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Virginia Head Coach Mike London Postgame Quotes
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Duke at Virginia
Nov. 12, 2011
Virginia Head Coach Mike London
On the death of George Morris’s father:
“First of all, I wanted to make sure I had an opportunity to talk about George Morris, a guy that’s our FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) representative. A couple days ago his father passed away. George has been very instrumental in the development of our players off the field. He (Morris Sr.) passed away in the morning, and he (George) was at our team meeting in the afternoon. I was kind of shocked as to why he was there. George shared with the team that the last words out of his father’s mouth were, “Go tell the team to press on.” So George left and came and spent the last couple days with the team. I just awarded him the game ball. It’s one of those games, one of those situations, where behind the scenes you try to look for things that are motivating you. It’s a member of our football family that has been with us for a while. To have a situation like that happen, and have him be with the team, I just wanted to pass that on to him. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family as they put his father in the ground. It was an emotional couple of days, the last couple days here. Being able to play a good, hard, aggressive, physical game, which we kind of knew was going to happen, and come out with a victory, makes it even better.”
On dominating second halves in the past two games:
“Hopefully [it is] due to the maturation process of being 10 games into the season now, and having to execute the game, having to not make the same type of devastating mistakes that could cost you games. We’ve been back and forth here a little bit, particularly with the second half. To see the guys come out and execute, and guys making plays, and defense coming up with the big interception, those are the types of things you want to hang your hat on as an identity of what your team is about. Hopefully we can try to continue to do things that will help us win and minimize those things that cause us to lose.”
On improving past the three-game win streak:
“As I said, going into the 10th game of the season, you want to see things improve. You want to see guys step up and make plays, and I think what you see is some of that going on: Max Milien, Zachary Swanson – that’s a name that hasn’t been called a lot – and got in there and was able to block some power plays. You’re looking for the improvement, and I think it continues to manifest itself. At the same time, you’re never satisfied with some of the things you do. I don’t know how many penalties we had, but you have to minimize, particularly the simple errors, things about lining up and motioning. We should have some of those things with some of our guys. As far as progress is concerned, I’m pleased with the progress. It’s hard enough to win games, and when you have an opportunity compared to what went on last year, to turn around and make some plays and win games, it makes it special with the players and the coaches.”
On Kris Burd’s touchdown:
“I was running with him. I was tippy-toeing down the sideline as he was going. It’s close. When you have those plays like that, like the goal line play down there, and they make the call on the field, then you have the video reviewed, then it has to be conclusive evidence. Unless you can magnify the camera to see if he’s a millimeter of an inch touching the sideline over, or wasn’t fumbled before. It’s a tough job that the officials have. You always want calls to go in your favor, but in this particular case, I think it looked like Kris was in, and we moved on from there.”