Al Groh Quotations

The other thing that we had emphasized all week long was that it was everybody's job in this game to find a way to win. A lot of players had to step up individually and do that. Obviously the heart and the energy ? as well as the production ? that Marques provided us was just a tremendous punctuation point to the career that he's had at Virginia. He's been a special player for us in the things he's been able to do and how he's been able to energize this team.

We've asked a lot of him being a young player. ... He's been asked to come in and play a major role in a hurry, but he's a very mature kid and he takes coaching terrifically.

With no loving in our souls and no money in our coats.

We've got a significant rebuilding job in front of us. We've got pretty huge losses in four areas.

What we really need from an overall personnel standpoint is we need our veteran players to play better and we need our younger players to step up,

What we know now is the same thing we knew last night. He's got a sprained foot.

We regret that the incident occurred and apologize to Mathias. We prize and promote sportsmanship, discipline and accountability and are all concerned that Brad did not handle himself in line with what we expect of a Virginia football player.

we might be going till December without him, and I don't think about it. . . . The only time I have a discussion about it is when I'm talking with you guys.

Losing stays with you a lot more than winning stays with you. Yes, there are positive feelings that come with winning. But you prefer not to live with that losing feeling that stays with you for a long time.

Last year, we had a veteran team with a lot of proven players, and we won by some substantial margins early,

Last year, ... we had a team built around power and that was the way we played. This year, we have a different kind of team.

So many of them played so early and for so long that they were around for a long time.

On a play two plays earlier, Brad was blocking Mathias and cut-blocked him to finish the play -- in full view of the umpire,

Mike's a player we've been waiting on for quite some time. He brings an element of speed to our team that's special for us. It showed up on another of plays. We got a chance to really see it on that kickoff return.

One of the Walsh tenets that he says repeatedly in his book, is that in his offense 50 percent of all the passing yardage should come on yards after the catch. So, if that's what you're banking on, if there's not much yards after catch, then you have a lot of short throws, a lot of catches for minimal yardage that don't amount to a great deal of production.

(Monroe) wants to be coached. He wants to be very good.

Now, we have certain positions that are rich in experience, but across the board it's the most inexperienced team that we've had,

Now that we have (Brown and Cook) here, and we're actually coaching them, we have a much better sense of how quickly they catch on to things and how physically ready they might be, ... That changes the equation and some of the things that are available to us.

Obviously this is one of the most inexperienced teams we've had, as indicated by the fact that we only have one senior in the defensive lineup. But we have a lot of talented young players, so they just need a lot of days like this to come on. It's going to be very important that we bring them on as fast as we can.

Obviously the heart and the energy -- as well as the production -- that Marques provided us was just a tremendous punctuation point to the career that he's had at Virginia. He's been a special player for us in the things he's been able to do and how he's been able to energize this team.

Obviously, somebody will be ahead to start with, based on fall performance and so forth, but it probably will be an open horse race here in the spring.

Nobody has had a better training camp than Brennan.

I was run into. I appreciated his effort.

I wouldn't say that's what he bases his game on, but he has good athletic ability and good sense of how to use it.

I would say in the last 12 minutes, we had the opportunity to make some plays and BC had the opportunity to make some plays. The game hinged on their ability to make those plays and the fact that we did not.

If we get into (injuries), then it's like we're setting a scene for not doing well. We believe in the players and we trust the players we put in the game. ? When you start talking about how badly you miss certain guys, then you're doing a disservice to those kids battling hard for you, as if what they're giving you isn't enough.

I have decided that it would be in the best interest of the players and the team that we move on and the players move on with their careers.

I don't know and I don't think about it.

I did not think about overtime at that point. There was still close to seven minutes remaining.

I don't know that my mood is a Rolling Stones mood right now, ... It would be kind of a shame to miss, though.

I analyzed everything from the top down. This includes me, the systems and all the way down to the shoes we wore.

Chris has really had a pretty positive day every day out there. I guess you could say he's had a real good average on a lot more at-bats than before.

gets a lot of attention, but what's really important in being a solid team week in and week out is being able to keep your opponents down, and they're really good at that.

From an experience spectrum, we're on both ends of the spectrum, and we have little in-between.

