you keep up with the volleyball postseason?
Stone Boylan 23:10
Well, we it engineered it to make it no our season ended like while we were still here, because we had brought it up like it was a pretty big downfall after that, like we had a lot of high expectations. And then after that law after that, when, like we went in, we already covered this in the episode. This was the Chick fil A game where they didn't give me a sandwich at Pitt was horrible. And we got smoked in that game. That was the one that was the first game I went to with you. And after that, we like we were just up and down, up and down, up and down. We went like five and five and our last 10 and just did not really in the season off as strong as we had hoped. So that was really unfortunate. But the Louisville win was still a good thing to look back.
Griffin Cunningham 23:52
I think the way that the season ended made that moment probably even more significant. Yeah. Meaning it was definitely the most like media coverage that I had seen at a volleyball game like they had the postgame press conference. Usually it's just like me, just me with like my phone. Yeah, they had like the like, I think Amanda rice put on a whole headset and like talk to somebody and so
Stone Boylan 24:21
even when we went there, I got jealous like when we went there we the first game I'd gone to with you was this was the Pitt game, as I said, but it was after the Louisville games that already happened. It wasn't just us. There were a few people there. So clearly, they got more coverage for that game and future matchups. And I feel bad because I think I think volleyball as a sport itself is one of the more underrated sports in general. I think it's really fun to watch. And I think the environment is pretty cool. And it's not that hard to follow either. Like, you know, the terminology is just something you have to get used to like aces sets and stuff like that, and how that works. But, um, it's pretty easy to get to We chances to hit, you know, hit it in, in their set square. And it's really fun to watch and follow. So maybe next year we could, I think we've had a few of them were pretty young, we didn't have like a crazy amount of seniors. So maybe we could pick up where we left off a little bit from the Louisville game and yeah, yeah, getting more consistent season.
Griffin Cunningham 25:23
They only had two. I think seniors exit the program. Yeah. Yeah, I think I mean, that's at the top of the list. Definitely. For me. We're going to talk about a couple of other different things, but of all the things that I was at, I think, I felt like the most energy was captured on that night. Yeah. And in any gym. Like, I don't, that was the same gym that the women's basketball team beat UConn in, which we'll talk about, but I felt like that volleyball game was like, right there with that, if not, you know, greater, as far as you could tell me both teams, both teams were really like, pumped. But that Louisville game was like, over halfway into the season like that. It meant a lot to them, obviously. Yeah. And they haven't had as much success as our women's basketball team. So that's why that's awesome.
Stone Boylan 26:18
Hopefully they can do that next year, maybe. And then with soccer, we've nothing absolutely nothing. They were horrendous. I can't even give any sort of meaningful game to them. So we're not going to that's unfortunately sorry. They
Griffin Cunningham 26:32
they fired. They're who they hire. They
Stone Boylan 26:33
coach we Yeah, I don't even know who they hired. I can't remember
Griffin Cunningham 26:37
the guy they hired. I think it's from a northeastern school. I think. Not UConn.
Stone Boylan 26:49
I'm not sure. Oh, man. I don't know where they hired him. He's a young guy, though, I think, right?
Griffin Cunningham 26:54
I wish I I'm gonna have to look it up, you're gonna have to come back to me. But that's fine. He has like accolades to his name. Oh, so that's exciting. Let's cool. And they hired an assistant recently too. So hopefully the men's team can turn it around. But I think for the women's team, even though they didn't have any good like, finishes any games. Like, historically, they I mean, in the past five years, they've been good. This
Stone Boylan 27:17
probably last one was probably one of their worse. This is
Griffin Cunningham 27:21
one of their worst seasons under coach, which since when
Stone Boylan 27:24
we went over both of the sports, we definitely came away saying women's was better than men's. They because the women's ended up finishing the season, they played like two of the best teams and they like tied both of them I think, which was a huge, and then they went the ACC tournament last. So that was unfortunate, but soccer, not really not really a thing to go look back on after this season cross country, they had their three peat. So that was awesome. Very good for them. They've just been dominating for the past three years. So that's cool that we have some sort of dominant program to you know, acknowledge and look back on, we've brought them up a few times. So no need to go in super in depth. And there's not as much like I don't know, analysis needed, prescribed across country. It's just kind of like, you know, stamina and running and all that stuff. And we've, we're pretty dominant that so that's, that's awesome. For the
Griffin Cunningham 28:21
year, my only qualm with cross country is just like, it's so hard to like, follow, cover and follow. Like they have such a limited amount of meats in the year. So it's like, if you don't get to, I mean, they don't even run in Raleigh, they run in Cary,
Stone Boylan 28:44
and some of them just train like they're there and in a ton of meets, they just like get ready for that right one me,
Griffin Cunningham 28:50
the top athletes, the top performers don't run in like the first three, four meets of the season, until maybe there's like one left or it's just like the regionals or like so it's just like, almost impossible to see our best athletes run and then and then they're gone, basically. So I was a little irritated about that as far as far as being the sports editor of Agromeck gets like for photos and stories. It's just it makes it a lot harder to cover something like that. Would
Stone Boylan 29:20
you be don't know. agronomic is the they do the yearbook for NC State? Griffin is the lead sports editor there and since meeting him through this podcast, I helped them do a lot of stuff for sports coverage, as well in writing stuff in the yearbook. Did you ever get the coach's name for soccer, or is it Yeah, his
Griffin Cunningham 29:42
name is Mark Hubbard.
