By Louis Fernandez, WRAL Sports

North Carolina Central football spent Saturday afternoon with a classic spring game – four quarters, running clock, two teams scrimmaging. It’s an easy format to follow. One thing that’s not easy, is following up the team’s recent success. 10 wins in 2022 and an HBCU National Championship, 9 wins in 2023 and a trip to the FCS playoffs, the bar is high at O’Kelly-Riddick Stadium. Head coach Trei Oliver has created a culture of success in Durham. In fact, the culture is so important, you could see the motto “Culture Over Scheme” printed on shirts and hats all over the field.

Having one of the best players in NCCU history running the offense during this stretch helped craft that culture, quarterback Davius Richard. Now his time at NC Central has come to a close. So who’s the next act to follow? Oliver isn’t mincing words.

“We had the best quarterback in Black college last year with Davius Richard. We’ve got the best quarterback in Black college this upcoming year with Walker Harris.”

Harris, a rising senior, played at Heritage High School in Wake Forest. He spent the past few years as an understudy for Richard. He gets it’s going to be a challenge

“Davius is obviously a great quarterback, he’s been a great quarterback here for the past four years, but you know me, I’ve been playing football for a long time, this isn’t my first rodeo.

As a backup last year, Harris saw action against UCLA and threw five touchdowns against Mississippi Valley.

“He has an unbelievable arm, he throws people open and he does a great job of placing the ball, guys are covered and he still puts the ball back shoulder, leads them or whatever the case may be, but he’s always going to get the receiver a chance to make a play on the ball,” Oliver said.

As for the rest of the team and the rest of spring game, there were plenty of big hits from the defense. Oliver took notice.

“The young guys, we’re extremely young, we lost a lot of guys unfortunately to the portal, but these young guys that we have primarily in the back end have really, really come along. We challenged the guys this morning defensively about matching our offense’s energy and I thought our defense came out and played with great energy today.”

Running back Chris Mosley had a lot of success as well, breaking off a few explosive runs and scoring multiple touchdowns.

NCCU opens up the season in the Orange Blossom Classic in Miami on September 1 against Alabama State.

Source: wralsportsfan.com