Doeren:"It Was Pretty Successful"

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media after the 2018 Kay Yow Spring game.

Overall thoughts on the game?

We didn’t fumble. Nobody got hurt. I think it was pretty successful. Only one ejection.

Was it miserable out there?

Oh yeah it was great. My hands got cold at the end.

Will you be able to use this to get better?

There’s going to be some things we get out of it. I told Des Kitchings, ‘You guys didn’t fumble today, that’s saying a lot.’ That’s a big deal in a game like that.

One of Ryan’s goal coming back was to play well in bad weather. I thought he threw the ball well today.

I thought Louis Acceus, Isaiah Moore and Germaine Pratt were flying around at linebacker. There will definitely be film to watch. There’s going to be some bad stuff but there’s some good things in there too.

Any flashbacks to Notre Dame?

The fourth quarter got rough out there. The referees were falling down, hard not to laugh a little bit.

How did Ryan look in the bad weather?

Next year you look at our schedule you have no idea what mother nature is going to bring, we may or may not have a bad weather game so that was a good chance for him to throw in bad weather, put it on tape, obviously it was on ESPN3. It’s a game that he’ll have to show other people, I thought he threw the ball well today.

You need things to work on in your 6th year, right?

No question.

What were your takeaways on offense?

I was impressed with Nakia Robinson, I thought he had some good runs today. He had a problem early in the spring with ball security and I thought he took care of the ball, saw some holes.

Running back wise, that’s a spot we’re trying to figure out what we have because Reggie's out with a minor injury and so is Ricky Person. To be able to get those reps to other guys and watch them play today because it was a tough day to throw and catch, that was a position we wanted to evaluate.

What do you need to improve on before the next game in the stadium?

We’ll take this next week and sit down with every player, myself and every player, position coaches with every player, strength staff with every player. We’ll talk about where they’re at, strength and weakness wise.

We’ll put a plan in place for the next three months. That’s why I like finishing spring a little early because it gives us a little more time to recover and get healthy and be full go for camp. We’ll put the action plan in place and ask our guys to follow it. It’s just a process. Where we’re at today will be nowhere near where we’ll be when guys are healthy, everybody’s together and the new guys get here.

What we’re advantages you had to playing in bad weather as opposed to good weather?

Either would have been good. We had some young guys that needed to play in a non-practice environment. I told them ‘It doesn’t matter who’s in the stands, you’re on ESPN today and that’s going to be televised. Anybody who wants to watch it can watch it.’

For guys to understand it’s a national broadcast, even though it’s not live, it’s out there and that’s important. If we would have had crowd noise that would've been a great opportunity as well but to have to focus through the elements, that’s a big deal for some guys. We don’t practice in stuff like that, we go in the indoor so it was a unique opportunity to play in a game-like deal out there and have bad conditions.

What did you think about Chris Dunn?

I thought he was excellent today, it was a tough day to kick the ball. He got it up, the ball was straight. He’s in a routine, he’s been terrific all spring.

What did you think about the defensive line?

Roseboro and James Smith-Williams have been really steady. jGrant Gibson and Larrell Murchison have gotten a lot of reps and had a very good spring. We need Eurndraus Bryant and Shug Frazier to come back healthy and get in to that rotation.

I was impressed with Joseph Boletepeli, the true freshman who graduated high school early, he’s done some good things this spring. Can’t say enough about how hard those guys are working but we have to get healthy.

We need to get Val Martin our junior college signee here, we need to get Alim McNeill our four-star signee here. We need to start getting all of those guys on the field together. We’ll have a good rotation. Coach Patrick will do a good job with time he’s allotted throughout the summer to work on fundamentals with our d-line. It won’t be the four guys from last year who get all the pub, but we’ll have a good line.

How disappointed are you about the Kentavius Street injury?

It crushes my heart. Everybody here that’s interviewed Kentavius knows what kind of person he is and how hard he works so we feel for him and we’re praying for him. I’ve been throught this with another player at Wisconsin (O’Brien Schofield) that had the same deal at an all star game. He just retired after nine years in the NFL. I told Kentavius this isn’t the way you want to enter the league but you will enter the league and you can stay as long as you take care of business. He’ll be fine. It’s just disappointing that it happened. We’ll wish him a safe recovery and pray for him.

Did the spring go how you would have liked?

I think so. The spring is always the hardest time because you lost seniors and you signed players to replace them but they aren’t here yet. Your depth charts are decimated at spots and you have nicks and nags.

We’ve been fortunate this spring, we’ve had some guys out but none of them have been serious. It hurts your depth. At the same time, you look up at the depth chart wall and see all these guys are coming back soon.. The blessing in it is these kids get some reps and get better. When everybody returns you've got more experienced roster to play with. We’re in a whole different place than we were five years ago. There’s a lot of depth and competition. Our receiving core, the depth we’ve got there, the height, the talent. It’s fun to watch that group.