Sour Grapes: Ralph, Players Say N.C. State Plays Dirty

Ralph has alternated between blaming his own players, the weather, and God for losing. This isn't really making excuses, but it does sound a bit sore:

Defensive end Isaiah Ross was lost for the season when he tore an ACL with less than two minutes left in the first half, a play Friedgen believes was not legal.

"I'm going to look at that one, because I think it was really uncalled for," Friedgen said. "He should have been thrown out of the game. They didn't even see it, which doesn't surprise me. He got an ACL, so he's definitely out."

Travis Ivey concurs (same link):

"Guy basically after the play speared him in his leg and then jumped on top of him and started hitting him when he was on top of him," defensive tackle Travis Ivey said. "So, they were playing hard and they were playing passionate. Sometimes you have to draw the line. The ref didn't see it and didn't call it so that's fine. We still had to go back out there. It added fuel to the fire as far as how we were playing."

Actually, Ivey went so far as to suggest the Wolfpack played dirty the entire game:

"They were doing a lot of things out there that weren’t really warranted, but that's the game of football."

I'll say that I did notice a lot of very questionable hits from NCSt the entire game - Torrey Smith got ridden out of bounds unnecessarily and nearly got hurt when he finally went down five yards out of bounds. Jamarr Robinson and Chris Turner took hits after throwing the ball all game long, one that was particularly noticeable on Robinson's pass to LaQuan Williams with 22 seconds left. Richard Taylor got thrown to the ground after taking a knee on his interception. Robinson got hit out of bounds on one of his runs.

But all that's on the refs, not the players. If the refs called those, then N.C. State wouldn't commit as many - or Maryland would've won - and there wouldn't be complaints. If they really were playing dirty, as it seemed they did - and Ivey would know better than me - I am a bit peeved at the refs.

Lord knows I'm not firing up 360 to see how dirty is was. I'm done with watching footage from this game.