Stone Boylan 29:43
Where is he from?
Griffin Cunningham 29:44
New Hampshire.
Stone Boylan 29:45
What? Where do you come from in college?
Griffin Cunningham 29:47
New Hampshire. Oh,
Stone Boylan 29:49
university. Oh, that university? Okay.
Griffin Cunningham 29:51
It says seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances since 2017. For New Hampshire. Well,
Stone Boylan 29:56
we would love to have at least an appearance A little inconsistent ones, so, so if we can do that for them, that's good. And then we can talk about this before the football, recap basketball. We kind of brought it up for UConn. We're gonna go in more depth in the basketball. But you kind of brought it up earlier. I think the Louisville volleyball game definitely had more cachet to it and like meaning, but this one was still awesome. It was still like a huge deal that they'd be in a kind of kick started their season so far to being pretty successful. Yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 30:29
yeah, that game. It Yeah, it was the second game in the season. So I feel like that's why it was really like, it was exciting. But it's like, with basketball, you don't know. Like, if a team finishes poorly, like if UConn just like lost all their games. After that. We would be like, Oh, it wouldn't meet as much. Yeah, so that was the scary part for me. However, I actually don't know how good UConn is doing, do you? They are doing good as always. Well, they're not doing as good though. Like they're not they I mean,
Stone Boylan 31:02
relatively in terms of like, I mean, yeah, in terms of them being like, number one year in and year out. They are ranked number nine right now.
Griffin Cunningham 31:11
And what are we ranked?
Stone Boylan 31:12
We are fourth, I believe. So that's fine. But I mean, if you think about it, nine is what a top three seed maybe to seed in the tournament during the rankings, which they could obviously win the whole thing. And they're still very good, because tournament time you don't view it like, Oh, this is the number. We're AP number two. And they're AP number seven. No, it's just we're once either to seat and when you look at it that way. It's like, okay, this is anyone's game. But hopefully, we can progress and maybe match them again in the tournament, if that comes down to it. But then we can end this best state sports moments of 23 off with a little bit of a football season recap. We first think we can go into I guess would be the high in terms because we're talking about the best state sports moments, even though I do plan on going just into the season a little bit. And that is definitely, at least in my opinion, the UNC game. We kind of we ended off the 23 year with light at Red talking about the game and my kind of takeaway was like, hey, like, this is totally winnable. I think we weren't favored. We were underdogs. I remember taking us in that game. And it was like we you bet on the game.
Griffin Cunningham 32:28
Yeah. That's not legal. What do you mean? I'm 21? Yeah, but North Carolina it's not legal yet.
Stone Boylan 32:33
Yeah. We're legal. Yeah, we're good. Plus, this is live flip. This
Griffin Cunningham 32:40
is incriminating evidence
Stone Boylan 32:41
Now, flip. Flip is also a site if you don't if you know, you know, it's a pretty good app to use. That doesn't matter about me. But even then, I don't think they're going to come get me for betting $5 on NC State. How much did u plus 3. Just doubled. That was a big deal. But it was pretty. I mean, we were not favors. We were not we were underdogs at home and our trajectory was like, complete opposite directions. We were looking up they were looking down. And it was the team's best overall game. 100% They got two interceptions on Drake may ending his season and his career with Carolina and he'll be going to the NFL Armstrong at 350 total yards three touchdowns. Zero turnovers his best game by far. KC Concepcion had nearly 200 All Purpose yards and two touchdowns. And it was Peyton Wilson's last home game. And he finished with 15 tackles sack a forced fumble and an interception. This is the last college game. Yeah, it was phenomenal. And the interception that he had was literally the last throw that Drake may made as a Tar Heel, so we ended his career. And it was just a perfect culmination of everything for the team and that was kind of our our Super Bowl. If you want to use a term just for a big game.
