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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 1, 2010

Mike London

THE MODERATOR: Now we welcome Virginia head Coach Mike London. We'll bring on coach and ask for a brief opening statement, then go to questions.
COACH LONDON: Good morning, everyone. It's business as usual. Very excited about the opportunity to have a home opener, to play in the state of Virginia, obviously play a school and a team that have I have a great amount of respect for.
Players have been working hard. Looking forward to a great contest.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach London.

Q. Mike, how much did you know about Perry Jones when you came back to Virginia? Had you seen him play in high school? Had you heard much about him? Were you just kind of starting fresh with him?
COACH LONDON: No, you know, when I left, I had seen his highlight tape. He was playing safety, linebacker, running the ball. He was all over the place. A very dynamic video. You watch that and you see he's very accomplished as a football player.
You get here and you see that offense, special teams, he can do a lot of things. He even snaps on some of the punts. He can do it. He's very talented in high school. The talent has crossed over into his college opportunities, too.

Q. It seems when people talk about him they talk about as much about his intangibles as his tangibles, his work ethic. Have you been impressed by the way he conducts himself off the field?
COACH LONDON: Very much so. Perry maybe struggled a little bit academically because he wasn't focused in that area. But during the spring, over summer, he ended up getting over a 3.0 GPA. Football-wise he's always had a strong work ethic. Comes from a great high school in the Tidewater here. Is a great young man. Doesn't say boo, just goes to work, so we're glad to have him.

Q. You're voting in the coach's poll this year, correct?
COACH LONDON: Yes, I am.

Q. How did you evaluate teams when you went to do your ballot from outside the so-called power conferences, Boise, TCU and such?
COACH LONDON: It's always one of those tasks that you try to go back and look at games, significant games that they won, conference history, your other colleagues around the sport that you talked to that may have seen them play or may know about a particular player or players on their team. It's always difficult sometimes, you know, to rank teams, particularly when no one's played a game yet.
I think going into the season, they are where they are, but as the season goes on, a lot of things will come to fruition as far as are they a top-10 team or top 25 team or what.
Initially, a lot of reading, a lot of talking to people. Hopefully you try to do the best job you can in trying to rank them.

Q. Share where you voted Boise?
COACH LONDON: No comment (laughter). Hey, they're a great team. They're very deserving of having the type of attention that they've garnered for themselves over the last couple years. I'm sure it's going to be a great game between them and Virginia Tech. Looking forward to that.

Q. Mike, how different or similar has your approach been in taking over Virginia as opposed to whatever experiences you drew on from two years ago when you took over Richmond?
COACH LONDON: Any situation when you're the new guy, come in, you want to establish your culture, philosophy, things that you want to bring to the program.
Fortunately, you know, with Richmond, the program had won before and it's one of those things you're surrounded by a bunch of players that have won a lot of games. You kind of carry it over. 2008 and last season, just kind of the mindset that those guys have.
Here, again you have to try to change the mindset, the culture of expectations to what you think are important to a program, building a program. You got to used to trying to win, get used to trying to do things from a positive standpoint.
It's been different in that their the mindset, the mentality of winning, expecting to win was prevalent. Here you build your case, build confidence, build something that the players can have success in. You take it process by process. Academically we did great. Socially, a lot of the guys did a nice job connecting with the community. Now we got to play on the field. We're hoping that the other successes can meet the measured amount of success on the field as well.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Coach Reid. At one point you were on his staff and now vice versa.
COACH LONDON: Very respectful relationship in that Coach Reid was a very, very good head coach. I learned a lot from him. We go separate ways. We always stayed in contact with each other. Very similar in the philosophy of trying to play hard and fast and tough. Does a great job in dealing with players from all issues: academic, social, personal.
When this opportunity came, there was an interest, I asked him if he had an interest in coming back to college. He did. Now I don't look at it as a role of all of a sudden I work for him, he's working for him. I look at it as a collaborative effort with all the coaches I have on staff that are responsible for particular positions.
But Coach Reid has a wealth of knowledge, been a former head coach three different places. I'm just fortunate to have him on this year's team.

Q. Do you remember your emotion of being on the other sideline two years ago when you played Virginia and what you expect in similarities or differences when you look across the field and see Richmond on the other sideline this time?
COACH LONDON: Absolutely. I mean, it was the first time I'd been over to the visitor's locker room. Just the feeling of having been there. Spent six years of my life here. Now coming back to Virginia, knowing that I'm going to play a team that I spent a great two years, ups and downs, close wins, tough losses, players and coaches that I'm very familiar with and good friends with still to this day.
The human element is very prevalent. That's my alma mater. Dr. Ayers gave me an opportunity. Now I'm here with Dr. Sullivan, wearing orange and blue. Trying to do everything I can now for the University of Virginia to be successful.

Q. Obviously when any coach comes in, he talks about a clean slate for guys who haven't been playing very much. Does it seem that there is an unusually high number of players who have kind of been forgotten and are now in the mix, Fells-Danzer, Horne, Miller, probably some others? Isn't that unusually high?
COACH LONDON: You know, I guess you can look at it that way from the standpoint that they hadn't played, for whatever the reasons were. Now you look at defensively, you know, Ausur Walcott was a safety, now a starting linebacker. This will be his first college game getting a lot of reps. LaRoy Reynolds, the same way.
You're right, there's a lot of players even though they were here and around, as you step up, now you got to be counted onto play 30, 40 plus plays in a game. Aaron Taliaferro was one of those guys in a different scheme. Now he's in a different system. He's expected to step up and play.
There are a lot of players on this team, both offensively and defensively and special teams roles, guys were here, hadn't gotten a number of reps, and now they got to step up to the forefront and they've got to perform.

Q. I was wondering the progress of Marc Verica during fall camp, what you've seen out of him.
COACH LONDON: We've seen a lot of progress in Marc, the type of progress that you would expect of a fifth-year senior who has played in games, won games, who has experienced the highs and lows of playing that position, leading coverages, presnap reads, being able to manage and distribute the ball. Marc has got to play his best football. He's got to distribute the ball, make the reads, make the throws. If a wide receiver can't catch it, make sure that no one else catches it by throwing it on the mark.
That's where the fifth-year guy got his bid in the game. Hopefully we can provide opportunities for him to be efficient, provide opportunities to protect him, provide opportunities to get him out on the pocket, just to do where we can increase his level of confidence by what we're doing, the plays we're doing, how we're managing the game for him.
It's time for him now to step up and be the leader of this team and be the quarterback of this team.

Q. I've seen all the press releases coming out about painting the town orange. Your thoughts on the excitement building in Charlottesville as you all get ready for your first game this weekend?
COACH LONDON: It's natural emotions when football is now in the air. There's all the changes gone about, building the program, the new uniforms. It's part of the whole process to reach out to everybody in the Charlottesville community and those of us that travel a distance to come and see us.
I realize all of that doesn't make a difference. You still got to block, tackle, perform, execute. It's just another part of the process. You try and create an atmosphere and get your fan base back and try to do some things to get people back interested in us.
I'm sure the excitement is building for the players and for the school, the community, President Sullivan, her first game here also. We're just going to try to represent the school and play good football here. If we can do that, we'll take a one-game-at-a-time approach. We want to make sure we start out in a fashion, as I said before, I need everybody to be involved in this, the program. We're hoping they're going to show up on Saturday.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for being with us. Good luck this weekend and we'll talk to you next week.
COACH LONDON: Mike, thank you.

End of FastScripts

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