Wake Forest Athletics
Football Weekly Press Conference Quotes
10/1/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 1, 2002
Wake Forest Football
Weekly Press Conference
Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2002
Head Coach Jim Grobe
??We??ve proved that we??re talented enough to win, but not talented enough to win easy. We have a chance to win or lose every Saturday. I had a chance to talk to our players yesterday [Monday] and told them the teams that make plays down the stretch are going to win. You can??t just stand around and wish and hope that you??re going to win. You??ve got to make plays to win. We made a few of them down the stretch Saturday night but obviously not enough.??
??I thought our coaches had a great defensive plan. We thought Virginia was pretty good at running the football, and we stopped that pretty good. We thought they did a great job of distributing the football. We thought Schaub did a great job getting the ball to the tight ends and the running backs out of the backfield. We played all that stuff pretty good. Where we broke down was giving up too many big plays. They threw five or six fades on our corners that we didn??t contest very well. I think five throws accounted for 180 or 190 yards of offense. It??s a shame, but I thought our plan was pretty good. We played hard and played the scheme pretty well, but when you give up big plays, you are not going to play well defensively. That was the difference in the game. That was the game in a nutshell ?V giving up too many big plays on the defensive side.??
??You can take the other 10 guys and put them in any alignment you want to, don??t rush them and cover with everyone, but there??s always going to be one guy standing on the corner by himself on one receiver, and anytime they want to single that guy out, just throw it down the field they??re going to be able to do it. I think a couple of times, if we did the play 10 times, we would be able to stop it. They were perfect throws and perfect catches, you just couldn??t execute it any better. But there were three or four times where we didn??t have the technique very well, we didn??t position ourselves very well, and those are the things that we??re working on. I think we can coach them better, and give our guys some of the tools that they need to play better. The bottom line will always be that players make plays.??
??Our guys need to play better. Our guys have enough ability to play. We??re just in a league where everybody??s got a lot of talent. We??re going to try to give our players a little bit better coaching. I think our guys need to be a little bit smarter, and realize that you got to do things the way coaches want you to do them.??
??A majority of the team is doing the things they need to do, but the big plays are what got [Virginia] back in the football game. And that was a situation where you have to give them some credit. Schaub played really, really well, and we found out they got a couple of receivers besides Billy McMullen. We stuck Eric King on McMullen all night. We thought if we could close down McMullen and rally down to the underneath passes and shut down the running game that we??d play great defense. Everything proved to be true except that we found out they had a couple of other receivers on the other side that were pretty good players.??
Senior Nose Tackle Montique Sharpe
On his injured knee:
??I didn't play a lot at NC State or Purdue, but I'm looking forward this week. I'm 100 percent now. Now I can go out and help the team. I haven't really thought about it. I just try to go out and play, and not think about it.??
On losing to Virginia:
"We have to keep practicing and keep competing. We have to play hard. We let one get away on Saturday, obviously. We just didn't make enough plays down the stretch in crunch time. That can't bother us now. We have to go and focus on Georgia Tech."
On Georgia Tech:
??They are a big physical team that likes to run the ball. They lost their back [Tony Hollings], but they still do a good job running. We have to go down there and bring our A-game.??
Senior Tight End Ray Thomas
On blocking for the rushing game:
??It??s a hard thing to do. I think the offensive line, including the tight ends and receivers, take a lot of pride in blocking.??
On things to work on:
??Both sides of the ball need to improve. All of us have a hand in any game. The defense played well enough for us to win. With two minutes left in the game, we had the ball. I think the offense has to take a lot of the responsibility, we should have punched it in for the win. We should have ended the game. I think if the opposing team puts up 38 points, it's the offense??s responsibility to put up 39. If they put up 100, we need to put up 101.??
On team diversity:
??We have guys from all over, its fun to get everyone together and joke about each other??s hometowns. I take a lot from the guys about being from Canada. We have a lot of fun with that. They just like to hear me say ??out?? and ??about??, and different words like that. Twelve men play at a time in Canada (football), so they tell me to pay attention to how many people are on the field.??