Griffin Cunningham 34:08
Can we talk about the Pop Tarts bowl? Um,
Stone Boylan 34:12
unfortunately we do have to, but it was I wrote down here like just underlined it pure disappointment. Like that's what it was because if you don't know we reached we reached nine wins with the UNC win because we had went on a huge run, beating like Miami. Clemson with Virginia Tech. To them beat UNC we reached nine games nine wins. And I was like, okay, like, we're gonna be in a big bowl game. And we could get to 10 wins, which hasn't happened in the past like, what seven years or something like that under Dave Dorn. And we get the Pop Tart bowl which is like a super funny gag and like a like pretty. I'd say like got a decent amount of coverage just because it would be funny, and I'd be a hater. Yeah, I can go for it.
Griffin Cunningham 35:04
I didn't like the coverage of the Pop Tart.
Stone Boylan 35:07
You didn't know. I
Griffin Cunningham 35:08
thought it was annoying. Why? Because I'm not gonna, like call anybody out. But the people that were consuming the Pop Tart coverage where that was the annoying part. They were like, Oh, the Pop Tart this the Pop Tart that like, Can we eat the Pop Tart? It's a pop tart saying
Stone Boylan 35:29
was like, played out like, relax, relax, like when they said trophy or mascot would be edible or something like that. Well,
Griffin Cunningham 35:36
there were some people. Like some people that just like could not get enough of this pop tart. You didn't like that? Well, it just made me think they were stupid. It's like, made me not want to watch.
Stone Boylan 35:56
Did you watch the game?
You didn't miss out on like, yeah, if you were optimistic, at least because I was optimistic. I did not go to the game. Obviously. It was in Florida. I think it was it was in Orlando. Exactly. Yeah. I watched the game because I had to drop my neighbor off. And I went to like one of his basketball, mini basketball tournaments or whatever. He's, he's in high school, he plays basketball. And I was like watching the game on my phone there. And then when I got home, and it wasn't, it wasn't really a blowout. We can just really felt the loss of Peyton Wilson, in my opinion, because he did not play that game. If you don't know, a lot of high profile college players don't necessarily play regular bowl games unless it is the college football playoff. A lot of people played in that high profile meaning that they're probably going to the NFL, which I think a cool thing for us comm NFL draft time that we're gonna be able to cover is Peyton Wilson being drafted because he will be drafted in the NFL just depends on obviously, where the location and where in terms of, you know, picks, where is he going to be picked, but he did not play. And I think we also felt the issues of having only one viable weapon, which is KC. And that really took a toll on the offense. Armstrong wasn't even that bad people hate him. Obviously, I've not been a full hater. I feel like I'm just a realist with him. And it was 100% Correct. I'm gonna keep saying that till I die, literally was. And I like when we talk about him before, obviously, people hate him. Because the Louisville game which was bad, it was really bad. But this game, if he wasn't, I don't really blame it on him. He had 121 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown, which in itself is very good. Obviously, he did have an interception, but it was towards the end of the game. And it was because we were just obviously trying to throw the ball a ton to get back into the game, because we were down by two possessions. And that's because the defense really missed Peyton Wilson, they had 15 Missed tackles in total. We I think Kansas State was for four on fourth down conversions, which if you just stop like half of those, we have a chance to go down there and you know, obviously score more points in it. Some, I think one of the drives, they went forward and forth and got it two times which led to a touchdown, which if you stop them on one of them that takes away points entirely. And that gives us good field position. So for four on fourth down is huge. We also didn't get a single sack on the game, we had a missed field goal that would have made it a one possession game, meaning we wouldn't have needed to just hurry up and throw the ball down the field to score a touchdown. We could have taken our time and given it maybe Casey running it or Armstrong running it more than rather than you know Armstrong trying trying to just chuck a throw and chuck it up which eventually was picked. So I think there's a ton of context to that game and I don't really view it as well. Armstrong's fault. I mean, we literally would have been in it ended up 121 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown. I think he did a pretty good job of taking what the defense gave him of like, hey, they're gonna double team Casey, all my other weapons suck. Besides our tight end actually really liked him. He had a pretty good game he had a nice wide open touchdown. Which one to start or didn't even Right, yeah, yeah, that sucks. But other than that, I kind of feel the defense and Kansas State. This was there. They had a freshman first year quarterback plays his first kid
Griffin Cunningham 39:44
watch the beginning of that and you're talking about like rushing quarterbacks like that dude's got it. Who? Kansas State
Stone Boylan 39:50
