Wake Forest Athletics
Postgame Quotes -- Wake Forest vs. Duke
9/11/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 11, 2010
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Wake Forest Head coach Jim Grobe
On playing Tanner Price in the second half...
"We thought Ted (Stachitas) had broken his hand. We X-rayed his thumb. He had a lot of swelling on the back of his non-throwing hand. They did a quick look at his thumb and it was ok. He got hit really hard on the back of his hand with a helmet. Ted just felt like he was going to have trouble handling the football, because we're asking that guy to run it and pitch it and do those type of things. He didn't feel like he could pitch it with one hand so we didn't have much choice but to stick with Tanner. I thought it was good for Tanner. I thought he did some good things. We're not down on Ted. We just thought it was going to be hard for him to handle the football."
On the defensive adjustments in the second half...
"I think more than anything, we challenged them to play the coverage called. I thought we had some ad-lib stuff going on. Our kids were doing their own thing a little bit. I have to give Duke a lot of credit. They made a lot of good plays. There were times when we had the coverage right and they just beat us. They just flat went out and got the football. One time they ran power off tackle and we had the outside linebacker dropping into coverage. You hear so much about (Sean) Renfree and the receivers and you get to where you're trying to stop the throw game so much, that you forget they can run the football too. I think they had us off balance in the first half. Brad Lambert and the guys were able to calm them down for the second half. We just started playing gap control and playing our areas on the field. Just trying to do our job instead of doing our own thing."
On who will start at quarterback against Stanford...
"We'll have to get in and watch the film. Typically, my first impression is not the right one. We have to watch and see what the kids have done. Ted's hand looks pretty bad. I'm sure the swelling will get out of it pretty quick. If he hasn't broken a bone in his hand, he should be fine. We planned on playing two quarterbacks today and we felt like we would stay with the hot quarterback. I thought Ted did some good things today. I thought Tanner did some good things. My guess, just coming off the field, is that it would be Tanner to open it up, if we feel like he played better than Ted. I would be surprised if we got to Stanford next week and didn't play both of them, assuming Ted is healthy."
On the play of Tanner Price...
"I think the thing I liked the most is that he didn't seem like a true freshman. He misfired on a couple of throws. He floated one down the middle of the field that I was afraid was going to get picked off. He was looking for the right guy. It just got out of his hand and floated on him. I thought just watching him you would never be able to tell by his demeanor today and the way he executed and ran the offense, that he was a freshman. He looked like a more veteran quarterback out there today."
On playing Josh Harris near the end of the game...
"We tried to get Josh Harris in the whole first half. I think one time we had him in, we hit a touchdown pass the first play. Another time we had him in, we threw the ball three times or the quarterback ran it once and we threw it twice. We had not gotten him any work. I thought down the stretch, it says something good about a redshirt freshman that Billy Mitchell, our running back coach, has the confidence to have Josh on the field when it counted. We feel like we have three running backs that we can win with. We'll continue to try to use three."
Wake Forest freshman quarterback Tanner Price
On playing in his first ACC game...
"I thought it was a great game. The defense came out a little bit slow in the first half, but offensively we were doing pretty well. The defense stepped it up the second half and it turned out to be a great game"
On quarterbacks Ted Stachitas and Tanner Price leading the team in rushing...
"The offensive line had a really great game. They gave me plenty of time passing, and they opened up some big holes rushing."
On playing in such a high scoring game...
"There were certain plays that looked really good and you just have to capitalize when you have the opportunity to make a play."
Wake Forest redshirt sophomore wide receiver Chris Givens
On playing in his first game of the season...
"It's a tremendous feeling. I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to be back out here. I really wanted to play against Duke. I understand how big of a game it was for our team, it being the ACC opener and a big in-state rivalry. It meant so much to be to be out there with my teammates."
On playing in such a high-scoring game...
"I love those type of games because as an offense, every time they score, we have to come out and respond to their touchdown."
Wake Forest redshirt senior wide receiver Marshall Williams
On his wide receiver pass to Chris Givens that went for a 81-yard touchdown...
"We've been repping that at practice and Coach Lobo has been preaching to me to hit the quarterback, but today I saw that the safety jumped down and Givens was wide open. I stepped back, got the ball, and I threw it, and I actually surprised myself with how far I threw it. It was a good play. I'm glad he caught it."
On playing in a shootout...
"If you're on offense, you like scoring points, but you don't like when that happens to your defense. Our defense didn't play their best today, but there are going to be days when the offense is not going to play its best and we're going to need their help. It's always a shootout with Duke, so it's what we expected. I'm glad that we came out with a win"
On Tanner Price's three-touchdown performance...
"Tanner is always a cool and collected kid. You never see him sweat. Tanner came in today and showed great poise. He has a heck of an arm as he demonstrated today. I think that he's one guy that will benefit a lot from getting reps and experience, and I think he played pretty well today.
Duke head coach David Cutcliffe
Opening Statement
"I'm really proud of our effort as far as coming back and competing; certainly with the first half, coming back from a 14 point deficit, to tie the game again. The second half started very well offensively. Two weeks in a row we've started the third quarter slowly. We gave ourselves a chance to get back in the ballgame at the end, and it was because of the competiveness and the spirit of our squad, and I appreciate that. I told our team that this by no means defines our team, or our season. And it wouldn't have if we had won today. And I say, had we won, say we got the onside kick, and we went down and scored, we'd all be happy. But we would've played exactly like we played, which isn't going to define who we are. It's my job to see and not make as many mistakes. There are reasons it happens, and defensively we simply need to tackle better to begin with. Just look at the numbers, guys are throwing at us, but most of those run yards, a lot of it wasn't tackling very well. And, when we tackled when, we shut them down. So, it goes back to correctable things. Will it define us, no; we have to play good, clean football. Kicking game goes from phenomenal to giving up the punt return; we're a pretty good return team. There are a lot of things to build on. And, I always choose to be more encouraged than discouraged, and I will always be that way. There were so many encouraging things; I want players to understand that. And when we go to work tomorrow, we're all big boys. We have to face up to all the things that have to be corrected. Anytime there are things that need to be corrected the head football coach is accountable, so that's where it all starts. That's exactly what I told them, you have to look at what we can all do better, and play excellent football. Win or lose we need to play excellent football."
On a flat 3rd quarter start...
"Did I think we were flat? I can't until I study the tape know what happened. I know we've had two third quarters which I'm not happy about. I thought our offense was a little gassed, coming back out. There was a lot of emotion spent the first half, and I don't believe any of you have seen a first half like that before. I know our offensive kids looked a little gassed, and I was trying to get things energized. But, again, when we go back and look at the tape, there will be some physical reasons as to why we didn't play our best."
On the high-scoring first half...
"I was just trying to stay in some sort of balance. I knew not to get too high with the highs, or too low with the lows. I needed to hold our team in check, and our coaching staff had a lot of talking going on. At that point in time, the worst thing I could've done would've been to be emotional. I kind of just backed up and said, we have to handle this, and we had to get back in the ball game. I thought our kids handled that, as did the coaches. As it turned out, all that was for nothing. It was zero-zero basically at half time, and I thought the emotion and energy was phenomenal at half-time. And, it just didn't transfer."
