Wake Forest Athletics
WFU Football Press Conference Quotes
9/3/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 3, 2002
WFU FOOTBALL
WEEKLY PRESS CONFERENCE QUOTES
TUESDAY, SEPT. 2, 2002
Head Coach Jim Grobe
On bouncing back from the NIU loss?K
??I think we??ll bounce back. I think our players are disappointed. The nice thing is we??ve got more games to play; we didn??t end the season on that note. It??s a tough start, but I think our players are excited about playing East Carolina and excited about playing another football game, and hopefully playing better.??
??I??m worried about any loss, you never like to lose. I think we lost to a good football team. [Northern Illinois] had a great kicking game, a really good running back that did a nice job running the ball, and defensively they hung around. We were never able to put them away. Playing on the road is really tough and we??re disappointed, but I think the nature of our players is that they??ll bounce back.??
What problems will be worked on?K
??Certainly the kicking game, I thought that was the biggest problem by far. I don??t know how you give experience to freshmen kickers, its just not something you can do overnight. They??ve got to experience it. We??ve also got a freshman long-snapper. I thought we had really good special teams practice in August, I felt like we were as prepared this week as we possibly could be, but pressure adds another dimension there??s no way you can simulate that in practice.??
On Ovie Mughelli and Fabian Davis?K
??They played great, Ray Thomas played great, if you looked at the play of some of our older players you couldn??t ask for anything more. I thought Fabian played his best game since I??ve been here, as did Ovie Mughelli and Ray Thomas, I thought all three of those guys played great. But unfortunately couple of our old players didn??t play the way we expected. And unfortunately some of young players played the way we hoped they wouldn??t play, like rookies.??
On ECU??s revenge after tough game last year?K
??I think we??re going to take everybody??s best shot, I don??t think anyone is going to overlook us, now, and so when we play, we??ve got to be ready to play. But right now, we??re mostly concerned about us, I don??t think we can get too caught up in who we??re playing this week. We had so many mistakes in the opener which is not unusual, but I think your best gains are measured from the first game to the second game, and hopefully we can correct some problems we need to correct.??
On practice schedule since loss?K
??Friday we watched the film. Saturday we had a really good day of practice, I thought one of our better practices. Monday night we had a really spirited practice, the guys hit the weights and bounced around pretty good. I think the players have bounced back; I??m not sure the coaches have bounced back yet. I think they??re looking forward to playing another game. The young guys bounce back quicker than the old guys do. We??re still smarting a bit as a coaching staff, but I think we realize what our weakness are and our guys are doing a good job giving our players a better chance to win this weekend.??
Defensive problems?K
??We??ve got to do some things differently, regardless of scheme. Defensively, we did not play very well at times and at times we played very well, but it was in spurts. But overall I was very disappointed in our defensive performance. I think we??ll play better this week and I think our coaches will do a better job from a scheme standpoint, making sure more than anything else, that we are not asking our kids to gun too much. We will probably simplify things rather than keep adding on.??
On Tarence Williams?K
??You will see Tarence Williams if he continues to practice well. He had a good practice Saturday, a really good practice Monday night. So if he continues to practice well, he??ll play some for us. He??s been healing well all along, the doctors and trainers have been really pleased with the way he??s healed. But the problem has been whether or not he can run into people, and that??s what we??re going to find out today. One of our main concerns is that we don??t throw him into the fire where his foot stays healthy but he hurts his shoulder, gets banged up some other way, so we??re going to work him hard in practice this week. If he plays against East Carolina, it??ll be somewhat limited as far as reps are concerned, we??ll continue to give all of our backs a lot of reps and try and keep our guys fresh.??
On playing at home?K
??I think it??ll be nice to get back on grass. The field we played on was a good field, but we played on artificial surface at Northern Illinois. If we had our druthers, we??d choose to be on grass. I think our guys will be glad to be on grass, especially in Groves Stadium in front of our fans.??
On ECU??s fans?K
??There will be a lot of [ECU] Pirate fans, there??s no question about that. We know that by pre-game ticket sales. I think our guys will be focused on football and focused on what we??re doing. I think we??ll have a good crowd. The key for us is to play good football. If we play good football, people will want to come see us play.??
Junior Offensive Guard Tyson Clabo
??Its going to gnaw us until we win. After we had practice in the rain for three hours on Saturday, it makes you hungry to want to win again. I don??t want to go out there and do it again. It will gnaw at us until we get on the winning track.??
??As an offensive lineman, I take a lot of pride in protecting the ball throughout the game. And if we stay on the ball throughout the game, we will be successful.??
About ECU...
??I know they are gonna be pretty mad. They will be ready for the game. We??ll be ready though, we will be ready for football. We??re going to play hard, and try to win by playing our hardest if nothing else. That??s the only way we can think about it.??
Senior Linebacker Jamie Scott
On Learning From NIU Game...
??We??ve worked especially this week on cutting out some of the mental mistakes. We found out we are going to have to work a little harder. We know that everyone on the schedule is prepared to beat us and we need to go into every game with the same mindset. We lacked a full understanding of this mindset going into Illinois last weekend.??
??We??re not going let the loss linger; we are going to look at it like we still have an 11 game season to go. We??ve got put them (Northern Illinois) and the mistakes we made behind us. We are going to use it to get better and look forward to the rest of the season.??
??The coaches seemed a little disappointed, and we were disappointed in ourselves. We played a good team and we knew it was going to be tough, but we expected to pull out of it with a victory. Up until that last play, we felt like we had won the game.??
About ECU...
??We are going into this game like he (ECU QB Paul Troth) is an all-star quarterback and not an inexperienced one. We have to prepare to play a perfect game. They are going to be fired up and want to win. We are just as fired up as them to get our first win.??