states Yeah, he was running because a four or five star recruit was his first game which obviously they're pretty hard grew to that's good. But still it's his first college game like our Defense has been amazing. It was super disappointing given up 28 points to a group that didn't have their starting quarterback. You know, that was that was really upsetting. But yeah, I mean, I'd say are just when you look at the season in general, I'd say our combination of like, you know, we could say that we had a lot of unconventional wins. Like we weren't really winning the way you think we would with some of these these early season W's. But we also had a lot of unfortunate games that were totally winnable losses, like Louisville, totally could have won that game, this field goes lead to that. And then this game, I think was definitely possible. You know, like I said, the fourth down conversions, Miss tackles, all that is pretty big in this field goal into why we lost. But I would say overall, with those two things, I think a nine win season feels like the correct amount of wins that we probably would have been should have had, it just came in an insane way, obviously with MJ Morris, quarterback changes all that stuff. But next year, which we can go into this in an another episode of the transfer class that we have, because if you haven't been following, it looks very good. And as I said, we can cover another episode, but I think we can potentially expect maybe even a little bit more with next year squad, which would obviously indicate that we could try and reach that double digit win Mark. I'm not trying to guarantee anything. But um, next year, I think we could be looking up a little bit with the new regime of players that we have.
Griffin Cunningham 41:43
So we'd be so back. Yeah, we
Stone Boylan 41:45
would be so back. Nice. We are so bad. Hopefully,
Griffin Cunningham 41:49
I saw that. Aiden white, entered the transfer portal and then exited the transfer portal came back. Yeah. Came back. That's about all I saw.
Stone Boylan 41:57
We got a few we'll talk about another episode. But we got a few ones that I do really like, I think that'll help a ton, especially on offense, they'll just be trying to find like, okay, can the defense make up for the loss of Peyton Wilson, like having younger guys progress. And the other transfers that we got? Can they try and fill the hole, because as we said in the K State game, it was a huge hole that was left by him, which I think maybe goes to show how valuable he could be as a future player in the NFL, which would be really cool.
Griffin Cunningham 42:32
Well, let's condense our basketball segment a little bit here. But you want her to talk about what they've done so far, and then maybe what they could do, as far as like getting into the tournament stuff.
Stone Boylan 42:48
Yeah, I could shorten women's a little bit just because I think we're kind of just waiting for the tournament to start for them. They've had an awesome start 14, and no, unfortunately, they did suffer their first loss recently, which moved us from AP number three, to number six. But with a few teams losing we're back up to number four. So we're back to a projected one seed, we have six players averaging double figures, which I believe is the most or second lowest in the ACC. The team itself is top five and points in general, as well as points allowed and field goal percentage in point differential in the ACC the only other team to be top five in those stats is Virginia Tech, which is our only loss of the season. But it was at Virginia Tech, with a game winning, you know, put back shot that happened at the last second. And Virginia Tech also has to a really nice pair of like centers and forwards on their team that are both gonna go to the WNBA. So not a bad loss at all. We're currently the projected two seed but that'll probably be a one seed when it comes down to it. But the ACC is projected to have eight to nine tournament teams in women's so which would be tied most for any conference. Yeah, so we'll definitely have some competition there. But I think we're kind of just expecting us to win. Maybe we'll lose a game or two here and there. But that happens in college basketball. So I think we're just kind of waiting to see like, okay, are we going to win the ACC tournament? And then where are we going to place in the NCAA tournament for women's? Yeah.
Griffin Cunningham 44:27
The only thing that I'll add about women's basketball right now is just, I don't know if I've said this before, but like, I'm so impressed with how they've, like, turned it around from last year. Yeah, because they were good the year before that. And then they came in and just kind of like belly flopped a little bit. And so me being at NC State for my firt that was my first year here. I was not really expecting them with a lot of similar personnel to be able to do what they're doing. And what they are doing is among, you know, a pretty rare group of teams. It's hard, it's hard to, to have this level of success and sustain it. And they've just done it in the stats back it up and they have, you know, they have star players should
Stone Boylan 45:25
I should I river zijin. Was River. Was
Griffin Cunningham 45:29
she there last year? The center rivers Oh, river Baldwin. Yeah, it was river Baldwin. Yeah, they're all of their statistical leaders. Were there last year? Okay. So that's why it was like not they, I mean, they just committed to getting better.
