Dave Doeren’s Postgame Press Conference After Win Over #17 UNC

NC State Head Football Coach Dave Doeren met with the media for his postgame press conference after the Wolfpack defeated #17 UNC in Chapel Hill today in 2OT. You can watch it here, or check out a BULLETED breakdown below.

• What a game. Heck of a win. Super proud of our players and staff. It was awesome. What a football game.
• Coach Brown and his team battled back.
• The Quarterback for them is a really good football player.
• Our guys are just resilient. They’ve got a lot of grit and heart. They just find a way to win. That’s what we did.
  • I’m thankful to be with these guys. It’s been a hard month.
  • I can’t even put into words for you guys how hard this month has been for me.
  • It’s a great way to finish the season. I’m very thankful. Give God the glory.
  • I can’t wait to enjoy a Saturday of college football with no stress, just relaxing with my family. It’s a hell of a win.
• I don’t think people understand what Derrek Pitts had to do today [moved from Corner to Nickel].
  • They casted him up. He’s got a bad wrist sprain and played.
  • Jalen Frazier has been a 3rd-string and 4th-string guy all year, and he came in and gave us valuable minutes.
  • Derrek Pitts. They did a great job on Josh Downs. We all know how good of a player he is. To keep him from scoring, they did a really good job at the nickel position.
  • We missed Tyler Baker-Williams. We missed Jakeen Harris and Devan Boykin. All three nickels were out.
  • So, it was pretty impressive that Derrek could go in there and have the recall he did.
  • He was the nickel for Tony [Gibson] back at West Virginia back in the day.
  • I gave everybody a game ball, but if not he would have been one of the guys that got singled out today.
• We needed Devin [Carter].
  • He’s a guy who can make contact catches, and they’ve got big corners.
  • He came up with a big play for us there to get the lead.
  • He had a lot of contact catches that we needed to make.
  • Obviously we had another one there at the end and didn’t.
  • It’s good to have Devin back. We were hoping that we had Trent Pennix, too, but it just didn’t last.
• I think it’s a great lesson for people out there that you don’t give up, you keep working.
  • Ben [Finley] could have easily been one of these Quarterbacks who jumped in the portal when he didn’t get what he thought he was going to get.
  • Instead he was a great teammate. He went down and serviced the defense.
  • I bet that the 10 weeks down there made him the player that you’re looking at right now.
  • Going against that defense day-in-and-day-out has helped him see the game a little bit slower.
  • Our defense does a lot and presents a lot of things, and he has to see that every day as the scout team quarterback.
  • I’m super proud of him. I can’t say enough about him stepping in and taking care of the football and doing a lot of good things for us.
  • His brother was undefeated here. That’s cool to keep the tradition going for the Finleys. I can’t say enough about Ben and his performance today.

• I think we had 8 starters out at one point last week.
  • The week before I felt like the game was taken from us more than we lost it, to be honest. So, I don’t know that it reshapes anything.
  • I think it just proves the staying power that our guys have and the resiliency, grit, toughness, love.
  • I told them all week that nobody is going to care about anything other than this win when we win this game. This will make a lot of things feel better.
  • It’s a 365-day you-know-what sandwich that the other school gets to eat.
    • We didn’t want to eat it. We wanted to have that. We wanted to finish with that pride.
    • That’s what happens with rivalry games. One team gets to feel good for a year and the other team doesn’t. It’s a great job by our guys finishing.
• Yeah. ‘Light It Red’ [his t-shirt underneath his hoodie].
  • That’s what we do when there’s a celebration.
  • I actually wear this quite a bit underneath my top, and I just got excited.
  • I wanted to go over there. I heard our fans cheering, which was awesome.
  • Our parent section was great. I just wanted to go over there and thank them and get excited with them.
• I did talk about it. It’s not really a state championship because we didn’t get to play Duke.
  • But we did beat all 3 teams in state: ECU, Wake Forest and UNC.
  • It’s awesome to have that as part of the year, and obviously that helps in recruiting.