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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 16, 2011

Jim Grobe

MIKE FINN: We now welcome Wake Forest head football coach Jim Grobe. We'll ask for a brief open be statement and go to questions.
COACH GROBE: Really disappointed that we didn't come away with a win down at Clemson. We just couldn't get it closed out. Had a couple things that we could have done better in the kicking game and offensively and defensively.
But I thought the effort of our kids was really, really good. I was proud of how hard we played. We just didn't play well enough to get a win. Now we've got a team coming in in Maryland that's very talented and well-coached. We really have to try to bounce back, get our heads back up, have a good effort this Saturday.
MIKE FINN: Questions for Coach Grobe.

Q. I know you were a poll voter this year. We were asking how you slot teams, especially a team that has a bad loss but many victories. How do you weigh those? How do you rationalize a team with such a varying rÃ©sumÃ©?
COACH GROBE: I try to look as much as possible to the games they've played that week and then also strength of schedule. I think quality wins are really, really important. A bad loss, and I consider a bad loss a loss to a team that they maybe should have beaten and didn't get the job done, I think that's a problem.
So many times teams are losing to great teams. When you play a really, really good team close and lose, there's nothing wrong with that. So I try to look at strength of schedule and who they're playing, where they're playing them, try to just evaluate it each week.

Q. Noel is a freshman, leading the nation in passes defended. What does he do so well and did you see this coming from him?
COACH GROBE: No, we didn't see it coming. We think he's a talented kid. But as a freshman, without much experience, you really worry about having a kid that young out on the corner.
I think the best thing he does is he competes so hard every snap. He's a kid that really likes to play. I think you get his very best effort on Saturday. He's sometimes a little too aggressive. He gets his hands on a lot of balls. That's a good thing.
I think probably the thing that we'd like to work with is being a little bit more savvy sometimes on situations and deep balls where we're not getting in a chase position.
But I think the best thing about Merrill is he really competes hard every snap.

Q. When you look back at some of these games where you've gotten off to great starts and haven't been able to finish them off, are there common ingredients or threads that run through those from your end of things?
COACH GROBE: Well, I'm not really sure, to be honest with you. I had somebody ask me the other day if depth was an issue. I think certainly depth is always an issue.
The only thing I've looked at is you try to look at your team and see if you're getting worn down late. I'm guessing that with some of our kids that have to play every snap, that's an issue. But you don't really notice it on film.
I think probably the biggest factor is we're playing good teams. The teams we've lost to this year are really good football teams. I think anytime you get down to crunch time in the fourth quarter, you've got to make plays, which I don't think we've made enough of against the best teams. At the same time they've got good players, too, and they're going to make some plays.
I think the bottom line for us more than anything is we're playing really good teams.

Q. After a great start to this season, Jimmy Newman missed his last three field goal attempts. Does he look tentative to you in the way he's kicking right now?
COACH GROBE: Yeah, it's very disappointing for us. He was kind of cruising along. I think sometimes when you miss one, it kind of sticks with you, then you start looking at all kinds of things from the length of your cleats to whether the ball is in the exact middle of the field, whether there's a breeze, whether the snap is good, whether the hold is good, whether the timing is good. Everything known to man starts going through your head.
I think most guys are best when they can get out there and not worry about anything but just hitting the ball good. Hopefully we can get him back here. These last couple games, it's been something that, field goal kicking, we were kind of taking it for granted.
He didn't kick very well at Syracuse. He missed an extra point and a field goal that was makable. From that point forward he's been dynamite. We kind of got spoiled, quit worrying about it. Then the last two weeks it popped up.
Hopefully he can get his head straightened out and start hitting them good again.

Q. The final offensive drive you had at Clemson, you've always been pretty candid at second-guessing yourself on some of that stuff, do you look back and say there's a certain way you would have preferred to handle it or it's just bad breaks in terms of how much time was left on the clock?
COACH GROBE: Well, the problem that we had was we would have rather just been in our normal offense to where we can call a play, then if we don't like it we can get out of it and change it to a different way.
But with the time that was left, we didn't have any time to do that. We basically had to just call a play and go with it. We didn't execute real, real well. We had a couple great opportunities.
I think after we hit Cameron Ford down the field for a first down we were in great shape. We missed seeing Brandon Pendergrass, our runningback was in the flat, was open. We tried to bang the ball into Campanaro. On the last play we just didn't read it out very well and took the sack.
I think the time was the problem. We really had to be in a hurry mode offensively and we really did not want to get into overtime again on the road. We've not had much success in overtime on the road. I think we've won all of our home games in overtime but we've not had much success on the road.
I think collectively as coaches we felt like that was the time to get a couple first downs and get in field goal range and try to win it in regulation. The problem is, you don't have much time to get it done.

Q. With Jimmy Newman, does that give you additional sympathy for the issues David Cutcliffe has had at Duke with kicking this year?
COACH GROBE: Absolutely. I think this is my 37th year in coaching. It's a tough job for kickers. It's a job where when you're kicking it good, everybody's patting you on the back. When you're not kicking it good, it just seems like you're not going to get it back again.
I think the thing that you know and the thing that we've talked about with our football team is, Hey, guys, we could have made a bunch of plays defensively. We had our hands on four interceptions the other day. We didn't get. We had many opportunities to make tackles that would have gotten us off the field to make plays in the pass game. Offensively we had many times we could have made a better read, a better block, all those types of things.
It's not just the kicker. The problem with the guy kicking the ball is he's out there by himself and everybody is watching him. When you miss one, it's not like you can hide. Everybody is there to see it. I have sympathy for all the teams that are having trouble kicking field goals, but I have as much sympathy as you can have for anybody in Jimmy Newman missing that field goal Saturday because I know that's something he didn't want to have happen.
MIKE FINN: Coach, thanks for being with us today. Good luck this weekend.
COACH GROBE: Thanks.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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