Doeren's Postgame Comments Following Georgia Tech loss

Here's what NC State coach Dave Doeren had to say Thursday after the 28-26 loss to eliminated the Wolfpack from bowl consideration

ATLANTA -- The disappointment was etched on coach Dave Doeren's face as he met with the media following Thursday's 28-26 loss at Georgia Tech.

His team had just let another one slip away, wasting a valiant second half effort with a first half that left the Wolfpack in too deep a hole to full recover.

It was State's fifth consecutive loss and at least mathematically, the most disappointing and damaging since it assured that the Wolfpack would be shut out of the bowl picture for the first time in six seasons.

Doeren discussed what went wrong in the first half and what when right in the second -- until a decisive missed two-point conversion finally sealed the Wolfpack's fate. Here's what he had to say: 

"I’m proud of the way our guys fought in the second half. (We) obviously didn’t do enough in the first half to make it an opportunity for our players to have an opportunity to be in a much better situation."

"I thought the last two minutes of the first half really hurt us. We had a scoring drive, a three-and-out and getting the ball back with a chance to go score and we fumble the punt. I know no one feels worse about that than Thayer (Thomas). But to give them that field position before the half and then they score was tough. We were kicking a field goal, which we did and made it, and getting the ball back to start the third quarter that we could get a little bit of momentum swing there. So that was critical."

"I feel bad for our seniors. I love those kids and for them not to have a bowl game … we're going to make this a special week for them, with the last week, Senior Day at Carter-Finley against our rival."

But there were some positives tonight. We ran the football well. I thought our offensive line battled. Our tight ends and our backs ran hard. I thought Devin Leary showed a lot of guts and leadership. Tabari Hines did some good things catching the football. But we didn’t do a good enough job on their quarterback. His legs hurt us and obviously a couple of the deep throws.

Doeren said that his team's offense, which outgained Tech 278-149 and outscored the Yellow Jackets 23-7 in the second half, actually began to get its act together on its final possesion of the second half, which ended in a Christopher Dunn field goal:

"I think it started to click the drive before the end of the first half. We started getting into some run game and some tempo, which helped. I thought we just executed. We found where their blitzes were coming from and were able to pick them up better as the game went on. The O-line prevented the penetration we were having early., because there were some things happening inside on our center that was bustin up our inside and hurting us on our run game. We were able to take care of that with the adjustments that were made at the quarter.

Doeren responed to a question about the two turnovers State forced -- both fumbles recovered by Larrell Muchison -- by muttering the word "finally." Here's what he said about the Wolfpack's first takeaways since Sept. 28.

"It was great to get two takeaways. We should have had one on the first play of the game, forcing a fumble on the opening kickoff, but they recovered. It was big to get the ball back."

The Wolfpack had a chance to tie the game with just over five minutes remaining when Ricky Person Jr. catapulted himself into the end zone. But an unsuccessful two-point conversion play kept that from happening.

Here's how Doeren described what turned out to be the decisive play, in which quarterback Devin Leary overthrew tight end Cary Angeline in the end zone just as he was hit:

"It’s a sprint-out. We’ve got a flat route with a corner route behind it. So if it’s man-to-man (we're) hoping to get a rub for the flat. If it’s zone, you’ve got a high-low for the quarterback and Cary's on a hide route going on the opposite direction that he can throw back to if everything’s covered, which it was. Then he had pressure on him so he couldn’t get his feet set for the throwback. So it’s a typical rub route, high-low with the tight end hide route."

As bad as a first half Doeren described as "horrible" was, he didn't have to say much to his team at halftime. He didn't have to. They did most of the talking themselves.

"To be honest, they were calling each other out in there. I didn’t have to say a whole lot. And not in a negative way, just guys saying ‘this ain’t us, what are we doing?’ Everything has been about executing and doing your job and we didn’t and they were just calling each other out on it."

"I didn't have to say a whole lot about that. it was just 'We need to play the best half of our life to win this game, you guys are capable of it. If we can go out and do that, we’re going to have the best celebration you’ve ever had after this thing.' And we were close. We just didn’t get it done.