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Oct. 4, 2003
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Virginia Coach Al Groh
On his overall thoughts on the game:
“I was happy for the players and pleased with the way we played. In the ACC road games are important, If you want to do anything in this conference, you have to win on the road. We got one now, we go into a real hard place to play next week, hopefully this will give us a little bit of momentum for that.”
On the defense’s play:
“I think defensively, we felt very challenged. You know that’s 36 points a game against three name teams. So we felt very challenged. With the particular way we wanted to play, I think the players got the message very well and executed very well.”
On getting pressure on Darian Durant:
“We changed our rush plan a little bit at the half. Some of the things we did in the first half, we changed the rush plan. This guy is a terrific quarterback. You know if it was anybody other than Darian, we probably would have had a lot more than we had, but he’s got great escape ability, he’s got a great competitive mentality. He was hard to pin up, but I thought our guys really did a good job.”
On Matt Schaub and the offense’s performance:
“He obviously means so much to our team. This is a nice way to be able to play, to go 19 for 22 with that kind of efficiency and still be able to run the ball. In the last few weeks we have had to play every game differently and its nice to be able to play both ways if that is required.
On stopping the Tar Heels on the first drive of the second half:
“We thought that’s one of the critical things, to win on the road, that you half to do. When it is a closely contested game at the half on the road, you need to come out in the third quarter and try and establish yourself. Otherwise it just becomes a seesaw game, back and forth, and who knows what happens with those things. The advantages in that case it is often with the home team. That was a big challenge for us.”
On Wali Lundy’s play:
“Wali is a grinder. He is a good kind of guy that you can feed it to a lot throughout the game. I’ve been impressed here, just in recent games, especially now that he has his legs back underneath him, I can see what he is capable of in terms of total carries in a game. He is a back that you can ride for the whole fourth quarter if that is the way the game goes.”
North Carolina Coach John Bunting
“It was a beautiful day, great crowd, great Old Well walk. We couldn’t ask for a more perfect situation for us to get our first win. We just went out there and didn’t take advantage of that opportunity. That’s very heartbreaking to me. And to a lot of the players on our team.
“We had chances in the first half to stay with those guys. I knew that we would need to score points when we got in the red zone. I’m talking about touchdowns rather than field goals to stay in there and put a little pressure on them, which we didn’t. There were several opportunities to make some plays out there, to tackle somebody, to play a tight man-to-man coverage, and we weren’t able to come up with that, either.
“I really thought at halftime we would come out and play better than we had the first half and we played worse. I’ll take my responsibility for that, I’m sure the rest of the coaching staff will take their responsibility. And I certainly hope that our players will take theirs so we can move on. There’s not much good to come from that game with the exception of the special teams.
“What we’ve got to do is get those players that are capable of playing good to play good all the time and be more consistent.”
On true freshman linebackers Edwards and Sparkman:
“They played hard, they played fast. Larry Edwards played fast – he was all over the place. That’s the kind of talent you need to be competitive in the ACC. That’s the kind of players we’re playing against.”
“We matched them in special teams. There are three phases in the game and you have to win two of them to have a chance to win. We did not win either the offensive or defensive phase.”
On quarterback Darian Durant:
“As good as he is, we can’t week-in, week-out put it all on him. And there is a lot on him. We need more plays to be made by the guys who had been making those plays. Failure to run the football is hurting us, to be able to sustain drives. We went for it on fourth and one and we were snuffed in the backfield and Ronnie McGill fought his way out of it to get the first down.”
On the timeout he called in the first half:
“I’ve seen some great basketball coaches call some timeouts at the right times. The guy who coached here for so long was my favorite of all time. And I thought he always called them at the right time. I often wondered if there might be a time to do that in a football game and I felt that that was the time. I did not like our body language out there and I did not like the fact that we were being called for a lot of silly penalties.”