Stone Boylan 45:43
I think that's a good sign of coaching and progression. Agree and all that because they're right up there with like, South Carolina who's trying to build their own dynasty, Iowa with the best player in the entire country and probably one of the best players in women's basketball, including professional in general and Caitlin Clark. So that's, that's a pretty good sign when you're up there with teams like that. Yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 46:05
I think it's a I mean, chemistry is a huge thing in the sports that sometimes we underrate, which Yeah, I think
Stone Boylan 46:12
it doesn't really fit. But it's not something that shows up on the box score. So it's kind of hard to, which is why I'm definitely a believer, as much as I say stats all the time. I think they both live, like watching the game and falling in the context of the team. And then looking at the stats, I think they both, you know, combined to where it gives you like the best possible evaluation of a sport or team. Okay, on demand, that's women's men's is a different story. We are definitely actively following the season more just because we are not guaranteed a tournament spot. Is there still hope? For one? Yes, there definitely is. But we're going to be hoping and wondering all the way up until Selection Sunday, when they release who's currently I'd say we're on the bubble, for the bubble. Like when you look at the real bubble teams, we're outside of that, which is not an amazing spot to be. But we're there, at least for that our losses that we have are not bad. At all, we lost by nine to at Tennessee who's a top 10 team, we lost to BYU who's a top 20 team, they were not at the time, so they've been much better. We got blown out by Ole Miss, but they're 15 and one and they've been ranked. So they're much better than we thought. And then we lost to UNC, which is much as people hated it. I went to that game, it really sucked. We're doing good in the first half, I have a few notes on that game. Because that's kind of the one that we're like, Okay, could we do something here? First half was like, you know, we a little bit hopeful second half totally fell apart. There a top five team, their objective one two seat. So, you know, as much as it sucks, they they're gonna be good. They're gonna be very good. They're right there with you. But I'd say in terms of rankings, where we are right now, we're kind of like in the low 70s range, which, obviously, if you think about it, the field of it's technically the field of 68 of teams who get in there, half of those teams are automatic qualifiers, meaning that's why you see a lot of like, you know, FDU, and Florida Gulf Coast and Oral Roberts, like, that's because those lower colleges won their conference. And there's a ton of conferences that 30 There's 32 conferences. So that's half the spots right there. And the rest are just at large bids, meaning it's just whoever the people who pick things should be in. So unless you win the ACC, you got to play pretty good. And, you know, 70s is like, as I said, not really in the bubble, but trying to get into the bubble. Our next, I'd say, one of the biggest things that we need to focus on for the season, what I kind of project the team to look like, is beating the teams that we should, but we're probably going to lose to the teams that we shouldn't be. Because our roster is not really built to be one that is like, have this sort of star power that's like okay, like UNC RJ Davis, go get us a bucket. Armand a big guy, go get us a bucket, we kind of just got a lot of solid roleplayers. And I feel like that kind of explains and is the reason of why our losses aren't bad. But we're not having any great wins. Which is why the biggest thing that we need to pay attention to is beating teams that we you know, should be beating or that are close to us, like the Pitts of the world. Virginia Tech, Virginia. Wake Forest is the game that we play. Tomorrow. I believe as I'm recording this, I'm going to that game. Wake Forest is on the bubble right now. I think they're much better than what their ranking says. But they're on the bubble. Same with Miami. All these teams are ACC teams, Virginia, Virginia Tech Pitt those are also with us, we need to win, like, at least a majority of these games to be like, Hey, we are above them. And we can get into the tournament because teams like Miami, they could lose to, you know, random teams, but they could also be like the Clemson's, who's which Clemson as the tournament team Dukes, because they have such, you know, high volume of shooting, they could explode. So we need to beat those kinds of teams to win when it comes to time, you know, to pick the best 32 And look at state and they're like, Okay, they did this against these ACC teams, I think we should put them ahead. So that's kind of elegance of the team, but the in terms of or the like, overall team in terms of the season, but the team itself, I think the lineup, as I said, I think we're, I think we're too deep for our own good. Like, we don't, we don't, as I said, Have a go to guy, guard or big man, I mean, horn and burns are the two best, but neither are good enough, I think to be consistent go two stars. And that's that's why we have depth this year. But I feel like Kevin Keats doesn't really know who to fully throw out there sometimes, like I'm watching the UNC game. Michael