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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 28, 2011

Paul Johnson

THE MODERATOR: We welcome Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson.
COACH JOHNSON: Good morning. We were happy last week to get a win against what I would consider a good North Carolina football team. We didn't do everything perfect all the time but we did enough good things to win the game.
Now looking forward to going on the road for our first ACC road game against a team who beat us pretty good a year ago. So we have got a chance to line up and play them again and see if we can't do a little better. I think we can play a little better than we did a year ago here.

Q. Last week, you talked about the offensive line in generalities, this week I would like to ask you specifically about Omoregie Uzzi, who has been the ACC's offensive lineman two straight weeks. Is he the guy who sort of sets the tone since he's the oldest guy in there and is sort of the leader of that unit?
COACH JOHNSON: Yeah, he's probably the leader of the offensive line. He's a junior but he's the oldest guy we have up there. You know, he's played a lot. He started for the last couple of years and he's played a lot of snaps. So I think those guys probably will feed off him a little bit.

Q. What are his best attributes? What does he really do well in there?
COACH JOHNSON: I think he's just a big, physical kid. I mean, he's, you know, 300-pounder. He's pretty strong and he's got experience. He did a nice job in the last game. I think we keep a stat for those guys, we had 20 defenders to the ground. That's a pretty good stat for one game.

Q. What were you most impressed or most encouraged by from the game last Saturday?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, I think just the attitude of the team. We didn't particularly play well, that great offensively. We played in spurts. But then defensively, we had some real lapses, especially the start of the second half.
But the kids are resilient and fought back when North Carolina fought back and tied up the score at 28-all and we went right back and answered and got them stopped and got them off the field. So it was good to see that the kids had some determination and grit there when they needed it.

Q. What do you want to see better out of your team this week?
COACH JOHNSON: You know, any time you turn the ball over, you're disappointed, and we did that twice last week, once on the five-yard line going in, which was a big problem a year ago. You can't have that, and we just have got to get better. We have got to continue to get better every week, because we are not where we need to be right now.

Q. NC State made the transition last year obviously when they beat you with Russell Wilson the quarterback, and they replaced with Mike Glennon, who has good numbers. What problems does he present for preparing than Wilson?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, I think they are both players in their own right. Certainly Glennon has a very strong arm. He's probably not quite as mobile as Wilson, but he's probably got a little stronger arm overall.
So they are going to do their stuff. I mean, they don't vary much. They have got a system that they run and I'm sure that they just plug him in and continue to run it. Russell Wilson certainly put a show on down here a year ago, I remember that.

Q. Just to finish up, the 35 points last week, the big outburst the against Kansas the week before, did you see this coming and did you kind of know in August that you're going to be explosive on offense and it's going to be a pretty good year or just do you say, you're better than you thought you would be?
COACH JOHNSON: I think we are a little better than everybody was saying, but you never know until you play. I think we have got a good team that genuinely care about each other and work hard and we have that attitude and have that chance to be successful.
We are still really young. I think we have 11 scholarship seniors on the team. We play two on offense, or really, one, I guess, on offense, and we have got three or four on defense. So it's a pretty young team.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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