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RALEIGH -- Saturday dawned cold and raw in Raleigh, a late November day that felt somber despite the roaring masses packed into Carter-Finley Stadium.

The 99th game between N.C. State and North Carolina wasn't about who was here, though.

Dana Bible, one of the great assistant coaches in America, was not calling plays for the Wolfpack. While his team played its final game of the season, Bible was in UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill after being diagnosed last week with leukemia.

To a man, the State players and coaches said State's dramatic 28-27 win was about its offensive coordinator, and when quarterback Russell Wilson threw the ball into the stands as the clock ran out, he immediately wished he hadn't.

"That was the game ball," he said sheepishly. "We wanted to give it to Coach Bible."

State fans, it turns out, were also thinking of Bible. They threw it back.

The longest week of a long, long season began with the players getting the news that their coach was stricken with cancer and ended with them dedicating the biggest victory of the season to him.

"It was for him," Jamestown running back Toney Baker said. "We definitely talked about it during the week. We wanted to give him a little boost, maybe help him out a little bit and give him a little bit of courage and enthusiasm to get it done. He's a tough guy. I'll be praying for him."

Bible calls plays for State, probably the most important role of any coach other than head coach Tom O'Brien. It's something he's done for years here in Raleigh and elsewhere. In 2000, he was nominated for the Frank Broyles Award that goes to the nation's top assistant each season.

He came here originally in 1983 as an assistant to Tom Reed and arrived again with O'Brien from Boston College in 2007. In between, the namesake of the great Texas coach who invented the 12th Man tradition at Texas A&M coached at four other colleges and in the NFL. Bible's resume reads like the classic assistant, a man who has stayed out of the spotlight his entire career, the humble confidante who deflects attention to his players and his boss.

Wilson said Bible, even from his hospital bed, coached him throughout the week.

"I talked to him several times," Wilson said. "He gave me the pregame speech to get me ready, told me about the defense, told me what I should do here and there. It just shows how much he loves football and how much he loves coaching."

The program paused when it got the news last week. Bible was preparing to leave with the team for the Virginia Tech game last Saturday when he was rushed to the hospital. He was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia and immediately placed in isolation. Nobody outside the family was allowed to see him this week.

O'Brien began making plans for the final game, deciding he would call the plays himself against North Carolina, assembling the staff and even bringing in another coach to help make preparations under the unusual circumstances. He called Jay Civetti, who coached with O'Brien and Bible at Boston College and at N.C. State, and talked Tufts University in Medford, Mass. into allowing the 30-year-old assistant to come down to Raleigh for the week.

Civetti said he was proud to come to the aid of his mentor. He found some of his old State attire, explained to his new wife that he'd be gone for Thanksgiving and headed out early in the week. They all came together Saturday, a staff that had been through a long week at the end of a long season, and took down No. 23 Carolina for the biggest win of the year while Bible watched from his hospital room on the UNC campus.

Players said he was more than a stricken coach, he was a 12th man on the field.

"He's in a tough situation," Baker said. "He's fighting for his life. We tried to play our hardest for him and get the win."

State fell behind early and fought back, taking the lead for the first time in the fourth quarter. The final minutes, the players said, seemed to take forever. O'Brien said the entire season felt that way from the loss of Nate Irving, considered to be the best player on the team, to the news of Bible.

"This is the hardest year I've ever been through," O'Brien said. "You start off with your best football player on defense almost kills himself over the summer and you end the year with your offensive coordinator in the hospital with cancer."

In the interim, State lost 16 players to season-ending injuries. The remarkable run of injuries, beginning with Irving's automobile accident until two more went down Saturday, was unlike anything he'd ever seen in 35 years of coaching. Nothing, however, compared with the news of Bible, which he shared with the team during the busiest week of the year.

When it ended, and the wild celebration began near midfield, a ball went flying from the field and into the stands. Wilson said it was his best pass of a cold day that ended in a warm glow. A few minutes later, it was coming back, headed for a locker room of happy football players and, eventually, to a hospital room of a beloved coach.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com