Doeren: "It Was A Good Win For Our Team"

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media to discuss the win over Syracuse.

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Opening Statement...

I'd first like to say thank you to the fans. I thought it was an awesome atmosphere for Military Appreciation Day.

At one point I looked up there and just kind of took it all in. To see it the way it was, packed all the way to the gills, our fan base was incredible. So thank you for that. I know the veterans and active military thank you as well.

It was a good win for our team; wasn't pretty in the second half at all. But you know it hadn't been done in 11 years at State, to be 2-0 in ACC play. We got there and pretty or not, I'm happy about it. And a lot of things we can get better with a lot of things we'll talk about tomorrow as we prepare for Louisville.

I thought we played a great first half, really bad third quarter, and we finished them in the fourth quarter. It was kind of the game, but it wasn't good enough in the third quarter. Look at it come in and talk about it. You know we knew they wouldn't quit playing and they did the same thing at LSU last week. Tough team play.

If you're not matching them score for score and we didn't do that in the third quarter we just didn't produce enough points in that quarter and that made it a tight game. Defensively we knew it was going to be tough and they're averaging 35 points a game and they got 25. So pretty happy with that.

It's great to be in that situation and look forward to playing Louisville and home on Thursday. I wish we had more days to get ready ,but that's the way it is.

Unfortunate that Dakwa Nichols will be out for the season. And I'm not sure to the extent of the knee injury, but he will have surgery tomorrow and I feel for him. Great young man, and he's spent a lot of time in our program.  I hate to see him get injured because he was doing so many good things for us on special teams... we'll pray for him.

I don't know what was being said on the field. I'll talk to my players about it tomorrow.
I'm not happy with how we responded. We've got a veteran team, and we can't let people control our emotions with what's being said or done, and we've handled ourselves better than that and we didn't.

It's inexcusable. I don't like it. They had 12 penalties, we had six. I don't know why they were happening that way. I don't know what was being said the refs weren't telling me. I was just trying to keep the guys from continuing it.

More on Running Game...

Well you know there are big zone  dog, zone pressure team, and they have tendencies on where they were coming from. I thought Coach Ledford and Kitchings and Drink and the guys had a good feel for it. We're trying to cut off their pressures and split them and we're able to do that.

Some of the schemes, and we were knocking them off the ball a little bit. You know with some of our run game but they did a good job too.

More on starting this game fast without a letdown...

I was really happy.

I mean I was ecstatic. You know that was one thing I said to the team I said you have a choice. You're trying to have a legacy as a senior class which means you're trying to leave behind something that you're very proud of. And I said this week you have that opportunity. You haven't been 2-0 in ACC play in 11 years and the senior class can say they did that.

In order to do that you have to make the right choices about our discipline and not listening to people telling you great win. And I thought our guys did that. We did a great job. And so I was really, like I said, I think getting that win was huge... huge. You just look at the schedule moving forward and you're playing all these marquee matchups, ranked teams, and you know I know we'll be excited to play a couple of teams that aren't ranked because of the locale of those teams and this was the one that I was most concerned about and happy we get it.

More on talking to the team...

All I tell them is that we've got to find a way to win and we want to be better than we were in the week before. Like that's all we talk about right now.

It's such day to day right now, what we talk about is so tiny... all these big picture things, we don't talk about any of them. I mean it's just trying to keep them right here,right now, all the time and just be proud of them for like you've mentioned you know coming off a huge win which we haven't had in a long time against a ranked team in a way.

Finding a way go beat a team,  they are a pain in the butt.  The offense is a pain in the butt, and Dungey is a hell of a player. So is that receiver, Ishmael... great player.

More on discipline...

We talked about discipline a lot and you probably wouldn't think that in the third quarter because of the flare ups but that was what we talked about, disicipline is a choice that you make as a person and you can choose to be disappointed and choose not to be.

We talked about that all week and everything that we do and I challenge our seniors. I said You guys are the ones that talked about wanting to be in a better ballgame. You better have leadership this week because if we don't it's on you, and those guys did a great job, a great job leading us.

On Nyheim Hines as a running back...

 Yeah, he got a 100-yard game. That's great.

If you know the kid, the young man is so competitive .  You think about a track guy, and a track guy is all about personal best... let me get my PR. Did I get my PR get my PR. And so I think each game is a measuring stick for him. He was at ninety nine yards which probably hurt him all week. He lost a yard somewhere that didn't get them 100 yards , and that's why it's such a good football player.

His speed and all the other things are great, but his competitiveness is elite.

More on trying to motivate for this game...

Boston College, our guys will be angry to play them because we did not beat them last year... we didn't play well against them. We didn't have that Syracuse.  We won last year at their place so there was zero that I could go to.

I said hey guys if you want to be who you say you want to be and be in a real conversation, you got to win this week. That's all we talked about. When we play North Carolina, it doesn't matter what the record is. When we play a ranked team, when we play Notre Dame, it doesn't matter what the record. We're playing Notre Dame. When you play a team that beat you the year before you got that bad feeling about playing that team.

They outscore their opponents in the first four games 25 or 24 points in the first quarter. You know we had them down in the first quarter. So we made them come back which they haven't had to do this year.

On the kicking strategy... referencing the poor pooch kick by Bambard...

Well that was a bad kick.

I mean if you saw the sky kick we did earlier, they had an offensive lineman on the 20-yard line ,and we were kicking it to an offensive one. Earlier in the game he caught it and we tackled him on the 22 and that was supposed to be the exact same.

It's like when you go out and play golf and then you miss-hit. He missed it, bad kick.

More on Eric Dungey...

I think he's a great player and his competitive spirit jumps off the film, and I have so much respect for Dungey as a player as a competitor. A guy that won't give up football and people are probably telling him he should have given it up. He won't give it up because he loves it so much.

I have a lot of respect for that guy. I wish him nothing but the best.

More on Carson Wise kicking field goals...

I don't know if I have to go get a voodoo guy and take him down there and see if I can get rid of the curse.

I don't know. I was really proud of him. He hit a pretty long field goal early in the game and then missed an extra point.

I don't know if it got this head after that or what, but we were making progress.

Since we started training camp, he's been very accurate from the 30 yard line and that's a 47-yarder.

He's been very accurate. We had the wind behind us going that direction. He just made a field goal. The timing was right.

You always have something to lose, but he's been very accurate in practice. He kicked his first one through so I thought we'd have you know he'd have confidence to make it and he did.

A 24-hour rule with Louisville on Thursday?

12-hour rule. It's really an eight-hour rule because we're cut.  I just told the team that I said you don't get 24 hours. I said you're going to treat this like tomorrow is... we're two days removed already.

Tomorrow's game week Monday.