WVU’s game Saturday brought back some North Carolina State memories to me.

I was at the 1973 Peach Bowl in Atlanta with my late wife, Monnie, and our three children when my alma mater faced the Wolfpack.

Lou Holtz was the NC State coach. Bobby Bowden was in his 3^rd season as WVU’s coach.

I had a double reason to go to the game. NC State had the Buckey brothers, twins Dave and Don, who playing for Akron Kenmore High gave Cuyahoga Falls High fits when I first moved to Cuyahoga Falls as assistant State Desk editor for the Akron Beacon Journal.

The Buckey twins kept doing it in the 1973 Peach Bowl. Dave threw a TD pass to brother Don, who also ran for another TD.

The Wolfpack shredded the Mountaineers, 49-13. WVU got 3 of the game’s first 4 scores – 2 Frank Nester field goals and a TD pass from Bernie Galiffa to Danny Buggs. The 13-7 lead was followed by SIX unanswered North Carolina State scores.

Don Buckley played for Holtz again, when Lou was the New York Jets coach.

It was back to the Peach Bowl in 1975, again against NC state. Down, 10-0, WVU came from behind to win, 13-10, with quarterback Dan Kendra and linebacker Ray Marshall named MVPs of the Peach Bowl.

Kendra threw TD passes to Arthur Owens and Scott MacDonald.

North Carolina State beat WVU in the 2010 Champs Sports Bowl, 23-7, behind quarterback Russell Wilson (NOT the Wisconsin QB who moved on to the Seattle Seahawks). The Mountaineers’ only TD was a pass from Geno Smith to Stedman Bailey.

My other North Carolina State memory goes to the days when I was sports editor of the Williamson Daily News filling in for the legendary Jim VanZant while Jim was in the service.

I gathered the Williamson Daily News all-star basketball team that I had selected from high schools in the Williamson-Pikeville-Inez area that straddled the Tug River separating West Virginia from Kentucky.

Everett Case, the Gray Fox, was the North Carolina State coach and the speaker at the all-star selection dinner. I arranged for the all-stars to have a pickup scrimmage in Williamson Field House, where the Williamson High team played. Nickname: Wolfpack. Karma, huh?

My goal was to maybe help a few of the all-stars get a free college education for their athletic talents. It worked, in a strange way.

George Ritchie, who played for Chattaroy High in Mingo County, got his scholarship, but at Wake Forest. Somehow the word spread from the all-star scrimmage to Demon Deacons coach Bones McKinney. George scored 874 points for Wake Forest, averaging 11.7 a game for his career there.

George later coached basketball at Williamson High and later became Williamson Junior High principal.  He passed away in 2011.

Williamson’s football/baseball complex, where Hall of Famer Stan Musial began his professional baseball career on the St. Louis Cardinals farm team, in 2007 was renamed the Jim VanZant Field in his honor.

Jim’s son, Greg VanZant, coached WVU baseball for 18 years and twice was named Big East Coach of the Year. His final season was in 2011.

Jim, so popular he was elected to Williamson City Council, passed away in 2010 at the age of 81. He helped establish the Kiwanis Senior Bowl in southern West Virginia for high school seniors. He was a WDN fixture for three decades, minus his military years when I replaced him. When Jim returned, I was switched to city editor.

Jim played for the 1946 Marshall national champions basketball team coached by the famous Cam Henderson and Jim coached the Williamson American Legion baseball team to four state championships.

While I was sports editor at the Williamson Daily News, I founded the All-State Baseball Team selections for high school players in the Mountain State.

The next year, Fairmont Times sports editor Bill Evans, whose legendary writing and big words drove me to the dictionary as a Monongah High student and inspired me to become a sportswriter, too, officially appointed me chairman of the West Virginia Sportswriters Association baseball all-state selections, which I continued when I moved to the Charleston Daily Mail.

Dick Hudson, another legend among West Virginia sportswriters, was the Daily Mail’s sports editor. Three times he was named state Sportswriter of the Year.

Coupled with my half-century friendship with Mickey Furfari of the Morgantown Dominion-News, who took me under his wings when I worked at the Dominion-News while finishing my WVU education, I had personal experiences with four of West Virginia Hall of Fame sportswriters – VanZant, Hudson, Evans and Furfari. They provided my foundation for a 15-year sportswriting joyride in my 43-year newspaper career.

When I graduated from WVU, Bill Evans offered me a job as sportswriter at the Fairmont Times. It would have been an honor to sit at the feet of the guru who gave me the impetus for my career, but I wanted to make an independent start away from Marion County, so I went to the Williamson Daily News for less money than Bill offered me and began my 43-year newspaper career for $55 a week.

Eventually, I made more than that in less than 3 hours as my career progressed.

WVU will play North Carolina State at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina. Both teams are 2-0. After that contest, the Mountaineers will begin their Big 12 conference schedule against Kansas State Saturday, September 25 in Mountaineer Field.

Hopefully, there will be no lightning or rain, as there was in the first two games.