NC State coach Dave Doeren says team wants to fight, ‘built for adversity’ following 3-2 start

NC State coach Dave Doeren isn’t one to shy away from talking how he feels. And after the Wolfpack’s back-to-back losses to Duke and Virginia Tech, the 13th-year coach laid it all out there Monday afternoon in his first of two weekly media availabilities. 

“It’s a situation none of us thought we’d be in at 3-2, but at the same time, that’s where we’re at,” Doeren said. “When you get tested, you stand up and face the test. That’s what I’ve done for a long time in my life. … When you get in the corner, you swing hard, and you get guys with you that want to swing. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

NC State’s loss at Duke, a 45-33 shootout, didn’t appear to sting as much as this past weekend’s 23-21 defeat to a reeling Virginia Tech squad that was outscored 79-26 in its previous six quarters against FBS competition. The Wolfpack, however, wasn’t able to build a strong enough lead to overtake the Hokies, led by interim coach Philip Montgomery. 

That hurt. NC State graduate linebacker Caden Fordham, a captain, and graduate defensive end Cian Slone were both visibly frustrated in the postgame press conference. The Wolfpack defense logged a season-most 14 missed tackles in the loss to the Hokies as it gave up 174 rushing yards on 16 attempts to Terion Stewart, a tailback that had just 11 carries for 65 yards this season entering the game. 

Not only did it sting inside the locker room, but the Wolfpack fan base grew angry over the defeat. Social media turned into a space to vent, and none of that was positive about the direction of the NC State program. 

But for Doeren, NC State’s winningest coach (90 victories), he doesn’t care about what happens outside the Murphy Center. He wants to win just as badly as the fan base — likely even more — but his goal is to keep the roster focused on the task at hand, not at what others outside the program’s building next to Carter-Finley Stadium believe. 

“You’ll find out who’s loyal and who isn’t during tough times,” Doeren said. “You got to block the people out of your life that aren’t that way. You don’t need to read negative things, you don’t need to pay attention to negative things. You control what you can, and you surround yourself with people that want to do the same.”

He later added: “It’s one thing to say you want us to win when we’re winning, and when we lose to say you want us to leave. That’s not loyalty. We’re going to be loyal to the people that are loyal to us, and that’s these players, these coaches. We’re going to fight together. We’re going to fight hard. That’s the message. And these kids are going to do the same.”

NC State, which hosts Campbell on Saturday afternoon (2 p.m., ACCNX), is looking to right the ship before its road trip to Notre Dame the following weekend. Coming together is something Doeren preached after the loss at Duke, but it was stressed even more following the defeat at the hands of the Hokies. 

“As coaches and players, when you face adversity, it’s about locking arms, getting together and getting better,” Doeren said. “In that room, they want to compete, they want to get better, they want to fight, and this team’s built for adversity. We understand at NC State, what this place is about. It’s about not quitting, it’s about fighting even harder. When things get tough, we bow up.”

The Wolfpack is likely to lean on its hard, tough, together motto that Doeren has instilled in the program. The ‘HTT’ acronym, after all, is on the front of each and every helmet in Raleigh. Doeren’s job is to prepare the team moving forward, and he believes that it will be able to rally around the mantra that the program holds itself to.

At the end of the day, NC State’s program has the same blue-collar mindset as the university, and Doeren wanted to stress that nobody within the Murphy Center has quit on the season with seven games remaining.

“As a fan base, we understand how passionate you are and how much you want us to win,” Doeren said. “Just know that you’ve got a coach and a staff and a bunch of young men that are trying their butts off, and they’re not going to quit. That’s what we’re about. We’re about sticking together and fighting. As we go through this, we ask that you do the same: stick with us and fight. Tough times never last, and tough people do. One of the things that I love about this school is that it’s built with tough people.”

Doeren, though, wasn’t naive. In a way, he understood why those outside the program aren’t happy. There’s time for the program to right the ship, and he knows it comes down to the coaching staff and players executing adjustments the rest of the way.

“It’s a what have you done for me lately business, and I understand we’ve lost two in a row, so that’s how we’re looked at. We got to get back to doing things better,” Doeren said. “No doubt about it, we’ve got to get back to what won us the first three games. Coming out of the first three games, I said this, we’re a lot better than we know we are. And we haven’t shown that yet. That’s on us to get it done.”