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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 17, 2010

Mike London

THE MODERATOR: We'll bring on Mike London, Virginia head coach. We'll ask for a brief opening statement, then go to questions.
Coach.
COACH LONDON: Good morning.
It's an opportunity to go back to a place that I spent four seasons at, actually, time with Coach Spaziani as the defensive coordinator. It's a road opportunity for us, something we haven't done this year is win a road ACC game. That's a challenge. But the challenge of meeting arguably probably the conference's best runningback is also a task at hand there.
With that being said, we're practicing well and look forward to going to the Chestnut Hill.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach London.

Q. Payne has had a good year for you as a runningback. You were in Houston during his senior season. Have you ever seen quite the career arc that Keith has had from high school star to apparent college wash-out, showing up senior year and scoring 15 touchdowns?
COACH LONDON: I tell you what, your assessment, if you ask him, high school phenomenon, and he gets here for whatever reason, has an okay start, then I don't know what you could characterize it, a falling out or leaves the program. Then he comes back with hat in hand, through a series of things he and I have talked about, the expectations, has met those expectations. He continues to meet the academic expectation, which is one that's very important to me.
But being able to play on the field and do the things he's done, it's been a complete turnaround because of the humbleness now he has as opposed to the cocky kid coming from high school that was all everything.
It's been interesting. But knowing him now and seeing him now, being able to see the transformation, basically it took time for him to grow up and become for us this year a significant factor.

Q. When he came to you, to use your phrase, 'hat in hand', was it an easy decision to welcome him back or were you reluctant?
COACH LONDON: I was reluctant. To tell you the truth, it was an academic deal and coming back it was an academic risk of taking him back. He still has some hurdles academically to cross over to get his degree. I put that out in front of him first and foremost.
I think there's a time that actually that might have encouraged him to go to Liberty. Danny Rocco has taken players from here and they've had nice careers at Liberty. That was a little bit of a thought process, too, if he couldn't handle some of the criteria that I set forth in the community, classroom, weight room-wise, not expecting that his teammates are going to welcome him back with open arms because he left the team. There were going to be things that he would have to do and there are things I asked team members, What do you think about this guy? How is he working? How is he getting along with everybody?
Spring practice, started going through that, the season started, things started rolling along, the answers to the questions were coming back as doing a good job, doing a nice job, can do better in this part but he's not a problem down in the weight room, different things like that.
He's emerged. He's dinged up right now. He came out of the game last week kind of dinged up. His wheels and body have taken a toll. Hopefully we'll have an opportunity to take him with us this Friday when we leave the Chestnut Hill.
I tell you, I just look at a big back with size that can get five and can get 40, can catch out of the backfield. I told him one of the early things the scout said, Can he pass protect? Early on I think he got knocked over by somebody coming off the edge, took that lesson to heart, and now has shown that he can pass protect.
The future is bright for Keith as long as Keith himself doesn't get in the way.

Q. You mentioned scouts. Does he have a football future?
COACH LONDON: I tell you, a lot of them look at the stats and they'll look they game and will say, Who is the big tailback? I think what intrigues them is a couple games with the catches and the run and the touchdowns. Keith still thinks of himself as a svelte tailback, but he might be somebody's fullback. Reminds me of, when I was at Richmond, Josh Vaughan was a tailback for us. A lot of the schools said, We'll look at you as a fullback. He was like, No, I don't want any part of that. Shoot, Josh, I think he's with the Colts and just scored a touchdown not too long ago.
So that body type, being able to do a lot of things because you can run like a tailback but you have the size of a fullback.

Q. I wanted to ask you, there's a lot of controversy after the Oregon-Cal game about players faking injuries and coaches coaching players to fake injuries. Is that something you've ever run across in your career? As a coach, what's your reaction to it?
COACH LONDON: I'm not quite sure the content of what you're talking about as far as faking an injury. Can you be more specific?

Q. The idea is to slow down or hurry up an offense that's trying to run a play every 15 seconds so you can substitute and catch your breath on defense. It's been charged that Cal had guys fake injuries to stop play so they could set their defense a little better. Whether that happened or not in that context, in general terms, have you seen it? How would you regard it?
COACH LONDON: Well, it's nothing that I would do or personally have been involved with or seen someone else do it to us. I do know the hurry-up offense is one of those things that tries to limit you making those defensive substitutions. We can get into the rule part of it about the umpire standing over the ball and allowing the defense to make an adjustment based on the personnel the offense brings in.
But it does cause some consternation with you trying to match another defensive back, take a linebacker out. Could be on their side of the 30 yard line, their side of the sideline that if you try to do a substitution, your guy is running from your long sideline area.
Offenses have been innovative and have used the rule right up to the line of even waiting to before the clock expires for play, to run a guy out there with maybe 10 or 15 seconds already knowing what the play is. Now defensively you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do you substitute your DB or keep your linebacker in there knowing there's only a couple of seconds left on the clock?
It's a tough deal. It's tough. So defensively it causes you to have to make decisions about playing a base defense or playing a nickel or dime defense.
But it goes to the crux of your question about having a player to face an injury to slow down the process. I would hope the umpires and referees in the game could look at that whole situation and make a determination whether or not the deception on the defensive part is not prevalent.
But tough question, tough to defend. I know it's a weapon a lot of offenses are using.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for being with us. Good luck this weekend. We'll look forward to talking to you next Tuesday.
COACH LONDON: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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