Post game quotes
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Sept. 29, 2001
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VIRGINIA 31, DUKE 10
VIRGINIA HEAD COACH AL GROH:
We’re still in the hunt. It becomes a little more clear every week.
On the Virginia defense:
We were on the field a lot with the defense, but that happens in these kind of games where you have a fairly significant lead in the fourth quarter and the other team is throwing the ball every single down. There are going to be some incompletions, and that makes for a long quarter. We tried to rotate the rush lines at the end and I thought that helped us. We had some guys who we asked to come up with plays in the game, and I thought they did that. I was pleased with a lot of things today.
We want to be aggressive with the rush scheme. It is nothing new from what I’ve been saying since January: We want to play good defense around here. I thought the defense played very opportunistically. [Defensive coordinator Al Golden] made some good changes at the half. When I say you have to play good defense, one of the things inherent to that is you have to hit the quarterback. We came in with that mentality today and we had pretty good pressure on the quarterback.
On the Virginia offensive line:
We did a few things with the scheme that seemed to minimize the amount of pressures we were getting. I thought [offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave] did a good job changing some things around at the half.
On the Virginia quarterbacks:
Matt Schaub did a good job. He is a pretty accurate passer and I thought he showed good poise in the pocket. We are getting indicates about where we are [with the quarterback situation]. We have two pretty good players and they are both developing and evolving. We are going to use those two players however they best give us a chance to compete. … This certainly doesn’t minimize what Bryson [Spinner] did last week. We are lucky to have both of them and I think both of them made some nice throws.
On the upcoming game with Maryland, which defeated W. Virginia 32-20 on Sept. 29:I kind of anticipated that they would [win]. We are looking at a team that is on a pretty good roll right now.
**Please note: The New York City firefighters honored at today’s game were: Lt. Jim Milone, Firefighter Joe Gildea, Firefighter Rich Amthor, Lt. Charlie Noseworthy.