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Miami vs. Virginia

Sun Life Stadium

Miami Gardens, Fla.

October 27, 2011

Postgame Quotes

Quotes for Miami Coach Al Golden

We’re obviously disappointed with the way performed. And that starts with me. We have to get back to work and get the team rested up and get ready to go on Monday for the final four games this season. I really don’t have much to say, I’ll just answer whatever questions you have.

On Virginia’s ability to make yards on the corners…

There’s a lot of reasons we didn’t. I don’t want to make any excuses. We knew it was going to be a challenge going from an option defense in a short week. Clearly we didn’t get the players to execute the way we need them to execute. And that starts with me and it starts with the coaches. We weren’t very sharp. We weren’t sharp on defense. Period.

On the number of big plays tonight…

Big plays are frustrating. We had seemed to calm that down the last couple weeks and we gave up some bad plays. Some mental breakdowns and explosive plays. They’ll kill you and they did.

On third down being an issue…

We didn’t convert well enough on third down. To be honest with you, we were in too many third and longs because of too many penalties, and because of our lack of execution on first down. We were better on fourth down than we were on third down. We were just not very good on third down. We’ve got to look at that. Certainly, we’ve got to look at our running game because we haven’t run the ball in a couple weeks now.

On Jacory’s injury at the end of the game…

He’s been banged up. He’s been banged up for a couple weeks. He needs a break. We’ve got to get him rested in the next three days and get him back and ready to go. I think he’ll be all right. I don’t have a prognosis now, but he’s a tough kid. He hung in there all day and I thought he played really well.

On feeling differently about whether or not the players are getting “The Process”…

Clearly we had some penalties that were absurd. We can’t have those penalties and the mental breakdowns that we did. The blocked field goal too. We weren’t sharp and we didn’t execute as well as we needed to and that starts with me.

On Tommy Streeter…

He’s giving great effort. He’s competing. He’s playing with a lot of confidence right now. We just came up a couple plays short.

On the running game…

If they’re going to take the run game away, we have to make X plays, explosive plays, in the pass game and we started to do that. But we weren’t sharp enough. We didn’t continue enough drives on third down. We were two out of four in the red zone. We missed a field goal. That’s the difference in the game. We fumbled a play in the red zone. We missed a field goal. If we don’t do that, it’s a different game down the stretch there. We’re not trying to score a touchdown. It’s just really disappointing in our focus and execution, really in all three phases.

On difficulty the defense faced switching from an option offense last week to a normal offense this week…

It’s difficult. But we know the challenge. It’s not like its difficult and we weren’t aware of the challenge. We knew what the challenge was. It was very difficult and clearly Virginia went through it a week ago. We know it is difficult, but that team is going to be in our league for a long time so we better get it figured out.

On what is wrong with the running game…

We have to examine the whole thing. I’m not going to sit up here and say it’s one game. We have to examine the whole thing. We just aren’t running the ball as effectively as we need to. Certainly we’re not staying on track with our first and

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