WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Jake Dickert had talked about two things frequently in the preseason as he prepared for his Wake Forest debut: the importance of doing everything with boundless energy and leaning on Demond Claiborne.
Both plans went awry early.
Yet all that mattered to Dickert was his team fought its way through to win anyway, offering a successful — if ugly — start to the latest stop in his long coaching climb that has reached all the way down to the Division II ranks
.“We did enough to
win a game," he said after surviving a 10-9 win against Kennesaw State that included losing Claiborne early to rib injury. "We came in here with one mission. That's to win a game. We did that.”
Indeed, the Demon Deacons (1-0) won on a night when they scored their lone touchdown in the first quarter, trailed 9-7 late into the third and needed a fourth-down stop in the final minutes to finally close out a Conference USA team that is in its second year of Bowl Subdivision play.
“I think everyone was anxious,” defensive back Nick Andersen said. “Everyone was prepared. ... It starts at the top and the team never folded under pressure. Adversity hit, it was really good to see and it's good credit to Coach and what he's displayed on all of us.”
The most obvious culprit for troubles was the nearly immediate loss of Claiborne, removing the 1,000-yard rusher from last year set to be the engine of this year's attack — so much so that Dickert had joked Claiborne could see 40 carries a game.
And that rippled through the offense, from execution and big plays he routinely provides to the energy that Dickert has talked ceaselessly about.
“I think yeah, you saw some long faces at times, and that's why I was up and down the sideline saying, ‘Guys, let’s go get this thing,'” Dickert said.
“The guys were definitely aware of it. They know.”
Claiborne had carries of 13 and 2 yards on the game's first two plays, only to come off the field and head to the locker room. He later came jogging back out carrying jersey-wrapped pads and checked in for the first of multiple times into the injury tent.
He eventually returned to the game with 10:24 left in the second quarter and had an immediate 4-yard carry, only to get up and jog right back to the sideline in what turned out to be the end of his night. Claiborne was later spotted with an icebag wrapped around his left ribs and was out of shoulder pads by the start of the second half.
Dickert didn't have an update on the exact nature of Claiborne's injury, but didn't sound overly concerned afterward.
“DC's a leader for us, man,” said quarterback Robby Ashford, who scored on a short keeper for Wake Forest's lone touchdown in the first quarter. “Everybody respects that guy, loves that guy. I love him to death. When he went out, you could kind of feel how our team was, it kind of went off.”
Still, Wake Forest grinded through against the Owls, pushing ahead for good on Connor Calvert's field goal late in the third. And the Demon Deacons held up on fourth down to force Dexter Williams II to throw incomplete with 1:50 left, prompting Dickert to pump his fist in exuberance that might’ve had some mixed-in relief, too.
“Sometimes you need some of this type of adversity to go out there and really discover what type of team you are,” Dickert said.
Dickert, who turned 42 last weekend, had left Washington State to take over after Dave Clawson's unexpected resignation in December. He's starting a rebuild for a program coming off consecutive 4-8 seasons, one picked to finish 16th in the 17-team Atlantic Coast Conference.
And he looked at even an ugly win as a formative experience in that longer-term effort thanks to the game-clinching defensive response. The look of its impact comes Sept. 6 against instate Championship Subdivision program Western Carolina.
"We will be a better team eight days from now because we went through this," he said.
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