Al Groh Quotes

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Al Groh Quotes following Virginia’s 22-20 win over North Carolina, Sept. 15, 2007

Opening Remarks
Probably everybody enjoyed that one. That was one of those things that makes college football great. A lot of plays by both teams, two teams fighting it out until the end. Terrific day, great atmosphere, and obviously, on top of that we pulled out a win. I thought we did a lot of good things in all phases. Obviously, offensively, we were rugged, and we were very effective in running the ball, that was a big factor in the game.

Cedric (Peerman) once again not only carried the ball, but he carried the flag and the heart for the team. To have those openings, obviously a lot of kids did a real good job to do that. We were very opportunistic on defense. We had to make a play at the end, and our guys were there to make a play. In those circumstances sometimes players can get down, teams can crack, that’s the second week in a row they’ve done that. Special teams stepped right up. It was as solid for us as they needed to be. Chris Gould was terrific for us, and Kudos to Danny Aiken today. Sometimes to come back from something as public as he had last week, that can often be the catalyst in the making of a player, so that was a very positive thing.

On the field goal reversal:
Fortunately, we do have replay, and if I said that I’ve never seen [a field goal being overturned] before, certainly there are a lot of members in that club. Field goals, look, there are a lot of them that get made that sometimes it’s a little bit difficult for us to determine from that particular angle, but we had people on the sidelines that were insisting that the kick was good. They brought it to my attention, and they were very adamant about it. [Upstairs] had the same kind of angle, and people were adamant to us. I trust the opinion of the people, and they were that adamant about it. You got to believe and trust what they have to offer, so obviously that worked out greatly for us as three points were pretty important. That was our challenge. I just went out and said that we’d like to use our challenge here, we’d like to use the challenge on the ruling on the field goal. A lot of people on the side said it was good. No, we did not have a video camera recording it. We challenged pretty quickly. We’re allowed one challenge per game, and you inform the official closest to you that you want to challenge the ruling on the play.

On having 2 wins in the ACC:
That’s very good. We’ve got two, and this is going to be a happy evening for the players, they deserve it, but pretty soon it’s time to move on. We’ve got a big test coming up. Clearly the most talented team yet that we’ve played. We’ve got a big test coming up next week, and we’ll be pretty quickly moving on and getting our focus on that one. (UVa hosts Georgia Tech next week)