NC State's Dave Doeren: "What A Win"

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media after the Wolfpack's win over No. 17 Louisville.

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I’m really proud of our players and our coaching staff. What a win. Great football game. Bunch of players on both teams playing hard. When you can play like that in that environment, it was electric. Our student section was the best I’ve ever seen it tonight, and we’d love for it to be like that every week. They make our team so much better when they do that for us. Thank you to our fans for that.

I thought Ryan Finley played a tremendous game, gave a lot of guys opportunities. Two receivers over 100 yards, and Nyheim (Hines) I thought really played hard. Our guys just wanted it. There were guys that got banged up – (Garrett) Bradbury’s out there laying on the ground, ribs are all beaten up. A lot of guys wouldn’t be tough enough to deal with that, and he was right back out there. That’s just a credit to the toughness of our guys, and I love them for it.

We worked really hard to get to this point. I told our team it was coming, told y’all it was coming. Some of you believed me, some of you didn’t. You can just feel it right now in our locker room. They believe they’re the best team. They’re playing hard, they’re playing together, and they’re tough, and it’s a lot of fun. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into it.
 
We get a nice little break coming off a short week, get to recharge our batteries a little bit and actually watch a little college football. Come back Sunday and get ready for Pitt.
 

On Ryan Finley’s performance...

Ryan really has done what he’s done every game. He’s consistent and he knows where to go with the football. He makes plays, keeps up in drives. He’s a great game manager and distributor of the football. He’s got great touch, Coach Drink has done a heck of a job coaching him. He knows exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and he’s never affected by anything. That’s exactly what we want at that position.
 

On Nyheim Hines...

He just plays angry. He’s competitive, spirited. Super talented, and he’s the most competitive guy on the field at times. He hates not playing well. Plays football like he runs track, trying to get a personal best all the time.
 

On the team’s maturation process...

They don’t want to be denied what they feel is theirs right now. We talked about it today with the team. They’ve had the struggle. They’ve had to learn what the word ‘perseverance’ means. It’s one of our core values. You don’t just choose to persevere, you have to have adversity. You have to have struggle, you have to face your fears. To do that, you’ve got to grow up, dig deep.

Our guys did that. They’ve invested so much, they can’t give in right now. They’re going to find a way. Offense is feeding the defense, defense feeding the offense. That’s the fun part of it. You can hear them on the sideline encouraging each other and it’s great. There’s no flinch in these guys, I can tell you that.
 

On Bradley Chubb returning for an environment like tonight...

We talked about finishing what we started. That was one of the factors, but there were a lot of factors. I guarantee you seeing the student section paint their bodies with ‘Chubb 4 Heisman’ made him feel good tonight. That was pretty awesome. That was never in our conversation, but he’s a cult hero right now and he deserves that.