{"id":76878,"date":"2025-08-30T14:55:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T18:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=76878"},"modified":"2025-09-20T14:41:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T18:41:02","slug":"what-wake-forest-said-after-the-kennesaw-state-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/08\/30\/what-wake-forest-said-after-the-kennesaw-state-win\/","title":{"rendered":"What Wake Forest Said After the Kennesaw State Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two plausible ways to look at what happened Saturday night at Allegacy Stadium. There is the take that says, \u201cHey, it\u2019s a new coaching staff, new system, and new players, so a win is a win.\u201d And there is a different angle that says, \u201cHoly cow. All that Spring camp. All that Fall camp. And a 10-9 win over Kennesaw State is all we got for that?\u201d There is also a third take that says some of both is possibly correct. Here is what Wake Forest had to say after the Kennesaw State win.<\/p>\n

What Wake Forest Said<\/h2>\n

Nick Anderson<\/h3>\n

The defensive back was correct when he said the Wake Forest defense took some hits early on. Kennesaw State was running plays with only burning 6-7 seconds off the plat clock. So the pace was fast, and the chunks of yards being picked up were significant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned to settle down,\u201d he said after the game. \u201cWe got punched in the mouth early. I think we did a good job of not getting too high, not getting too low, not getting rattled.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that it was the experience of the defense that allowed the unit to settle in. KSU had 200 total yards of offense in the first half and only 107 in the second half.<\/p>\n

Anderson said he was not worried about the lack of production on offense with so much of it being new, and star running back Demond Claiborne being out for most of the game. \u201cTonight, the defense held them to nine points. And there will be times the offense is going to score 40 and the defense is going to give up 39.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robby Ashford<\/h3>\n
\"What
Photo courtesy: Grace Sorrells (Shot with Grace)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The quarterback is at his fourth school in six years, so he has seen a lot and done a lot in his college football time. Still, he pointed out some unknowns early on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a pretty game overall. It wasn\u2019t how we expected to come out and play,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had a good week of practice. We felt great. It was just a lot unknown going into that game with a DC who\u2019s been overseas the past two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was referring to Marc Mattioli, the KSU defensive coordinator. Mattioli spent the last two seasons as a head coach in Paris in the European Football League. Wake head coach Jake Dickert assured the media last week that he had watched plenty of film on Mattioli\u2019s team, so we are not sure where the surprises came in.<\/p>\n

Ashford also took the first approach, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not ideally how we expected to win. A win is a win. We\u2019re 1-0.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happens next with Western Carolina coming to town was clear to Ashford. \u201cWe know we can\u2019t have too many more of these,\u201d he said, referring to the lack of production on offense.<\/p>\n

Jake Dickert<\/h3>\n

We covered the head coach\u2019s post-game press conference<\/a> to a great extent on Friday night. He was not happy with the early going of the game, citing, \u201cA lot of undisciplined play in the first half.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did intend to project an air of confidence in saying the team would be better in eight days, from Friday\u2019s game, because they went through that tough early experience.<\/p>\n

Dickert talked about the running game in the absence of all-conference rusher Demond Claiborne. He said, as some coaches do, that it is \u201cnext man up.\u201d He applauded the efforts of Ty Clark in particular. \u201cLet\u2019s give credit, let\u2019s focus on Ty Clark, coming in, picking up the slack, running his tale off.\u201d But there is more depth to the running back issue than next man up. Take out Ashford\u2019s rushing stats, because quarterbacks get messed over by having sacks count against their rushing yardage. The adjusted stat line is 88 yards rushing for the team on 29 carries for a three-yard per carry average. Clark had 37 yards on 11 carries. Jamario Clements had 26 yards on 11 carries.<\/p>\n

He called the play of his new quarterback<\/a> \u201cefficient.\u201d Dickert noted that Ashford did not turn the ball over, but also did not produce as well as he would have wanted on some key plays in the game.<\/p>\n

Dickert will be meeting with the media again on Monday after having reviewed the game film from Friday night in thorough detail.<\/p>\n

Main Image: Tony Siracusa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two plausible ways to look at what happened Saturday night at Allegacy Stadium. There is the take that says, \u201cHey, it\u2019s a new coaching staff, new system, and new players, so a win is a win.\u201d And there is a different angle that says, \u201cHoly cow. All that Spring camp. All that Fall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":76883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,17,35643],"tags":[9582,33534,1249,35509],"class_list":["post-76878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-featured","category-news","category-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-jake-dickert","tag-nick-anderson","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-western-carolina"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76878"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76885,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76878\/revisions\/76885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}