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Virginia plays its final home game of the season this Saturday against Clemson. The game is scheduled to kickoff at noon and will be televised on the Raycom/ACC network. The two teams haven’t faced each other since the Cavaliers’ 31-10 win four years ago; no current Cavalier has ever played against Clemson. Both teams are 5-5 on the season and are fighting to become bowl eligible. Virginia has lost two in a row and is coming off a bye last week. The Tigers have won two of their last three, including a 31-7 home win against Duke last Saturday.
Virginia head coach Al Groh held his weekly press conference Tuesday. Here are some of the highlights as he talked about Saturday’s game.
Q: Clint Sintim said earlier today that it was a good week for everybody (to have a bye week). Do you kind of feel the same way?
Groh: It was. The players were very focused, especially the first two days. Our goal was just to not look at it like on an extended period of time, but just have a good practice each day. And to start with the attitude that usually is the foundation of those type of practices; the players responded as was requested and as was necessary, which was obviously a very positive sign that we could really have their attention on what the possibilities are coming up.
Q: John Phillips was talking about one play, I guess a pass play you’ve run 12 times this season, and every time it’s worked and gotten yards. Do you have breakdowns of every play you’ve run, how many yards you’ve gained and how much does that go into your game plan at this point in the season when you have a big body of work?
Groh: We do. Sure, quite a bit. Obviously we would like to continue to do what we have found out that we can do well; we d like to do less of what we found out that we’re not doing as well. Sometimes it’s things that we did very well in the past but the current personnel perhaps is not such that it plays to their strength. Or sometimes we uncover certain things as the season goes on that, gee, this particular team and this particular player seems to have a good disposition to doing this well.’ Sometimes we find out that we’re doing something an awful lot in a particular circumstance and so we might do something different the next time.
We might, let’s just say theoretically, we uncover that there is a certain down and distance on which we’ve never run the ball. Then in the next game, we might just run the ball in that circumstance and everybody is going to boo because they can’t understand why we ran it. Well, sometimes you just do to break the tendency.
Q: What kind of adjustments do you guys have to make with an offense that’s potentially explosive as Clemson’s is?
Groh: Well, certainly they’re eye catching (with) the speed that’s there. There is clearly a well thought out plan to get the ball frequently to those players who can cause a defense a lot of trouble on a one-play basis. And thats what they do.
That’s probably one of the reasons why Clemson was so highly rated going into the season because there is a lot of them. Obviously with (Aaron) Kelly we have the all time leading receiver in the conference, we have two outstanding backs, maybe the two best backs in the conference, on the same team. Certainly the fastest back if we go by confirmed NCAA results. And a very, very fast receiver who I think he s got 44-45 times but he is not a marquee player just because he’s just kind of got to wait his turn till these other three move out of the way a little bit. But we are very familiar with him as a player from when he was at Fork Union, so there’s a lot of firepower.
Q: You mentioned previously where Clemson was in the preseason. Are you surprised to see where they are at this point in the season, given what they had in the preseason?
Groh: I think a lot of people probably were there at midseason. It’s one of those things that, was the team not winning games or were they playing bad ball? They were just not winning games; they lost a very close game to Maryland, they lost a very close game to Georgia Tech, they lost a very close game to Wake Forest. Those are all the kind of games that determine what shows up on the ledger.
But, in fact a play or two here or there doesn’t change how the team played it just changes the results. They weren’t playing bad football, obviously they weren’t dominating with that personnel, but now they clearly are on track the way they’ve played here recently, particularly on offense.
Q: Because C.J. Spiller can do so many different things, is he just about the most dangerous guy you’ve faced this year?
Groh: Very definitely. There has been no more dangerous kick returner that we’ve played. There certainly is no more dangerous runner that we’ve played. And as he has indicated here of latehe’s had an 83-yard touchdown catch against Duke. He had a 50-something catch against Boston College, so he’s doing all the things that the most dangerous wide receivers do and things that hardly any backs can do.
Q: Your seniors have played Wyoming twice, Pittsburgh twice, Connecticut twice, but they’ve never played Clemson. Is that one of the just unavoidable negatives of expansion that you’re just going to have these period where you don’t play teams in your same conference?
Groh: Yes. I think coaches probably stay pretty well versed on what’s going on around the conference. Obviously you’re going to know your constant opponents better than somebody that you haven’t (played). But in the cross over of game tapes and what not, clearly you’re not going to be an expert on the team you haven’t studied, but you have a pretty good sense of, hey, this the system that this team runs.’
But for players because there is, what is it a four-year interval with the cross over games?, players can very much be out of touch with teams in their own conference. Particularly this one in this particular circumstance because of the geographical separation of these two teams and where the pool of players on their rosters come from; there are probably very few players on either team that were recruited by the other team.
Q: Given that Tommy Bowden was among the longer tenured coaches in the league, will it be strange not be playing against him?
Groh: It will be, One of the plus signs of teams that you don’t play very often is … we see the coaches two or three times at conference events, but not really competitive (situations). There have been no results here recently so I’ve always enjoyed Tommy’s company.
Q: This is the last home game for the seniors. I guess every group is special but do you have a sense that this group is particularly close?
Groh: This group really seems to be, and has throughout the season, … overtly wearing their status. We’re the seniors, we have a lot of responsibility and this is really significant to us. We’ve been here through a lot and this is the last time through.’
You can clearly see that it’s been part of their group personality throughout. I think that had a lot to do with their holding course and giving direction here through early stages of the season.
Q: The seniors spoke about the tradition of speaking to the team before their final home game. On those occasions have there been times when you learn something about a player that you didn’t know before?
Groh: All of us who are in the room when that occurs learn about the player’s feelings about his experience and in particular about his teammates. There have been on occasion some pretty emotional exchanges about what being part of the program has meant to the player and the relationships that he’s established with his teammates.
From our standpoint a lot of times it’s been very reassuring that what we have been trying to create in terms of the unity of team and the commitment to each other and becoming part of the culture that we’re trying to establish has taken place and when you hear it come directly from them without prompting from their hearts, it is reassuring.