With just days before the football team’s home game against No. 15 East Carolina, injuries continue to plague the Wolfpack. Coach Tom O’Brien announced on Wednesday that starting redshirt junior defensive tackle Alan-Michael Cash is out indefinitely and will require knee surgery.
Along with Cash, redshirt junior tailbacks Jamelle Eugene and Toney Baker, redshirt junior wide receiver Geron James, redshirt senior tight end Anthony Hill and senior offensive tackle Curtis Crouch will also be on the sidelines due to injury Saturday. While most of State’s injuries have come on the offensive side of the ball this season, Cash is a major blow to the defense.
“He was, without question, our best player in the front eight,” coach Tom O’Brien said. “It’s a tough loss for the team, but we’ll go on.”
Senior Antoine Holmes, who will start at defensive tackle against the Pirates, said Cash helped teach him how to play the position.
“Cash is a very good player,” Holmes said. “I learned a lot from him. You could almost say that he treated me like a brother when I moved [from defensive end to defensive tackle]. He brought me up to speed with a lot of things. To say that we’re not going to be missing Cash is a complete lie. It makes it so that we just have to play that much harder.”
The Pack enters Saturday’s matchup with ECU in an offensive drought. State has played its last three games against bowl subdivision teams without recording an offensive touchdown. The last offensive touchdown against such a team came on one yard Eugene ran in the third quarter of the Nov. 17, 2007 game against Wake Forest.
Redshirt senior offensive guard John Bedics said there is not much the players can do except continue to put forth the necessary effort. “It is frustrating, but all you can do is keep working hard, get out to practice each week and try to improve,” Bedics said.
Despite the drought, O’Brien is pleased from what he saw from the offensive unit in last weekendís game against Clemson. He said Andre Brown, in particular, stood out as someone who has improved greatly since O’Brien took over the program.
“I think Andre has matured a lot since the day I got here,” O’Brien said. “He was a much more complete back Saturday, as far as I’m concerned, than at any time since I’ve seen him here.”
Although the offense has been devastated by injuries, seven players who were expected to be significant contributors before the season will not play on Saturday, Bedics said they are starting to find a rhythm and the points will follow.
“I think the offense is really starting to settle in now,” Bedics said. “[We are] just becoming more acclimated, and we’re all starting to gel more together. I think its going to pick up now.”
