Doeren: "We Had A Great Atmosphere"

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media after the 37-20 win over Marshall.

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Opening Statement...

I'd like to start out just thanking our fans and our students.

We had a great atmosphere tonight, and I really appreciate them being the way they were throughout the game. It meant a lot to our players and our staff and our recruiting efforts to have a stadium like that tonight.  It was awesome.

You know I'm really proud of the way we played in the second half. We scored the last 27 points, and had a shutout in the second half. We forced two turnovers, didn't turn the football over. Finley continues to be very very efficient throwing the football and accurate. Harmon had another 100-yard game. I like the way Reggie ran the ball there down the stretch and just proud of the way the guys responded.

You know you got to hand it to Marshall, especially Brady the receiver. I thought he was an outstanding player and obviously we didn't defend him well in the first half, and I thought our adjustments were solid in the second half.

Marshall's always had good receivers, always had good skill... and it was a good football game. I'm proud of the way we finished it.

How much did that first drive in the second half mean for you?

Well we got a key penalty that helped us on third and 15 with the pass interference.  After that I think Drinkwitz got in the rhythm calling plays.  He was seeing what they were doing coverage-wise, and the guys were making good catches for him on the perimeter. They were being aggressive underneath and we were able to run by them a few times. 

I thought our offensive kids really did a great job taking care of the ball. A week ago that was an issue, and to not turn it over with people all over them, stripping and punching at it. Steph Lewis was impressive running through contact, and Kelvin Harmon the same thing. We just took care of the ball and ran hard with it.

Thoughts on James Valdez's play and his potential injury.

I haven't heard from Justin. He did say he hurt his knee. I don't know to what degree. No idea. He ran off the field which I'm hopeful that's a good sign.

But James came in the game and did a good job.  He did a good job on special teams a week ago, and as thin as we are in secondary, we told James during the week to plan on being ready because of where we were.

I thought Alston played a really good game in Week 1, but he struggled tonight.  James had an opportunity, and I thought he did a lot of good things with it. I thought Nick McCloud played a pretty solid football game on the other side.

The adjustments just getting to safety help here... one of his touchdowns was a hitch. We have to tackle better on short throws but J.A. will learn from it and get better.

Thoughts on Reggie Gallaspy's play...

They did a good job on our outside run game, so we made a decision to start running more inside zone in the second half. Reggie's a little bit better in their on that type of play and that's why he's in there.

To be able to drag people... run through contact, and he did a nice job.  To average 5.1 yards a carry, the big run there after the turnover to score was kind of the nail in the coffin for the game.

More on the team's ceiling...

I think I told the team this in our pre-game talk today. I think we can be as good as we want to be as long as we stay out of our own way... the ceiling is very high.

It's very high.

We just can't be a team that beats ourselves... We're a very good football team when we do that.  I think we're 11 and 3 now since I've been here when we're plus-two. Those kind of games when we don't turn the football over, and we get it back, we're going to win at a higher percentage.

They did a good job, better than we thought they would, at stopping the run in the first half.

Thoughts on Kelvin Harmon's play...

He's a tough match up, and if people are going to continue to play man to man and pack it in there he's going to keep having 100-yard games.  I think that's one thing... he's had two in a row, and I don't see that changing anytime soon if you're going to play man-to-man.

He's a really tough matchup, not just on deep balls, but catching something in front of you and you've got to tackle him at 220 pounds. He's a big kid.

More on the kicking game...

The one field goal, I was excited for him, and I probably should have kicked on there when we went for it on fourth and one. We talked it over and thought we'd get it and continue to run some clock down and score.

But I'm not happy with our kickoff coverage at all. Really upset about it. I thought it was awesome in the first half from the get-go. Dakwa Nichols had a couple of big tackles and the ball placement has to be better, has to be deeper, and we've got to work on that. The PATs have to be gimmes, but we've have too many good players running down the field on kickoff coverage not to tackle people inside the 20 or 25. That has to get fixed.

Was Dakwa an adjustment on that?

No, he was on last week and actually he should have leveragee the ball on the one that went for the touchdown. That was his error, and the thing I love about Dakwa is he stood up in front of the team and he owned that... said he'd make up for it. That was an electric tackle on the first one, he blew it up.

I'm really proud of him. We have to get a few guys healthy. We have a few guys out and it's hurting us depth-wise on a few of those units.