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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 8, 2010

Jim Grobe

MIKE FINN: Thank you. Welcome to today's ACC football coaches media teleconference. Maryland junior safety Kenny Tate has been chosen as National Defensive Player of the Week by the Football Writers Association of America, for his efforts in Maryland's 17-14 win over Navy, which included making a game-saving stop on the goal line in the final seconds of the game.
With that, we'll bring on Wake Forest head coach, Jim Grobe, whose Demon Deacons will host the Duke Blue Devils this Saturday at a 12:00 noon game at BB&T Stadium. Saturday's game will be regionally televised by the ACC network, and it will be the first ACC game of the year.
Wake has captured ten straight against the Duke Blue Devils. With that, we'll ask for a brief opening statement from coach and go to questions.
COACH GROBE: Thank you, Mike. We were happy to get a win to start the season against Presbyterian. I thought P.C.'s kids played really, really hard. I thought they had a really good plan. I thought our kids had to play good to win, and we played with a lot of energy.
We made way too many mistakes, but you typically do in a first game. So we're hoping to improve this week. We need to. We're playing a really fine Duke team that's coming to town, and Coach Cutcliffe and his guys have done a great job with that football program. So we know we've got our work cut out for us.
MIKE FINN: Questions for Coach Grobe.

Q. What, if anything, do you learn about your team from playing Presbyterian the first game?
COACH GROBE: Well, I think as much as anything we found out that our kids like to play, they like to compete. I think that's always a concern for coaches to find out who wants to go play hard, and I thought we did that. I think we have a better feeling of who will go out in a game day atmosphere and play hard.
But I think probably as important as anything is we just got the young guys some game time. I think that was our biggest concern. We just hadn't -- we like the young guys on our football team. We think we've got some young talent. But we had gotten tired of practicing, and I didn't think we could get any better by practicing.
So probably the number one thing we got out of our opening game with Presbyterian is we got the young guys some experience, and I think we were pleased with everything except mental mistakes. I think we made too many mental mistakes, and we've got to look at ourselves as coaches as much as looking at the kids, I think.

Q. What did you see in your new starting quarterback?
COACH GROBE: I like a lot of the things that Ted did. He misfired on a couple of pretty easy open throws which was disappointing. And he fumbled the football at one time, and that's something we can't do. We can't turn the football over. But if you look at what he did, he played basically the whole first half and then gave way to some of the other kids.
But I thought he did some good things. He made some really good decisions. He ran the ball well, I thought. He made some nice throws. He made a really nice throw to Marshall Williams up the sideline that looked a little like a Riley Skinner throw, because it was right where you need to have it to be caught.
So he did some really good things. He's got some things that he's got to improve on. Probably the biggest thing for Ted was, like some of the other kids, he's not got any experience. Just getting out there and playing was really, really important.
I think he was somewhat indecisive at times, but at times he was very decisive. So we've got to get to where we can get him comfortable enough that he makes better decisions and makes them a little bit quicker.

Q. What did you see of your defense in that game? I know it's a little hard in a game like this to judge your defense, but what did you see and what are you looking for from your defense this year?
COACH GROBE: Well, I feel like we've got some ability. It's just we've got so many kids and in some cases our kids are not that young, they're just very inexperienced. They haven't played a lot of football when it counts.
So I think what we saw from the defense is we saw a lot of energy. We saw guys that were playing really, really hard, and that's the first thing that you want as a football coach. But I think, again, from our defense, just too many mental mistakes. We just had -- I keep saying that about both sides of the ball -- but we're so young we'll play in spurts pretty good, but then we'll get lulled to sleep sometimes and not pay attention to the call and not take care of business as far as our techniques and assignments.
So I liked -- I got to tell you, I had a good feeling about what our defense can be. But we've got a huge challenge this Saturday with Duke coming to town. We just can't in any way make as many mental mistakes as we made this past week.
I have to tell you though, I really feel like that most coaches expect that with young players in the first game.

Q. If you look at Renfree's numbers from the first game they're really pretty impressive. Is that about what you expected from him? Had you seen much of him at all?
COACH GROBE: I had other people tell me, in fact a couple of people that are from Arizona that knew about the kid when he was in high school, told me when Duke first signed him that they had signed a great quarterback. Of course he got some snaps early last year. And with Thad Lewis being as good as he is, I knew that Coach Cutcliffe wasn't going to put that kid on the field and take reps away from Thad Lewis unless he thought he could help them win.
So I knew with him being on the field last year he had to be pretty special. And I think he had a pretty good percentage of his passes before he got hurt last year. So I don't know coming off a knee injury if it you expected him to be as good as he was the other night. But when you hit right at 80% of your throws, I've been on teams where it's hard for a kid to hit 80% if there's no defense on the other side if you're just out there throwing on air.
On one hand I was probably a little surprised and disappointed that he played so well last week. Watching the video was pretty special.

Q. This Duke-Wake rivalry, what is it about this rivalry that makes it? You guys have played so many close games here lately and you guys have won it. What is it that has spawned and turned this thing into such a really close and competitive rivalry?
COACH GROBE: Well, I think, honestly, we've been a little bit lucky at times to win a blocked field goal, an interception in overtime, things like that where you just happen to be in the right place at the right time.
But I think we're very similar. I think the two schools are similar. We basically have the real student-athlete, guys that are good students and character kids that also play in a BCS conference, so we're very similar as institutions.
But I think one of the things that stirs it up a little bit is I think we both have a lot of North Carolina kids on our roster. I think Duke has almost 30, and we're somewhere around 35 North Carolina kids on our roster.
So I think when you have a lot of kids that have played against each other in high school and in some cases gone to school with each other, I think it stirs things up a little bit.
MIKE FINN: Jim, thanks for being with us today. Good luck this weekend, and we look forward to talking to you next week.
COACH GROBE: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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