Coming off a blowout win over Louisville, NC State football is looking to extend its win streak over archrival UNC-Chapel Hill to three games this week. Head coach Dave Doeren spoke to the media about the rivalry week game at his weekly news conference Monday. Here are some of the highlights.
On the win over Louisville: “I feel like our guys invested a lot in themselves, in their fundamentals and their technique. The results were very good for a lot of the guys. We were able to play a lot of the players in that game and get some guys some meaningful game reps. It was great to see [redshirt freshman quarterback Matt McKay] get to come in and run our offense at the end of the game, not just be in there to run the clock out. I thought he did some really nice things. Those reps are really valuable. It’s different than just getting practice reps obviously. I thought [graduate quarterback Ryan Finley] probably played his best game. I thought he really managed things well, put us in the right calls and gave guys chances to make plays. And the receivers, [junior Kelvin Harmon], [redshirt junior Jakobi Meyers] and [sophomore Emeka Emezie] played a really good football game.”
“… Our two running backs, [senior Reggie Gallaspy] and [freshman Ricky Person] ran hard and protected the football. As the game went on, I thought our run game improved a lot throughout the game. It didn’t start very fast, but as it went I thought the guys did some good things adjusting to the way they were getting played by Louisville. I thought [graduate center Garrett Bradbury] really played a good game for us.”
On the matchup with UNC: “These games are never about stats and records. It’s two close-by rivals. I’m looking forward to playing in this game, always have. I know they do the same. When you watch them on film, they have really good skill players. Their running backs are very impressive guys. They break tackles, they run hard and they’re physical blockers. Their receivers, [Anthony Ratliff-Williams] and [Dazz Newsome] are playmakers for them. They’ve got a lot of guys that have played. They’ve played in a lot of close games and obviously got a win last week with five games where they’ve lost by 10 or less. They’ve moved the ball on just about everybody offensively.”
“Defensively, they’ve got nine guys, five seniors, four juniors, that have played a lot of football for them. They know their scheme; they don’t do a lot. They’re sound. Kids know what they’re doing and why. I do think their defensive front’s as good as I’ve seen it for them in awhile, now that they’re all playing again. You see their middle linebacker, [Cole Holcomb] makes a ton of tackles. [Jason Strowbridge], [Malik Carney] and [Tomon Fox] are disruptive players. … Both their safeties are good open-field tacklers. They’re an active front, they’ve got 30 sacks on the season. So it’ll be a good challenge for us with our protections and limiting their disruption.”
On if the 2016 win in Chapel Hill was a turning point: “I’d say it was. It probably saved my job, winning that game. I wouldn’t be standing here today, probably, had we not won that game. Since then, obviously that was our recruiting class that had all these guys drafted the following year. For those guys to stick together and go through what we did that month, because that was a crazy season coming off the Clemson game. And then we just lost some games in the last seconds. Guys stuck together and got on a run at the end of that season, and then had a good bowl win against an SEC team. So I think our momentum changed after that win in our program for sure.”
On what the rivalry game means: “I don’t sit down and quantify that. I think it’s a really important game to our fan base; I’ll tell you that. Every rivalry game I’ve ever been in, even since I was at Shawnee Mission Northwest, I wanted to win that game. But every game I’m playing I want to win. I just think it’s more meaningful because we’re in the same city with a ton of their alumni. You bump into them all the time. Anytime you’re playing in-state teams, there’s recruiting things that can help you. All that stuff matters, but I want our players to play well and I want us to play our type of football. If we do that then we’ll be able to say that we won the game. We’re the type of football team that if we don’t beat us, and force them to beat themselves, we play pretty good football.”
On run game adjustments against Louisville: “It just depends on which play you’re talking about. I think in the first quarter, they were getting downhill. We were a little lateral in some of the things we were doing. The first game, we went off on the snap count, so that whole play got blown up because of that. There was another play where our guard stepped on our center’s foot, so he couldn’t get his block and the whole play got blown up. We just didn’t execute. We weren’t crisp in the run game early. Then we started doing some different things where we weren’t always running the ball in certain directions or to certain people. Changing up where we were going with the football.”
“Ryan got some tempo going so he could throw it around and loosen them up. They got tired and that was part of it. Early in the game there’s a feeling out period. Sometimes people defend you a little differently than they were going to defend the team that you watched that was like you. So you have to get to the sideline and say ‘Hey, they’re doing this instead of what we practiced, so here’s what we’re going to do.’ I thought our guys did that. The coaches did a good job coming up with other ways to move the football on the ground and our backs ran hard. There were a bunch of north-south, dirty runs by those guys.”
On Kelvin Harmon and Stephen Louis’ relationship: “Those two guys have kind of been hooked to the hip for the past couple years in the offseason training stuff that they do on their own. I don’t know if it’s a competitive thing where they want to catch more balls than the other guy but they just started doing all these things together to make each other elite and hold each other accountable. I think it’s really since Kelvin’s freshman year, because he saw how hard Steph worked when he was injured and I think there’s a lot of respect for each of them.”
