Wake Forest, Satterfield, Tailbacks Among DG’s “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs” (Week 9) – Ncsportsnetwork.com

COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK NINE:

Wake Forest, Satterfield, Tailbacks Quartet
Among DG’s ACC/NC “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs”
(Weekly Video = Posted At Bottom)

By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(final up to date Oct. 28, 2025)

While the main target of our “This Week In College Football” present is forward-looking as usually as doable, we at all times take a look again on the earlier weekend in school soccer, too, and generally we’ll provide some fast mentions to these making impactful headlines on the gridiron, particularly within the Atlantic Coast Conference and/or throughout North Carolina.

With that in thoughts, beneath are our Week Nine “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” delivered to you by our good pals at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach.

Jimmy’s has a full bar, nightly drink specials and reside music twelve months a 12 months(!). (It’s an awesome place to look at a recreation, too.) Right subsequent door, King Neptune has turn out to be among the best eating places in the whole better Wilmington space.

Week Nine “Fun Fact #1″

Fun Fact: Placekicking has gotten a lot higher on the school stage simply previously decade, such that — in 2024 — Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) kickers transformed greater than half of their makes an attempt from 50 yards or longer for the primary time in historical past.

As just lately as 2016, that long-distance conversion price on the FBS stage was barely 40 %, in comparison with about 73 % within the National Football League.

Now the hole is closing a bit, with FBS kickers changing 54 % of their kicks from 50 yards or longer final season, and that upward development has continued. Overall this season, greater than 70 FBS kickers have transformed at the least as soon as from 50 yards or extra.

However, final Saturday, when Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert requested his kicker, redshirt freshman walk-on Connor Calvert, as well a 50-yarder — with the sport on the road, as time was expiring within the fourth quarter, in opposition to SMU, in a recreation the Demon Deacons have been trailing 12-10 — he was asking for the longest profitable subject objective by any of the kickers at North Carolina’s seven FBS packages in the whole 2025 season.

In reality, Dickert even was asking Calvert to transform the longest subject objective of his whole life, at the least beneath precise recreation circumstances.

Calvert, who adopted Dickert to Wake Forest from Washington State, was primarily a soccer participant till his junior 12 months at Mountain View High School in Oregon. Calvert’s highschool coach hardly ever requested him to try something longer than 40 yards, then the kicker redshirted at Washington State final season. During his comparatively temporary Wake Forest profession, Calvert did have two subject objective makes an attempt from 54 yards — together with one earlier within the SMU recreation – however he had missed each of them.

This time, in fact, with the sport on the road and because the clock hit zeroes, Calvert transformed from 50 yards to beat the Mustangs on the ultimate play of the sport, choosing a nice time for one of the best kick of his whole younger life.

More on this wild Wake Forest story in a bit…

Week Nine “Fun Fact #2″

Fun Fact: Four of the highest six operating backs within the ACC are related in varied methods to the good state of North Carolina, they usually’re all reputable All-ACC candidates.

At NC State, redshirt sophomore Hollywood Smothers leads the ACC and ranks tenth nationally with 103 speeding yards per recreation. A product of West Charlotte High School, he’s in his second season with the Wolfpack, after redshirting the 2023 marketing campaign at Oklahoma, and he was among the many stars in each of his staff’s greatest wins earlier this 12 months. When the Pack handed Virginia what remains to be the Cavaliers’ solely loss up to now this season, Smothers carried 17 instances for 140 yards and two touchdowns, together with what turned out to be the game-winning rating late within the third quarter. Against a really sturdy Wake Forest protection, Smothers had 24 carries for 164 yards within the Pack’s 34-24 victory in Winston-Salem.

Speaking of Wake Forest, senior Demond Claiborne is third amongst ACC operating backs, with 87 speeding yards per recreation and eight touchdowns on the bottom. Claiborne, who is taken into account by many one of many prime 5 operating again prospects for the 2026 NFL draft, has gone over the 100-yard speeding mark thrice this season — in opposition to Western Carolina, Georgia Tech and Oregon State.

The different two prime ACC operating backs with ties to the Bold North State are Virginia’s sixth-year senior J’Mari Taylor and Duke’s true freshman Nate Sheppard.

Formerly of NC Central, an FCS program situated in Durham, Taylor is averaging 73 speeding yards per recreation and has scored 9 touchdowns (that TD quantity is second-best within the ACC) for the 7-1 and nationally ranked Cavaliers. He starred at West Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte earlier than spending 4 and a half years at NC Central, the place final season his 1,146 speeding yards marked the fourth-highest single-season whole within the historical past of that program.

Last however not least, Sheppard is averaging 71 yards per recreation and a whopping seven yards per carry for Duke. In addition to being an All-ACC candidate, Sheppard is among the many prime choices for the league’s Offensive Rookie of the Year honor.

Now on to this week’s shout-outs, which embrace coaches related to (in varied methods) Appalachian State, Cincinnati and Wake Forest.

