Virginia coach Al Groh Quotes

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Al Groh Quotes

Opening Comments:
This is a very special group of players. Their hearts not only beats for competition but beats for each other. We had a chance to do something few Virginia teams have ever done and that was to win 10 games. We had our opportunities and probably frankly we gave the thing away.

That leaves a lot of heartbreak next door but at the same time it is still “We, Us and Ours” and it is all of ours loss. We all feel it the same way. Those players leave with us having the greatest of affection and the greatest of respect for what they put in to make this team what it was.

It tugs at your heart for some of them to not to get what they so dearly wanted here today. And for it to have happen the way it did.

Q: Did you consider putting Sewell in the series before you did?
Groh: It was an injury to the inside of his knee. I can’t give you any more specific information because I don’t have it. So much of his game is about mobility we did not want him in there when he was immobile, one for his safety and two for the execution of things. There at the end it was just one of those things, kind of with the warrior’s mentality, he was like, I don’t care, I can do this.’ Clearly when he got out of the pocket, he couldn’t do the same thing. That is so much a part of his game that we felt when that part of his game was missing then obviously a lot of the plan was missing.

Q: What happened on the play where Peter Lalich (QB) fumbled?
Groh: We are trying to win the game and we have the ball and we’ve had some success doing that. We practice that circumstance frequently. Unfortunately the penalty put us in a difficult circumstance. Then we have a fairly safe play called there, a screen pass to the left over there. You figure that is pretty safe, you don’t see too many guys get sacked on a screen pass. Unfortunately we did not get a very good execution at one position and the player came scot-free before the ball could be thrown.

Q: Did you ever feel the game was in hand?
Groh: We didn’t play the game like the game was in hand. We knew coming in here that, for both teams, the game was never going to be over. Each team had proven their ability to come back at the end of a game. We were well aware of that circumstance.

Q: Containing their offense.
Groh: I give a great deal of credit to the players. They really bought in to how we how we wanted to play it. We had a pretty good understanding of what to do. That is all well and good if the coach has it, but eventually it comes down to the players buying into it, learning it and executing it. I think the kids on that defensive unit did a wonderful job of really applying what we taught them against some terrific players. Those guys are hard to hold down. We held them down for a long time.

Really, the big issue was, I’m not saying this to take anything away from those kids on the other side because they came back and won the game. There were two possessions we should have had the ball and we didn’t. The onside kick to start the second half and the fumble there at the end of the game. If we had those two possessions with to do something with, perhaps we could have swung the thing around.

We thought 24 or 25 points would put us in range to win the game. Without those two circumstances, we probably would have been.

Groh: The first thing that happens after a team loses is you begin the blame game. This has been a tight, closed-knit team and as we said before, when we lose, we all lose. We all could have all done better. I could have done better, I could have called a better game. We could have executed that play better. We could have scored more points. There is no heartbreak and there is no bitterness that is going to divide us.

Q: On the onside kick:
Groh: On our last practice Sunday, our 10-minute special teams period was nothing but fakes, onsides kicks, reverses on onside kickoffs. It was none of the standard plays. We were well aware of the fact that is part of Texas Tech’s very aggressive repertoire. They just executed the play better than we did.

Q: Was there a cumulative wearing effect of facing their offense:
Groh: The players did not express that at all. This is a defensive team that for two years has played as an iron man unit. This was nothing new for the defensive players. We did make some strategic substitutions along the way to cut some players time down.

Crabtree is a great player. One of the things that I think most coaches think at criticial points in the game is to think players first and then plays and they clearly thought him. It didn’t surprise us that they did. We talked about it on the sidelines to look for an increased effort on Texas Tech’s part to get the ball to number give. Even though he didn’t have the catch in the back of the end zone, he had the catch on the tipped pass for about 30 yards to put them in that particular position.

There were many people that we spoke to leading up to the game who said no matter how impressed you are with the player (Crabtree), watching him on tape and so forth, well he is better than what you think. We thought he was pretty good and obviously he was very good for their team today. We certainly tip our hat to him.

Q: On Dowling’s coverage on late TD catch.
Groh: He caught it, so we did not have good enough coverage.

Groh: A team of that firepower, if give them additional possessions, and both of them basically, one was a short field and one was a relatively short field, you are just making it hard on yourself to win and unfortunately we bear the results of that.