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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 2, 2013Dave DoerenCOACH DOEREN: Excited to take our first road game as a team, see how we can handle the things that happen when you go on the road, the different routine, the bus, the hotel, obviously an unfamiliar locker room and field. It's a bigchallenge for us this week at Wake, a place that State traditionally hasn't played well. The last seven of eight times they traveled up there they haven't come home happy. It's been a home‑team advantage for the last however many contests. We're excited about the opportunity. I know our players are looking forward to competing against them. I know that they will play hard. Q. Can you remember a season where you waited this long to play your first road game? The fact it took this long, are there any special challenges to break that routine and go out on the road? COACH DOEREN: To answer your first question, no, I've never had four home games in a row with a 10‑day prep. At Wisconsin we did open up with a bunch of home games one year, but we played straight through that year, we didn't have a bye. That part of it's unique. It's not like we're going a long ways. It's pretty close as far as this trip. But it's different for sure to play your fifth game on the road, to have had a bye week somewhere sandwiched in there before we played Clemson. It's definitely different. Q. As far as the routine is concerned, how do you get your kids to break what they've known for the last five weeks? COACH DOEREN: We actually changed the routine for the week. We do some things different. Normally as a team you stretch in one area. We go to a different area and stretch. We do everything on opposite fields just to kind of make our guys have to function in a different way for the week. It's been something that we did at Northern. It was good for us. They get used to the change. Every time we go out on the field, it's different than they're used to. We talk about it a lot. It's not something we're ignoring. We're talking about the routine change and we want the kids to embrace it. Q. You talked before the season about wanting to be a better road team this year. How do you as a coach try to get that wish to go into effect? COACH DOEREN: It's something obviously you spend time talking to your team about. It's a challenge we made a long time ago for our program to move from a challenging opponent to being a contender. We have to be able to take our show on the road, bottle up our energy we have at Carter Finley, take it somewhere else. Whether it is loud there or quiet there, we can't care. We have to be able to play within ourselves and block out the distraction, or not be brought down by the lack of energy at some schools where they don't have crowds, and just play exactly the same way we would play in our own stadium. We talk about it. We spend time talking about it. It's been a big conversation piece this week obviously. But in the off‑season it was something we talked about a lot. Q. I wanted to ask you about the fact you're getting your wide receivers into play in the running game. Is that something you've always done? Can you talk about why you do that, how effective it is. COACH DOEREN: It's something that I really believe in. The misdirection part of our offense is very important. My goal from a defensive background is to test the edges and the soundness of people's games. We're going to pull them laterally with our jet game, our arounds, and we're going to press them vertically with our zone and power schemes. It puts a lot of stress on the defense. I think it's something that allows us to utilize our speed. It helps our offensive line because it pulls people out of the box. If they're not going to pull out of the box, we're going to hand it off to those guys and let them run. If they are, it gives us a chance to run up inside against numbers. Q. The last two weeks especially, Bryan Underwood, he's been very explosive. He caught 10 touchdown catches last year. Talk about the importance of getting the ball in his hands. COACH DOEREN: He's practiced better. In the last two weeks he's had his best two weeks of practice. He's gotten the ball more because of that. A lot of these guys didn't have good practice habits, didn't go fast all the time. That's not something that we encourage now. He's bought into the fact that when he practices fast, he plays fast. As long as he keeps doing that, he's going to be a weapon for us, and we're going to find a way to get our weapons the ball. Q. Recap your first four games. What do you have to work on this week against a really tough Wake Forest team? COACH DOEREN: Each week is a little different. Our biggest issue has been change in the lineup. This will be the third game in a row we've had the same offensive line play together. I'd like to see fewer tackles in our backfield because of that. That will be a challenge because Wake has a great nose guard. I really like how hard their defensive ends play. That's the big thing, is we want to keep people out of our backfield and limit the number of plays that are made back there. That's a big goal for our offensive line in this game. It would be impressive for them to attain it. Second thing, and we got better last week, hurt us at Clemson, is to continue to minimize the presnap things that we do from an illegal formation or a guy jumping off‑sides, just have not beating ourselves. Then defensively the takeaways I think are huge. We're on defense getting three takeaways a game, it's remarkable how much better we play on offense because of field position. Q. Talk about rivalries in games. This is a local rivalry in North Carolina. Talk about what rivalry games mean for you. COACH DOEREN: Well, this game really isn't a rivalry game. It's more of an in‑state pride game for us. I think anytime you're playing a team that you recruit against within your borders, it's a big deal. I just think we run into guys a lot in this state in recruiting. We cross paths a lot on higher academic kids in particular with Wake and Duke. To be able to say you beat them helps you. It's important we have that ability to say that. I'm sure from their standpoint it helps them when they can say it. We definitely respect Wake. Definitely have a ton of respect for their coaching staff, the way they handle themselves professionally. It's a game that both sides are going to want to win badly. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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