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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 9, 2016

Bobby Petrino

Greensboro, North Carolina

BOBBY PETRINO: We're coming off a very good win on the road at Boston College. I thought our assistant coaches did a great job of getting our players to practice hard and prepare very well for the game, and our players went up there and played extremely well on defense and offensively executed, and special teams did a good job, so it was a total team win, and I was very happy to see that.

Now we're getting ready for a very good Wake Forest team, a team that's playing great defense and running the ball real well, so it'll be a great challenge for us. It'll be nice to be back home here in Louisville playing in front of our home crowd.

Q. Bobby, I believe Lamar Jackson has played in 30 out of 36 fourth quarters this season, and I was wondering what goes into your decision on when to pull him out of a game when you've got a big enough lead?
BOBBY PETRINO: Yeah, I think that's really the decision is when you feel like it's time to put our twos in and give them some experience and make sure that Lamar and the rest of our ones when we take them out stay healthy and get ready for the next game. You're always trying to debate when is the score enough that you don't have to worry about them coming back. Obviously we've had a couple games where teams have scored a couple touchdowns in the third quarter and make you very nervous.

But I think that we've done a good job managing it.

Q. I think one of those games was Marshall when you put him back in. When you did that, did you hesitate at all about that decision, or why did you make it?
BOBBY PETRINO: Oh, they scored two quick touchdowns. We gave them a quick turnover and they scored a touchdown and then they got another touchdown. You look at the score, and if it happens one more time, then it's a battle. It was just a decision where they tightened the score up and it was important for us to go get a touchdown and make sure that we secured the win.

Q. Have you in your career had to make decisions like this throughout the course of the season as many times as you have this year with Lamar in terms of trying to figure out when is the best time to pull him out of the game?
BOBBY PETRINO: Yeah, and it's really not just about Lamar, it's about the entire team. We substituted a lot of the defensive players the other night because we have a couple guys that have a couple nicks, and it was good to get our seconds in there and get them experience. I think that was one of the things that was really hard on us a year ago was we had such a tough schedule early, three big games early, that we weren't able to get any experience for our younger guys and get them to grow and get better.

You know, you take into consideration the opportunities for your twos and threes to get reps so they get better.

Q. Speaking about Lamar, has anything about his year caught you by surprise? Did you see this coming, or is anything about this year surpassing your expectations?
BOBBY PETRINO: Well, after about the second week of spring ball, we felt like he was really executing at a very high level, and his ability to set and his release, he just works so hard in getting it right, and his timing on throwing the ball, and then he had a big spring game, and we felt good about that, and we were real critical of, well, maybe it was -- he's going against the twos and he was a little bit late on this ball or stuff like that. But yeah, we kind of saw it coming, and it's really a credit to how hard he's worked, how much he's learned about the game of football, and how much he's improved on his technical aspect of playing the position of quarterback.

Q. I just want to talk to you about your uniforms this week. They look like they're pretty cool uniforms. Talk about how you guys come out with all these nice cool uniforms?
BOBBY PETRINO: Yeah, it's just a real credit to our administration and Tom Jurich and the relationship that we've built with Adidas. We're very willing to be one of the teams that gets to present and show new things, and we have just a tremendous relationship. They'll look pretty good, and our players like to look good, and we always feel like if we look good, we've got a chance to go out and play good.

Q. Talk about the three keys you guys need to pull out a victory at home?
BOBBY PETRINO: Yeah, I'm not big on three keys. It's going to be important for us that we're able to distinguish that we can run the football, make sure we protect our quarterback and throw the ball down the field, put pressure on their DB's, and defensively we've got to stop the run.

Q. Alexander and the year he's having for you guys, where have you seen the biggest growth from him this season?
BOBBY PETRINO: Well, you know, he came in at mid year before his freshman year, and he had a great spring, and then I felt like he wasn't used to two-a-days and camp and how hard everything was, and he tailed off just a little bit at the beginning of his freshman year. But by the end of the year, he was back playing at a very, very high level, had a great spring. He's just a very talented guy that's extremely smart and competent and can play the ball in the air. His ability to catch the ball and play the ball in the air shows you why we considered playing him at wide receiver and why we recruited him to play either receiver or corner.

Q. Have you ever thought about having him do both?
BOBBY PETRINO: No. It's a hard game. You've got to spend a lot of time just on the position you play.

Q. Lamar is so close to so many records, and people see that, but what they don't see are the people up front doing a good job for him. Could you talk about some of your offensive linemen who have stepped up and played well for you this year?
BOBBY PETRINO: Yeah, I think that's been one of the big keys for us is the improvement we've made on the offensive front, both our tackles, Geron Christian and Lukayus McNeil have done a really nice job for us and Tobais is in the middle making all the calls and running the show, and then Khalil Hunter and Kiola Mahoni have improved, and two guys that came in here a year ago, didn't know much about anything of our offense and what was going on, and just put in a tremendous amount of work and have made it a lot of fun to coach.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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