While the youth movement BC has had most of the attention - particularly after Emmett Morehead and Joe Griffin had their “we’ve arrived" moments on Saturday - the defensive performance of the Eagles should go down as one of the best in recent memory.

One of the leaders of that performance was six-year veteran Marcus Valdez. Valdez, who is playing as best he possibly can while heavily injured at this point in the season, had arguably his best performance in his career. Valdez’s showing in Raleigh will go down as one of the grittier efforts in program history.

“Valdez is what BC is all about,” head coach Jeff Hafley said postgame. “That guy should have two bionic arms on and he’s got something torn in his foot. He barely practices, but he goes out there and gives everything he has for his teammates and that’s what it’s all about. He does it and for the young guys to see it, that’s incredible. He had some huge plays in this game. Huge plays. That was one of the best games I’ve seen him play.”

Valdez had a huge smile on his face postgame and rightfully so, given what he’s put his body through when he could easily pack it in and look towards the future while the current team is (now) 3-7.

“Six years, to get a ranked win, it’s all been worth it,” he said postgame while still in his pads. “That’s probably the best game, the funnest game I’ve ever played here. Before that, it was probably some of those Clemson games…you could feel the belief, and I feel like it was that same kind of belief we had in those games.”

What made this one even more special for veterans on the team like Valdez was the fact that it came after such a horrendous start. Trailing by 14 in the first, it felt like things were only going to spiral out of control again. Instead, the unit held N.C. State to 60 second half yards total and ultimately kept the offense in it long enough for the final drive to be possible.

“We knew what they were going to run,” Valdez added. “They came out with that first script and we said ‘ok, they got us on a couple trick plays and new wrinkles we needed to make some adjustments to,’ and we made those adjustments. After that, I felt after we stopped them and stopped them and stopped them, they started getting a little tight and I was preaching to the guys, ‘they don’t know the adversity we’ve been through this season,’ right?

“Two wins before (Saturday night) getting punched down every week. ‘You guys suck, this and that,’ but you know, in the locker room we all believed. We know what team we are and we just haven’t gotten it done because we didn’t execute. Last week (against Duke) Coach Hafley put a big emphasis on attitude and effort, that’s all you can control. We did that last week, but we didn’t execute last week. He put that additional challenge on us this week. Be that same team. Attitude and effort should be the given. Now, go execute and we did today.”

Without veteran leaders giving everything they have on and off the field like Valdez has, that attitude and execution may not have resulted in the stunning win over the No. 16 team in the country.