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Dave Doeren Readies Wolfpack For Matchup With Notre Dame

Doeren, who has a 21-21 record at North Carolina State, is still seeking a signature victory. (USA Today Sports)

North Carolina State head coach Dave Doeren grew up in a Catholic family and attended Catholic school.

Though the 44-year-old Shawnee Mission, Kan., native was a fan of Nebraska as a child, he was well aware of the success Notre Dame was having during Lou Holtz’s tenure.

All those wins and tradition will accompany the Irish when the Wolfpack play host at Carter-Finley Stadium on Saturday afternoon. Doeren, though, said things like that don’t matter.

“I learned this from my time at Wisconsin and here, for us to beat anybody regardless of what they used to be or what they are now or what people say they’re going to be or how many stars they have or what their preseason rankings are, we’ve got to control the things we can control,” Doeren said at his weekly press conference. “That’s all I’m going to talk about with our players.

“The history of that program has nothing to do with what’s going to happen on Saturday.”

Doeren has led the Wolfpack to a 3-1 mark in his fourth season. Recruiting rankings are firmly on the side of Notre Dame, though North Carolina State enters as a slight favorite in Vegas for the noon kickoff.

“You can watch college football and see that everybody is beatable,” Doeren said. “Like I told [the team] on Sunday, you can go through and say, ‘This team beat this team.’ All we know is if we beat ourselves, we can lose to everybody.

“If we don’t beat ourselves, we can beat anybody. That’s all our focus is right now — [to] put the cleanest version of ourselves on the field and execute at the highest level we can.”

Doeren highlighted Notre Dame’s high-powered offense and talented offensive line. Sophomore wide receivers Equanimeous St. Brown and C.J. Sanders caught his eye, as well as senior offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey.

Then there’s junior quarterback DeShone Kizer. Doeren compared Kizer’s 6-4½, 230-pound stature to that of former Wolfpack and current New England Patriots quarterback Jacoby Brissett.

All those weapons will be a challenge for NC State, which has beaten William & Mary, Old Dominion and Wake Forest, and suffered a loss to East Carolina Sept. 10.

“We have gotten better, but we’re going to have to play our very, very best football, there’s no doubt,” Doeren said. “There are going to be some one-on-one matchups regardless of how you defend anybody with the ways they move [St. Brown] around. We’ve got to go up and make plays on the ball. We’ve got to beat blocks one-on-one.

“They can score, they can score fast and if they want to make it a deal where they’re running the football, they’ve got big backs. A really good test defensively going up against their offense and with Kizer at quarterback.”

Defensively, Doeren said he’s still unsure of what the Irish will run against NC State. Since the firing of defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder and the promotion of Greg Hudson, Doeren has noticed differences in the defense.

And with Notre Dame’s one game with Hudson at DC coming against uptempo Syracuse, Doeren knows his team has to be ready for anything.

“Are they going to play more press coverage like they did earlier in the year, or are they going to play more soft coverage like they did last week?” Doeren said. “That’ll be something we have to ask and adjust to as we go into the game.

“They are a three- and four-down team, so offensively we’ll have our plan and we’ll have to execute against multiple looks and do a good job adjusting.”

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