11/7/2020 football Edit

Manny Diaz says NC State gave Miami all it could handle

Justin H. Williams • TheWolfpackCentral

Staff Writer

No. 11 Miami defeated NC State 44-41 Friday night in Carter-Finley Stadium in a game with four ties and six lead changes.

The Hurricanes (6-1, 5-1 ACC) and the Wolfpack (4-3, 4-3 ACC) combined for 1,030 yards of total offense.

Miami head coach Manny Diaz, a former assistant at NC State from 2000-2005, admitted the Pack pushed his team to the brink in the first meeting between the two schools since 2016.

"What a game," Diaz said. "Credit to NC State, they gave us all that we could handle. I thought some of their execution, the way they called it, and the way they outfought us on the backend at times really presented us with a lot of problems.

"At halftime, we were on the ropes and the leadership of this team came into the locker room at halftime and calmed everybody down. We weren’t ourselves. With the penalties, we were just not giving ourselves the chance to win the game.

"Guys were starting to press in the second quarter. You could see the strain on their faces. We came into halftime. We regrouped. We knew it still wouldn’t be easy in the second half."

Miami Hurricanes football Manny Diaz — Miami head coach Manny Diaz won his first game against NC State 44-41 Friday night. (Ethan Hyman, The News & Observer)

The Hurricanes trailed by three at halftime but outscored the Wolfpack 23-17 in the second half and 13-3 in the fourth quarter.

Miami outgained NC State 620-410 on offense, but the Hurricanes head coach was impressed how effectively the Pack was able to move the ball downfield on his aggressive defense.

"I thought the key was the run game," Diaz said. "In the first half, they were running the ball well and making great throws and catches, but they were able to run the football.

"There were some throws or catches that they made that were highly contested and they were just coming up with all of them and outfighting us for them. It was very disappointing to see that.

"They had 41, which is way too many, but seven of that in the kicking game. Credit to those guys for not panicking and playing their best when it was needed."

Diaz was not caught off guard by the program he was a part of in the first years of his coaching career. He felt that his team was dialed in for most of the game and were simply pushed in a competitively fought game between two strong ACC programs.

"We never expected this game to be easy," Diaz said. "I don’t think we expected this game to be 44-41, but we knew from watching NC State on film this year that they were 4-2 in the conference, we were 4-1. They were half a game behind us."