O'Connell needs more minutes when he's the best passer on the team. And when the team goes on really long scoring droughts, it's it's because guys are just trying to create their own shot, like go look at burns, anytime you get to score, it's not because someone's throwing him a lot, he gets a pass on the elbow, backs the guy up, does a few moves and either does a fade or goes to lay it up, or horn. He's ISO with a guy making moves cross up, step back and shooting if they're making their own shot, because then none of them really passers. When O'Connell comes in. He, I feel like he does a pretty good job of at least keeping the tempo steady and not giving, like trying to create open shots. Because a lot of times we're forcing like UNC plays great defense, we were taking horrendous mid range shots that were just so bad. And they were not going in. I think horn was like one for 10 At some point in the game. And it's because he was just taking a lot of hard shots. We weren't really getting anything open. And even then, I feel like Keats isn't doing a good job of writing the hot hand. Like DJ Burns had three points in a row, three buckets in a row one on one, and they just pull them out and stop going to him. So I I'm just I'm not sure if he really feels like he knows who to throw out there. At what point and I think MJ rice needs more minutes to he's a guy that we identified in the beginning of the season. He's like a combination of a big guy, but someone who can still score and we didn't really have that. You know, I mean, we have like I said we've a ton of rolls like a ton. I I mean with what Taylor and Parker those are pretty similar in terms of just like athletic, forward slash guards, Middlebrooks. I like him, but he's obviously like a just a big defender, you know, but he should definitely be getting out there. I think we should just be going nine deep at the most. And just go into the game. Kevin Keats way you should be doing have at least only going nine deep. Go to the locker with the other team has say okay, this is the style of play and throw out guys that are going to, you know, match up to it. If they're a high volume high shooting like high active team. It should be Taylor Parker, Marcel and a combination of you know, horn with O'Connell in there. If they're a bigger team that kind of likes to slow the tempo down, get Middlebrooks and Diarra in there more. We just we don't have the star power. Did you just keep the same? Be like, Okay, I trust these guys. Just throw him in there. Kevin Keats needs to understand we got a lot of role players, we don't have a lot of stars. And you got to mix up the rotation rather than just defaulting to one specific lineup. Yeah,
Griffin Cunningham 54:04
I agree. That's something that I think I had a hard time at the beginning of the season identifying who was going to be the standout. And you know, who wasn't going to get minutes and the answer was neither.
Stone Boylan 54:17
Yeah. I mean, I'd say Horne has been like, good. He's really good moments. Yeah, burns, he said really good moments, which is why pointing them out. But they're not like, you know, look at the if you look at the UNC duo that just came here, they're no more close to that with a cot and Davis, they're just not. But we're deeper. So we need to let you we need we need to use utilize our depth more. I don't know. So maybe I know a lot of people don't like Kevin Keats, but I don't think it's horrible. But he's not doing himself any favors right now. It's just we need to it'll be really telling if we lose like a majority of these ACC games. I think his his seat is going to be pretty high if he doesn't win those.
Griffin Cunningham 54:53
Yeah. If anything else for basketball. No, that's it.
Stone Boylan 54:57
I know. There's a lot but yeah, I had a little We, we didn't really get to speak on it and that UNC game, definitely it was like, Okay, this is what we, yeah, we need to go over. Okay,
Griffin Cunningham 55:06
well, coming up in basketball, what are we looking at? Well,
Stone Boylan 55:11
I didn't write all this stuff down. I do know that we play. As I said Wake Forest right next, which I'll be at the game trying to go to as many games as possible, but we're kind of on the ACC stretch, playing a lot of ACC teams. I think the next one after that is teams that I've mentioned Virginia Tech and Virginia. Like these next three games, two of them are at home. One of them's at Virginia, I think we beat Virginia earlier in the year, we got to win at least two of these have to, hopefully the two on our home floor. But after that, like Syracuse, Miami, Georgia Tech Pitt, these are all middle of the pack teams, which is good for us. But we don't you know, our next hardest game is like at UNC. And then verse Duke, which is at the end of the season, which to be honest, I don't really, unless maybe we progress a ton. It's kind of hard to look forward. But I don't know if we're taking down Carolina and Duke, unfortunately this season. Well,
Griffin Cunningham 56:08
on that note, I guess we'll close it out for the day. And we'll we'll come back and revisit those questions later on. But yeah, thanks for listening to let it read and we'll know we'll be back. We'll see you next week. Music In this podcast was Jonas Hooper's king of sports and vibe and sneaky, licensed under creative commons from the Free Music Archive
Transcribed by https://otter.ai