Dave Doeren met with the media after practice yesterday prior to the Wolfpack’s home matchup vs. Duke tomorrow. You can watch it here, or check out a bulleted breakdown below.

Zonovan Knight’s original commitment to NC State…flipping him…

• A lot of times when kids commit, they get caught up in the hype of a moment.
  • I think he was at the Duke-UNC basketball game when that happened.
  • As time kind of went on, I think he realized he made a decision that he needed to re-evaluate.
  • I’m not completely sure why he felt that way.
• We never stopped recruiting him.
  • We didn’t feel like when it happened it was something that would last just because it felt emotional at the time, as opposed to something that he had been thinking through for a long period of time.
• To his credit, he came back here probably 7 or 8 times after that just to make sure that this was what he wanted.
  • For us, it was just about providing information and showing him all the positives that we have.
  • We don’t negative recruit and talk bad about other places, so we just wanted to make sure he knew what NC State had to offer.
  • Thankful for us that he did.

Knight says this game is personal for him…

• I could see that. I don’t know.
• It’s not something I spend a lot of time talking to them about, but I know that there’s relationships that they have on other sidelines, whether it’s former teammates or friends that might play for that school, or coaches.
• So, I can see how that would be a motivating factor for a guy.

Focus on Turning Duke over in Practice…

• We’ve definitely talked about the fundamentals of taking the ball away, like we do every week.
• Week in and week out there are different things that you see on tape.
  • Some people don’t carry the ball with a lot of ball security.
  • Some quarterbacks will hold the ball low in the pocket.
  • For example, last week we knew that the Virginia quarterback delivered the ball low. H
    • He had kind of a sidearm release, so we talked about getting our hands up and batting balls.
• It’s week to week on what you really emphasize when it comes to the weakness of the opponent.
  • In the case of Duke, they’ve thrown some interceptions, they’ve fumbled some balls. I know they work hard on that.
• Our kids right now are very excited about what happens when they get takeaways here and when they see the outcome and how it helps our offense.
  • I know they enjoy the sideline celebration they had doing those things Saturday. So, I think there’s a lot of energy about it here.

Preparing for Goal-Line stands…

• I think the biggest thing is being tough. Guys just have to want it down there.
• They’ve gotta be really strong, stout and have good pad level.
• Obviously you’re going to see quarterback sneaks.
  • You’re going to see whatever their bread-and-butter short-yardage runs are, and then the play-action passes.
  • You just have to rep those things, but it’s very hard to simulate in practice without going live what that’s really like down there.
• Josh Harris, Alim McNeill, C.J. Clark and Savion Jackson, those are some strong, thick guys that really fought hard in the trenches in those areas to really win the line of scrimmage for us in those two situations.

Has he spoken to team about pulling away in ACC standings…