I don't think you'd call him one of those knock-the-wall-down guys, but he is what the quarterback needs to be, and that's accurate.

Fortunately, we do have some competitive depth there, and we'll just let that play out.

Fortunately, there is an easy way and the coach doesn't have to be very smart to figure that out and minimize that problem.

Fortunately, it worked out that way. I didn't inquire as to how many ounces it took, but apparently it was sufficient to rejuvenate him. There were no problems in the fourth quarter, so obviously it served its purpose.

If it was a basketball team and Wali was the starting four, and we told the other guy he was going to go in at the seven-minute mark and he suddenly hit four straight three-pointers and kept hitting them all year long, you'd have to be fairly foolish to say we're going to the way things were, ... That's the only situation that occurred there.

If the coordinator can be the secondary coach also, then he's working with the position that every coordinator should always give the most attention to, ... Plus, most of the (defensive) adjustments that get made during the course of the game are secondary adjustments.

He had a very dynamic career at Mt. Tabor as a run/pass guy and the team was very successful down there. He's been a runner -- very athletic and a guy that we're really looking forward to having.

We try to get everybody involved with every prospect. Players had relationships with most of the coaches on our staff.

When he's ready to play we're going to tell everybody.

What will I do without you? They say that life goes on. I'm feeling sorry for myself. I can't believe you're gone.

He's a great model for the university in general. To have a player of this level and this accomplishment, who's also graduated in seven semesters, paints a pretty good profile of what we're looking for.

He's got real focus, but he's always very calm in terms of game circumstances as well as his own personal circumstances. I think he projects that very well, that sense of purpose and focus but calm at the same time to his teammates also.

He's got his pads on. You can call that what you want. He's done a little bit, but as I've said before, not to dodge the question, but until it really looks like he's going to play in a game, it's just a distraction from what we're trying to do.

He's a very gentle, compassionate soul off the field. But his game is a tough and tumble game. It's not a finesse game by any means. That's the transition he makes.

He's doing a nice job. It sounds like an over-simplification, but people who know him will understand that he's just being Vic. He's doing well because he's Vic Hall. Whether it's academics or holding on field goals for the first time, or playing on the corner, he's got a real good sense of competition.

He seems to have been very comfortable back there from the start. It's pretty amazing his first day back there how quickly he acted right at home as far as making the calls.

He's earning our confidence, and he certainly earned more of it today.

He's had two years of developing a very clear picture in his mind of how a really big-time linebacker performs. He had a real plan and a real intent about what he wanted to get done this year.

His resolution toward his circumstances was very strong from the outset. His accountability for it was very strong. He was very forthright.

His move on this position started back in December when we would segment a certain part of the practice just for developmental purposes. That was a position of attention as we started in the spring, and he's given us some positive feelings about that from the way he performed.

His whole game has progressed. It probably would be unfair to Emmanuel to say that it's one thing or the other, but he's a more confident, more active and certainly more productive player. Amongst the players who are having a very good camp, Emmanuel is very much one of them.

He's a very responsible kid, and he took his position very seriously,

He's going to get his hands on it. The big question is whether the ball is going to stay in his hands.

He's going to certainly be one of our featured performers this year.

He's done a real nice job with it.

He was pretty spectacular. All the teams that accomplish anything during a season have a quarterback that picks his team up and carries it, and he surely did that.

He was impressive on the tape, and he was impressive tonight, ... and that's what good players do. But most of his plays were underneath plays. There were some plays that I would have preferred that we could have gotten him on the ground faster, but in the long run, they weren't overly harmful to us.

He was a great inspiration to the players and coaches. On those days when he had to take chemo and radiation, he was at practice that day and sometimes the cumulative effects would cause him to miss the next day, but the time when he wasn't active in the program was minimal.

He was a great inspiration to the players and coaches, ... On those days when he had to take chemo and radiation, he was at practice that day and sometimes the cumulative effects would cause him to miss the next day, but the time when he wasn't active in the program was minimal.

He did everything we'd want a quarterback to do.

He did a real nice job today, he's proud of his touchdown and I'm sure he wishes he had that holding penalty back. Right, John.

He didn't melt away pounds over the course of the season, like he did in previous years. But he's not a small player.