#1—Shout-out to former Appalachian State head coach Scott Satterfield, the man who led the Mountaineers by their profitable transition from the FCS to the FBS somewhat greater than a decade in the past.

“Coach Satt” averaged 10 victories over his closing 4 seasons at App State, his alma mater, and led that program to a few straight Sun Belt Conference championships in 2016, 2017 and 2018. He left Boone to take the Louisville job within the ACC, however after 4 mediocre seasons with the Cardinals, he resigned and jumped straight to the top teaching job at Cincinnati in 2023, simply because the Bearcats have been becoming a member of the Big 12 Conference.

After an alarmingly gradual begin — 3-9 two years in the past, then 5-7 final season — Satterfield has Cincinnati 7-1 this season and ranked #17 nationally.

A former App State quarterback, and an offensive coordinator earlier than he grew to become a head coach, Satterfield has the Bearcats averaging 38 factors per recreation, which ranks third within the Big 12. His dual-threat quarterback, Indiana switch Brendan Sorsby, is a redshirt junior who ranks third within the convention with 284 yards of whole offense per recreation and has thrown 20 landing passes in opposition to just one interception.

One post-script to this shout-out: Cincinnati’s three hardest video games of the common season are all November video games — at #24 Utah this Saturday (that’s the late-night recreation on ESPN this week), then in a while at house in opposition to #10 BYU and on the highway in opposition to TCU to shut the common season.

If Satterfield can win two of these three very tough video games, it will rank as among the best seasons of his whole teaching profession. If he someway wins out within the common season, he’ll be 11-1, 8-0 in convention play and on his approach to the Big 12 championship recreation, with an awesome probability of creating the College Football Playoff.

#2—Finally, we’ll circle again to the place we began, at Wake Forest, with a shout-out to first-year Demon Deacons head coach Jake Dickert.

It is actually extraordinary to determine a approach to be 5-2 — and, bear in mind, an officiating gaffe in opposition to Georgia Tech away from being 6-1 — given the circumstances and particulars of his preliminary season in Winston-Salem because the successor to the universally revered Dave Clawson.

Among the 136 FBS groups, Wake’s offense ranks simply 113th, and the Demon Deacons don’t have an above-average quarterback on the whole roster. The Deacs’ particular groups, in the meantime, rank one hundred and first. Yet they’ve been aggressive and well-coached in each recreation.

Wake’s unusual mixture of sensible execution on protection — shout-out, once more, to defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton — relentless perseverance by adversity and easily believing — of their coaches and in one another, even when issues look bleak — is a testomony to nice teaching, clever gamers and a really sturdy tradition.

In its opening recreation this season, Dickert’s debut, Wake truly trailed Kennesaw State — Kennesaw State! — 9-7 late within the third quarter. Even with Claiborne injured and the offense struggling badly, the Deacons found out a approach to win that recreation 10-9. When they later misplaced back-to-back house video games to NC State and Georgia Tech, they didn’t flinch, didn’t panic, and no one pointed fingers. They caught to the plan, bought higher and stored believing.

Now Wake has a three-game profitable streak, with the above-described 13-12 victory over SMU one of the best of the bunch.

The Mustangs are gifted and well-coached. Trailing 12-10 with about 5 minutes to go, Wake put collectively a 60-yard drive that put the Deacons at SMU’s six-yard line with lower than two minutes remaining. Then, Wake’s greatest participant, Claiborne, fumbled the ball away, a stunning second that will have completely deflated many groups.

Instead, after SMU took over with 1:40 remaining, and with Wake having just one timeout remaining, nonetheless no one flinched. The protection compelled a three-and-out, with sixth-year senior security Nick Andersen and fifth-year senior linebacker Dylan Hazen combining on a game-saving third-down deal with, however even then issues nonetheless appeared bleak for the Deacs.

After the following punt, Wake was at its personal 42-yard line with solely 12 seconds remaining, no timeouts and its backup quarterback — sophomore Deshawn Purdie, a Charlotte switch — subbing for injured starter Robby Ashford. With a blitzing linebacker bearing down on him, Purdie threw an awkward-looking move down the appropriate sideline, the place there have been two SMU defenders subsequent to backup tight finish Kamrean Johnson, a Vanderbilt switch who had dropped a would-be landing move earlier and who additionally was within the recreation solely due to an damage to the starter.

When it mattered most, Wake’s backup QB (beneath stress) hit its backup tight finish (between two defenders) to arrange the extraordinarily unlikely game-winning, 50-yard subject objective from the redshirt freshman walk-on kicker, who — in fact — hit it, however by such a tiny margin that the SMU coaches requested for a replay simply to verify it had cleared the crossbar.

It all added as much as a loopy, extraordinarily unlikely mixture, however the Deacs have been 5-2 as they took off on their huge journey to Tallahassee.