NC State football recruiting: Wolfpack lands commitment from 3-star LB Raven Saunders

Turn on your red lights! (I assume you all have a red light of some sort by now.) NC State received a verbal Saturday afternoon from consensus three-star linebacker Raven Saunders, who is from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

I'm officially apart of the P A C K @StateCoachD @StateCoachD http://pic.twitter.com/xWuXAiMjjq

— raven saunders (@raven_ballhard2) April 2, 2016

We'll forgive the grammatical error and note instead that he has an excellent Twitter handle. Raven Ballhard sounds like some kind of football superhero.

Saunders is listed a 6'0 or 6'1, depending on the recruiting site you consult, and weighs somewhere in the 215-220 range. While he is listed as a safety by 247Sports, he's being recruiting to play linebacker by NC State.

Saunders holds offers from several other power-five schools, including UNC, Indiana, Kentucky, and Pittsburgh. Below are some highlights from his junior season. Like a lot of kids with the talent to play in college, Saunders played on both sides of the ball for his high school team. Looks like he's got decent speed and pretty good hands, and he's not a bad hitter, either.

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Bigots are losing the battle of the businesses

Not even in the same league:

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign said an additional 20 companies had joined 100 others in signing a letter to McCrory calling for repeal. The LGBT advocacy group delivered the letter to the governor’s office on Thursday. The new additions to the list of opponents include Hyatt, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Northrop Grumman, Ralph Lauren, American Apparel, Qualcomm, Twilio, Udacity, Pandora Media and EMC Corporation.

The Keep N.C. Safe Coalition, which supports the law, has also added more businesses to its list of supporters. They include Archangel Michael Orthodox Christian Bookstore, To Your Health Bakery and Snyder Packaging.

Since Republicans don't seem to be swayed by common sense or statistics, maybe someone should tally up the corporate worth of these two lists, the actual dollars involved. Without even taking the time to scribble on a notepad, it's apparent were talking billions vs a few million at best. Not that the GOP has ever been that sharp when it comes to economics, but this one's a no-brainer.

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The GOP’s Icarus Moment

Icarus, you may remember, was the mythical Greek whose arrogance drove him to fly closer and closer to the sun. One day, he got too close, and the heat of our star melted the wax from his wings, dooming him to oblivion. So too with the NCGOP. They have tempted fate for years. And now […]
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Rumors of economic blackmail of HP Furniture Market

Cooper vs. McCrory: Legal eagle and bigoted buzzard

Doing the right thing makes some people angry:

“I am following my oath of office,” Cooper said in a phone interview Thursday. He’s defending nondiscrimination policies adopted by his own office and the Department of State Treasurer, he said. Those policies protect employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and marital status, which the new law doesn’t. The law supersedes policies of all subdivisions of state government, including his office, violating the doctrine of separation of powers, according to Cooper.

“His excuse that his own internal policies would be affected is wrong,” McCrory said Tuesday of Cooper. “All employment policies for cities and corporations and the attorney general’s own policies remain the same. The attorney general is inventing conflict that simply doesn’t exist.”

It sounds like McCrory is starting to believe his own propaganda, which isn't that surprising considering his mental challenges. The simple fact is, the Governor rushed to sign this legislation mere hours after receiving it, leaving himself no viable argument that he or his staff had even attempted to vet the contents for legality or constitutionality. *If* the bill had been debated in committee(s) and on the floor of the General Assembly over a period of time, the Governor might have reasonably concluded there was nothing amiss. But it wasn't, meaning he and his staff had a greater responsibility for final oversight. Of course, all this is above his head, I'm just talking about what a real Governor would do.

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Discrimination as a campaign tool

House Bill 2 wasn’t the only bill dealing with protections for the LGBT community to come up this week. In states across the South, legislatures were passing bills that would allow businesses and individuals to discriminate. In Georgia and Virginia, governors vetoed so-called “religious freedom” bills that would allow businesses to refuse service to LGBT […]
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NC State baseball begins crucial stretch at Virginia on Friday

There's a couple ways you can process the early stages of this NC State baseball season. On the bright side, NC State is in good shape for an NCAA bid both from an overall record standpoint (17-8, 3-4) and an RPI standpoint (29). The other way of looking at this, though, begins with missed opportunity.

The scheduling gods gifted the Wolfpack with home series against Boston College and Notre Dame to begin league play. Neither of those teams are bad, mind you, but the Wolfpack probably should have gotten four wins out of those six games. The setup for an advantageous 5-1 start to league play was there. Instead, State split those six games.

That's okay, but it does create the potential for more sweating in the weeks ahead. The Wolfpack's trip to Tallahassee this past weekend was almost a complete waste of time, as State lost the opener, and the next two games were rained out. That deprived State of a couple of opportunities for quality road wins.

Now the Wolfpack is heading to UVA, which is in a similar position, record-wise. This is a get-able series, and it'd be timely in giving State the chance to build some momentum heading into the last bit of manageable schedule. After UVA, NC State has a home series against Wake Forest, then a tough road trip to Georgia Tech, followed by a home series against Duke.

That's either where it comes together or it crumbles. After Duke, State finishes with a trip to Clemson, a trip to Louisville, and a home series against UNC. All three of those teams are in the RPI top 10; their combined record is 59-15.

With quality opponents there is opportunity to gain ground, but if State needs another rally down the stretch--like it did a year ago--it's going to be a little more difficult this time around. That's why taking advantage of the relatively light front half of the schedule is important.

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