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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 2, 2016

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVE CLAWSON: We're looking forward to being home again and having consecutive games at home, I think, for the -- it seems like the first time all year, and host a very improving Virginia team that really played a heck of a game against Louisville, really. It looked like they had them. They went for two, which was a gutsy call to go up, and then they had a 4th down on the 30 yard line, and they played a heck of a game and moved the ball against an exceptional defense and played really good defense.

They're older and physical up front. Quarterback is playing at a high level. They've got two excellent backs and big wideouts that can go get it, and they have some very high level players on defense, as well, so this will be a very -- another challenging game for us.

Q. I'm just looking at the season so far, and when I see teams that have played very well in games against overmatched -- against very strong opponents and what they do the next week when I see NC State take Clemson to the wire, I see you guys take Florida State to the wire and come back and not play your best games the next week, I'm just wondering if Virginia is doing that coming off a great game against Louisville. Can you talk about the psychology of playing great against a tough opponent and not pulling it out? Is there a negative carryover?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I hope so this week. You know what, I just think each week is a different week, and I think a lot of it has to do with the maturity of your team, and because you beat a certain team or play at a certain level against a team makes no guarantee the next week. Every week you've got to come back, you've got to regroup, you've got to prepare, and you've got to play your best.

We're certainly not at a place right now program-wise that we cannot play well and expect to win against anybody we play. We did some good things against Florida State that allowed us to stay in that game and have a chance to win it, but if you throw three interceptions like we did against Army and have the ball in the red zone four times and come away with one touchdown, you're not going to beat people, anybody on our schedule.

I think every week you've got to go out there and you've got to execute, and you've got to be locked in. That's hard to do 12 weeks in a row. There's very few teams that have the ability to do it, and the teams that do it are the ones that become the elite, special teams.

We certainly didn't do that a week ago, and all the credit to Army; they outplayed us and outprepared us and did a great job, so we've just got to bounce back this week, and we've had a good week of practice, and play a team that we have great respect for. Any doubts about their ability, you just put on their game last week.

Q. The fact your offense sputtered a little bit, was that just something Army was doing, or were you guys just out of sync a little bit, or was it just those mistakes?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I think any time you don't execute as well as you'd like to, it's all of the above. Certainly Army played good defense and made plays. We did not execute well in the red zone. We ran the ball decently, but we did not make any -- we made three explosive plays the whole game, and we really felt that that was a game that we had to make explosive plays. Throwing the ball on the outside, and we took 11 deep shots against them and made one play, and so there's 10 plays that we got nothing from on a matchup and a coverage that we thought would be really good for us.

We have to execute the passing game much better than we did, and we didn't do that, so we didn't deserve to win the game.

Q. What is your strategy in recruiting the state of Virginia, and how might your games with Virginia and Virginia Tech influence that?
DAVE CLAWSON: I think very little because we play Virginia and Virginia Tech, we play each of those teams once every six year, so we're going to play them at Virginia, at Virginia Tech once every 12 years.

We recruit an area around our school, a certain radius. I think I had spent four years at the University of Richmond and know the state well and recruited the state very hard when I was there, and so I know it's really good football.

I also think it helped last year that both of those programs were undergoing staff changes, and we got a lot of players out of Virginia last year, in part probably because both of those staffs made changes. I don't know if that will happen every year, but it's an area that we actively recruit, and it's certainly in the ACC's footprint that both of the big Power Five schools in the state are in the ACC. So certainly people are familiar with our school and our program and our conference.

Q. Dave, this was just announced that your game against Notre Dame in 2020 is going to be played in Charlotte. I know that's a few years down the road, but just wanted your thoughts on having that game not in your home stadium.
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, we play them in our home stadium, I believe, in '18, and we had wanted to play a game in Charlotte, and obviously a lot of our alumni base is there, a lot of our fan base is there. We do a lot of recruiting in Charlotte, and we wanted to play a game in Charlotte, and certainly when you bring in the brand that is Notre Dame football, that's a very attractive game to bring down there.

We're excited about it, and it'll be a great opportunity for us to go down to Charlotte in the Panthers' stadium and play a national game against Notre Dame.

Q. As the week goes along, will the decision on Kendall Hinton be a game-time decision or game-day decision, or do you think you might know a little earlier than that if he's going to be ready?
DAVE CLAWSON: We'll know earlier than that. There's no point in announcing that. It doesn't help us by tipping our hat. But we're going to just keep bringing him along and see how he looks, and we'll probably have something definite by tomorrow.

Q. In what ways has your offense been different or maybe has it lacked anything with him not being able to play for this long stretch of time?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I think the thing it lacks is that we run the same offense, and John Wolford is a very good quarterback. We probably don't get as many explosive plays without Kendall, just because Kendall's ability to run the ball and create, he creates so many explosive plays out of broken plays, and I think John does a great job of moving the sticks and running, but a lot of times John's conversions with his feet are eight yards and 12-yard plays, while Kendall gives you an opportunity for those plays to be 25, 35, 50-yard plays.

Right now we're running the ball better than we ever have here. Our offensive numbers are somewhat similar to a year ago, but we're so much more productive running it, the big difference is we're just not making explosive plays, and that was one of the reasons that we had named Kendall the starter is we felt he would give us that.

I think by not having him, that's clearly what we miss is a little bit of the quarterback run game, and not because John can't do those things, but you're a little less apt to do those things with only one quarterback. When we had John and Kendall, we were more comfortable running the quarterback.

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