Wake Forest Athletics
Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest vs. Maryland
10/10/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 10, 2009
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Wake Forest Head Coach Jim Grobe
Thoughts on the running game...
"We have the ability to run the football. We've been hanging our hat on throwing the ball. Going forward if we can run the football a little bit better it makes our offense better and it makes it easier on Riley. I thought we had a lot of good runs and good success early in the game. As the game went on I thought we needed to have a little bit more push."
On keeping up intensity with a big lead...
"Coming out in the second half your mindset as a coaching staff is defensively don't give up big plays and offensively, don't turn the football over. On one hand we didn't turn the ball over, but trying to stay aggressive with a big lead is hard. It's something we didn't do a very good job of. But you have to give a lot of credit to Maryland's athletes. They came out in the second half and didn't quit, they fought and chipped their way back into the game. I'm proud of our athletes for winning the football game. It's a strange thing when you've got a big lead at halftime. You come out and you'd like to play as well as you did in the first half, but I thought that first half was played pretty well by the Deacs tonight."
On getting ahead at the start of the game...
"We usually come out and fumble the first play, give them the lead and fight back. That's typically the way we've played. When we went and scored the first touchdown, had the long kickoff return and Maryland went right in and scored I thought, `oh, here we go again.' But I thought Lobo and Brad had really good game plans offensively and defensively and our athletes executed well. That's probably as good a first half of football we've ever played."
On offensive penalties...
"That's what took us out of some of our drives. We had some holding penalties and a block below the waist. Just silly stuff. The worst thing you can do is turn the ball over, but the other way to kill yourself is to have too many penalties, and we talked to them about it. That's probably one of the more disappointing things about the second half. Some of those things are beating yourself a little bit and you can't afford to do that because we play too many good teams."
On Dominique Midgett returning after dislocating his shoulder last Saturday...
"I've never seen anybody come back that fast. That's a tribute to him, he's a tough guy. The good news is there really wasn't a lot of damage. They got it back in place. He wanted to come right back out in Tuesday's practice and go full pads and get after it. It's pretty amazing that he had that type of injury and could play a week later. But it's also a good indication of his toughness because there are probably a lot of athletes that wouldn't have played with that shoulder. But he played well and did some really good things."
Maryland Head Coach Ralph Friedgen
On the game overall...
"We obviously played poorly in the first half and they (Wake Forest) played really well. You have to give it to our kids. They hung in there and kept fighting. If we had scored that touchdown with eight minutes to go, who knows what would have happened. We blew a lot of coverages in the first half and didn't get a whole lot going offensively. Other than the long kick return, I wasn't real pleased with our special teams. We then played better in the second half but it was too little too late."
On what Wake did in the first half schematically...
"We knew what they were going to do. They threw a lot of screens into the pressure and (Riley) Skinner is good about seeing the pressure. They got a veteran offensive line that gave Skinner enough time to look downfield. That was the difference."
On the chance to take a two-game lead with a win...
"We missed one heck of an opportunity. If we could have gotten a win on the road here against a good Wake Forest team, that would have only helped us down the road. We still only have one loss in the conference. I told our guys to build on the second half and get ready for Virginia next week. I told them I was proud of the way they hung in there tonight."
On whether he thought his guys were focused from the start of the game...
"Yeah, I thought our guys came out focused. We had a very good warm-up and we were more vocal than we have been. I thought we were ready to play but we went out there and were blowing everything. Normally, we're not very loud pre-game but this time we were. I guess it was more bravado instead of substance."
