Virginia Head Coach Mike London Postgame Quotes

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NC State at Virginia
Oct. 22, 201
Virginia Head Coach Mike London Postgame Quotes

On the Cavaliers’ offense:
“It was disappointing. Too many turnovers, for sure. Too many turnovers that led to points. You can’t do that against a very fast, good, athletic team. They executed their game plan of zone pressure and a lot of movement. We obviously didn’t execute our game plan offensively. My hat goes off to Coach O’Brien and his staff, Coach Archer for getting his guys ready to play. They played hungry, and they got after it.”

On changing perceptions of the program:
“People want to feel good about the program, and we will. These are tremendous learning pains. Coming off the euphoria of a really good game, and then you see how devastating turnovers can be, especially when touchdowns are interceptions and red zone areas where the other team has an opportunity to score points. We got some turnovers ourselves, but we need to get one more than they got, and it just didn’t work out that way.”

On UVa’s passing game:
“I know they did a great job with their coverages. We have to do a better job of post-snap reads and where to throw the ball. It looked like we kind of threw the ball into the ground a little bit in regards to some receivers that were open. Like I said, you’re always the most vulnerable in terms of saying something that you’re not quite sure is accurate until you watch the film and have a chance to talk to the coaches about what the expectations of that play was. Obviously everybody saw that it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t a good enough effort from the quarterbacks in terms of throwing the ball, completing passes, from catching the ball, from the ball bouncing off hands and different things like that.”

On changing quarterbacks:
“David [Watford] didn’t get a lot of touches in the first half. I think he got one possession in the first half and then going into the second half it looked like he could do a couple of things there that might give us an advantage. But, like I said, we’re responsible for the ball and we ended up having those two turnovers. I think he’s got a ways to go to try to prove his game, but in the end Bill [Lazor] and the rest of the staff felt that at that point, if they were going to continue to blitz like that, that from an escapability standpoint, being able to use your feet, that he may have been the answer. Obviously, I thought their game plan was pretty good. They bottled up the outside, made the quarterback step up. They did a good job reading the route combinations and kept everything in front of them … we didn’t execute well enough.

On playing Miami coming off of a loss:
“Mentally it’s always tough because you think about things that could have been and didn’t happen. You have to turn it around because you have another nationally televised game, a team that wants to win and is looking to win and is playing at home. There are no other alternatives. This is what competition in athletics is about. You win some and you lose some, but how you respond and turn around and move in a direction that you’re capable of. We’ll see. We’ll see how resilient we can be, how we can turn around a short week and get prepared to go on the road and play a very, very good and athletic Miami team.”

On interceptions:
“It was the fourth or fifth series when David [Watford] went in and unfortunately he threw a bad ball that resulted in an interception. It’s always been the game plan trying to get these guys opportunities to get in the game after a guy watches the other quarterback when he’s in there. In the second half, David played more, and Michael [Rocco] watched. Our job offensively is to find that thing that we can get going and be consistent in that. I thought that going into this, we had a pretty good week of practice, but obviously not enough to be effective, to keep the defense off the field and to score enough points.”