UVA football coach Mike London talks with reporters on Wednesday’s weekly ACC teleconference.
COACH LONDON: It’s been a very productive week for us. You have a tendency sometimes to fall back on the what-ifs and what could-haves and should-haves and things like that, but our guys have been very focused about taking care of this football team, and then worry about who we play secondary. I have a lot of respect for Coach Laycock. I was on his staff for several years and have a tremendous amount of respect for us. And truly for us, and I know I don’t want it to be coach speak and things like that, but it is definitely about us and how we play and perform and close out quarter situations. As I said, we are looking forward to an opportunity to play another home game.
Q. Your biggest takeaways, we talked last week about a tough non-conference schedule to start the season. Looking at UCLA and Notre Dame, like you said, we can only control ourselves.
COACH LONDON: Well, improvement, that was big. Obviously from the first game, you never know, the first time your guys get out there and you’re competing against another team. UCLA, as we all know, is one of the better teams in the country right now. And then what’s more important is the ability to improve from game two, and that was evident in the last game we played. I was pleased the way the offense was able to move the ball and do some things that effect opportunities for explosive plays. We put points on the board and scored in the red zone. Defensively, we held them in terms of third down percentages. We have got to get turnovers. We haven’t had one yet, but we have to create those opportunities for us to score points and set the field position up for. There’s improvement. There’s always room for improvement in getting better, but as I told you guys before, these first two games are about as tough of a litmus test that you can have. But the good thing for us is that you can — there’s a sense of can do. We talked about mind-set. We talked about guys wanting to compete and have opportunities to win close games, and having played a few games now and having an opportunity to continue to move forward and play again here at home at our place is all we’re concerned about. And so it’s about continuing to get better.
Q. When you went in the fourth quarter against Notre Dame and you took the lead late with under two minutes to go, despite the fact that you come out of that game with a 34-27 loss, what can you say about playing against Notre Dame specifically, a Top-10 team, and seeing what your team was able to do late in the game, even though it didn’t end in your favor?
COACH LONDON: You know, I get — we talked about pats on the backs and things like that. That’s good. That’s great. But in this profession and in the world we live in from an athletic standpoint, you want those W’s. Now the mind-set has been created that you can play with some pretty good teams, and like I said before, they had some first rounders. They had some really, really talented players. It’s incredible how a mind-set can take over a lot of things and raise your level. We talked about a high tide raises all boats; guys that are role players and they step up, whatever their role might be. We talk about players that are guys we are counting on and they step up and they play even better, a guy like Canaan Severin or Matt Johns. So it’s continuing to get better. This is game three of a long season. It’s game three, and every process and everything that you do, it has to be reflective of the goal and the mission, and the mission is to win football games and the next opportunity for us this season is the next opponent, and that opponent is William and Mary.
Q. I believe you are 5-0 against FCS teams since you’ve been at Virginia. Virginia has lost some of these games in the past. Have you — would you bring that up? How do you address that FBS, FCS deal?
COACH LONDON: Yeah, I’ve been on both sides of it. Obviously had some success being at the FCS level playing a BCS team. Again, it’s easy for guys to read things and get on message boards and talk about the different things that should occur. But I’ve been on the other side where William and Mary, whatever it may be, that guys — those young men are football players, too. They play to win games. They are excited. Their goal is to have a big game and to have opportunities for their own programs. And so that’s why the approach for us has been about finishing, getting better, more explosive plays, scoring points, getting turnovers, let’s get to the quarterback, sack the quarterback, continue to tackle for losses, play press coverage when we have to, challenge receivers. I mean, there’s so many things for us to continue to get better as a football team; that it’s not the specifics of the team we are playing. It’s the things that we feel we have to do in order to improve. So you can’t afford to let your guard down. We saw last week with Jacksonville State, we saw Appalachian State a couple years ago. All those things are relevant if you think beyond what you think you are. And right now, we have to be a team that thinks we can win their first football game in a while and that’s the only focus.
Q. How much did you anticipate using your tight ends as pass catchers this year, and two, what did you learn from Coach Laycock when you coached under him?
COACH LONDON: Depends on the team that you’re playing a lot of times. But having a guy like Charlie Hopkins has been a benefit for us. The emergence of Evan Butts, who I think is going to be a really good football player, is something that’s also helped us. And again, we had Robert Burns. We have Brendan Marshall. That’s a possibility that Richard Burney might see his first action, and not just because of the tight end position, but because there’s other things that he can provide for us, a big body guy that can run and that’s athletic. But the tight end position, which has taken awhile to grow it back up to being a position of production for us is something that we look forward to using in games. Just going back to Coach Laycock, the first hire, just working for a guy that’s very methodical in his approach about how he prepares his teams, the expectations he has of his coaches. There’s no wonder he’s a dean of college coaches, and not only in the State of Virginia but for awhile, he’s been — the longevity aspect of him has been tremendous. I remember when I was his assistant, his daughter, Melanie used to be one of the office workers that helped assist me. She never gave up any secrets about anything. She never would say anything about what dad was doing, but Coach has raised some phenomenal kids and he’s coached some phenomenal kids. And I’ve been in a program with him where my first coaching friends were guys like Matt Kellner, Russ Huesman, Zbig Kepa, Tom Blaton (ph); those names go on and on and on, and I met those guys working for Coach Laycock, and they are still friends of mine today.
Q. You’ve had so many close losses over the last couple of years. How do you put those in a box and not let the what ifs eat at you?
COACH LONDON: Well, you missed the news conference the other day and you guys know, faith, family and football are my priorities. I know there’s a plan and there’s a purpose for a lot of things. How to handle adversity when things happen to you; these young men are looking at what a model can be to that. I believe that there’s an experience that we will have as a football team, as a program, that there will be very positive moments for this program. So we are just going to keep modeling our strengths. The things that happen that get away from you; the people that come into your life that leave, people we lose; those things happen. It’s your ability to bounce back and then comeback ready for them again. So we talked about mind-set earlier, and the mind-set for us is the can-do mind-set, and now I believe these guys believe that they can play with anyone. And the what we have to do is execute all of those aspects of playing a football game, offense, defense, special teams, football IQ, preserving time-outs, what to do in different situations. And that continues to get better over and over again and it just has to be modeled and demonstrated. I pray the good Lord can use me as a model for that, because I believe that soon and very soon, that the opportunity to have success here is waiting for us.
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