He could be pretty hard to handle in there. If he taps into everything he has to bring, he could become a nasty afternoon for some center.

He just said he felt he'd like to try it down there, ... it would also give him a chance to be in person-to-person communication with the defensive backs for any adjustments that had to be made.

He kind of looked like one of those balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade,

He just is really coming on strong, and he has a chance to be one of the better players that we've had since we've been here.

This was one of those keep-turning-over-the-rocks kind of deals,

I wouldn't say count him in, but I wouldn't say count him out either. He's got a great attitude about it. His doctors are very positive about it. It will be some time before we can make a final determination.

Kai has been through two years of playing in a lot of games, he's been to all the stadiums, he's played all the teams, he knows what's out there in front of him, he knows what needs to be done. He's a mature player now and he knows what it takes to be a really, really good player.

I think it's essential that we have the discipline within our organization to do the things that we think are done the right way and not just to take talent for talent's sake.

I think it's essential that internally or leadership-wise, I think it's essential that we have discipline within our organization that guarantees that things are done the right way and not just to chase talent for talent's sake. That's how you put a team together, and so that's what we're doing.

I think it's been a positive spring for Chris, mostly because he's had an increased opportunity to demonstrate his skills now that he's taking the majority of the turns.

I think you're searching for too many answers right there, ... I think it's an execution thing.

I think we'll keep the same policy with that position that we have with all the others. If at some point in time a player who hasn't been playing gives us a better chance to win, we'll use that player.

I think it's to the quarterback's advantage to be playing with experience behind him, and then if it's to the quarterback's advantage, it is certainly going to make it to the advantage of the team to have an experienced quarterback.

I think that's fair to say. That has been the case from the outset, whether it's eligibility issues or training issues or whatever the case may be.

It is a privilege, and not a right, to wear a Cavalier jersey and to represent our university community. There are certain things that are vital to putting your team together every year, and those things become in sharper focus and multiplied when you're in a rebuilding circumstance.

I think there's a little issue of you have to get the butterflies in your stomach when you ride in on the bus, as opposed to riding in knowing you're going to be a spectator.

Just a tremendous punctuation point to the career he had at Virginia. He's been a tremendous figurehead for what we're trying to get out of everybody.

Last week, we didn't really care what anybody said about us, ... We don't really care this week. We know what we have to do this week to keep it going. What we care about is winning and losing, and staying together as a team, and trying to play the kind of sound, solid, tough, aggressive football that we like to think is our trademark.

I reminded him of what we said at halftime last week: 'We're going to ride you. Let's go.'

Our intent from the start was really to invest heavily in this position.

Our attitude with tight ends here is the more the merrier. I don't know if we'll get to four tight ends, but we certainly wouldn't be averse to having three in there.

Other than the building itself, there's little about the Jets that's the same as it was when we were there. So I don't really know enough about the team to be able to speculate as to how he might fit in. He's a very adaptable guy and his poise and self-confidence enables him to really fit into any environment, and he certainly did that very easily when he went to Atlanta.

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste.

Really, we haven't addressed that or made any determination.

Really it's not the secondary that's being tested, ... it's the pass defense.

Our last message at halftime was something that we had said early in training camp. We just reminded the players that battles are not won by digging in. If you dig in, you just become a target. Battles are won by attacking. The players did a very good job of that, and they can be proud of themselves.

Our mentality is that no matter who we're playing, you'd better ready to prove yourself every week. Teams that don't have that mentality usually end up with an unpleasant result.

Marcus has really matured as a player, ... The way he went about preparing himself for that game last week was very impressive.

Marques was pretty spectacular out there today. He can just pick up the team and carry us. That scramble at the end was just a tremendous play.

I think it would be foolhardy to try to do something with him here.

We've talked for two weeks about the fumble situation and we weren't happy about it,

That was pretty close to being a season-ending injury. I'm certainly hoping that this one is not in that category.

That's the way things go. We all suffer setbacks and disappointments. Whether your team falls behind at the half, or your season doesn't get started until the half, that's just the way it goes.

That's a very positive thing for Boston College, too. I'd like to be able to say the same things about our circumstances every year, but in this particular case, because they have all shown themselves to be effective, it really doesn't make a great deal of difference who plays.