North Carolina A&T shows promise in clash with Wake Forest

WINSTON-SALEM, NC — North Carolina A&T got a $300,000 check to come across county lines to play Wake Forest. But it left with a lot more than a financial benefit.

Second-year head coach Vincent Brown Sr. said he felt the same after his team’s 45-13 defeat to its nearby ACC foe, but he found a lot of optimism in his team’s performance.

“It’s never satisfying when you go out and lose a game, especially by 25, 30 points, whatever it is. But there’s a lot of improvement that this team has made over the last season.”

NC A&T, coming off a 1-10 season last season, briefly led 10-7 in the second quarter on the road. Wake Forest took a 17-10 lead into halftime before exploding for 31 unanswered points to take command of the game.

But beyond the final score were several silver linings — most notably on the offensive side of the ball. Quarterbacks Kevin “KJ” White and Justin Fomby completed 15 of 25 passes for 152 yards against Wake Forest. Those aren’t groundbreaking numbers, but they are a considerable improvement for a passing game that was the worst in the FCS last season, going for just over 100 yards per game.

“We feel like we have two kids that can help us win games and we wanted to go into this game and get so far in this game reps,” Brown said of his quarterback duo. “And so we were able to do that and both made a couple of good plays. And then there’s going to be a lot for them to learn from this game that will benefit us down the road.

Running back Kenji Christian ran for 121 yards and a score and Wesley Graves added 70 yards on 19 carries for NC A&T in the first game under new offensive coordinator David Marsh with Wake Forest starting defenders playing well into the fourth quarter. It also took care of the ball, not registering a single turnover.

“I just felt like our offense did a lot of really good things throughout the course of the game, and we had to learn some of the guys and showed up throughout the course of training camp showed up again tonight, which is encouraging to see,” Brown said afterward.

The defense played solidly for much of the first half before being overwhelmed by the ACC squad. Brown, a long-time defensive coordinator, said he saw some things there to build on as well.

“Defensively, we went in with the mindset of playing a lot of guys and to try to develop some depth down the road. And so we got a long way to go. But I’m not discouraged at all.”

One thing concern for Brown was his team’s conditioning. Several players were left on the ground, stopping play consistently in the second half. He says conditioning was definitely a factor, as was the depth difference between North Carolina A&T and Wake Forest.

“We just have to do a better job on our team not just the players,” Brown said. “We’ve got to do a better job of training and conditioning or certain players have to practice harder so that when the games come up, they’re able to finish.

NC A&T will return home to face long-time HBCU rival Winston-Salem State on Sept. 7 at Truist Stadium.

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