UNC coach Larry Fedora says he was pleased with the focus his Tar Heels displayed throughout the 62-0 win over Elon. He expects the same effort this week at Wake Forest, and every week for that matter.

“As the game got a little bit out of hand in the second half, I was pleased with the way the guys went back out,” Fedora said during his weekly media teleconference. “They weren’t sloppy. They went out and executed as we had asked them to.”

Fedora said that the Heels need to focus the same against old rival Wake Forest. “I think we treat each and every game the same,” he said. “We expect to practice a certain way each and every week. Doesn’t matter who we play, where we play, what time we play, what the conditions are, we try to get our guys to play one way all the time. That’s the new Carolina way.”

Q. Obviously a lot of things went well
last week. Was there anything you looked at
and said, We really have to fix or correct this?
COACH FEDORA: There’s no doubt
about it. There’s so many different places in the
game we got to get better. We have to get better
with our tempo on offense. We still turned the ball
over twice. We had three penalties as a team.
Defensively, I mean, we still gave up a few
third-and-longs that we would not liked to have
given up. We had a penalty on special teams. Our
kickoff return team was not very good at all. Our
coverage team was not very good on our kickoff
coverage. So we got a lot to work on.

Q. Could you touch on a little bit about
preparing for a guy like Michael Campanaro,
receiver for Wake Forest, some of the things he
brings to the table that make him challenging
to defend?
COACH FEDORA: Well, I think the tough
thing about Michael is he’s a great athlete. You
can tell he’s very natural catching the ball. He
plucks everything with his hands. That’s not
something he’s concerned with. If they get the ball
close to him, he’s going to make the catch. He
catches the ball in contact, in a crowd. He can
make you miss. He can obviously take it the
distance.
It’s definitely a headache for you
defensively knowing that when he’s got you out in
open spaces, you have to make that tackle. The
key is make sure you get him on the ground. Don’t
worry about the knock-out, just get him on the
ground. He definitely gives you a challenge.

Q. This week both you and your
players have specifically mentioned winning
the state championship. How important is it,
especially with this particular team, to have
goals like that to keep them focused on what
they can accomplish?
COACH FEDORA: I think it’s extremely
important. I think the first step en route to success
is setting a goal. I think that’s the first thing you
have to do is set a goal. We have done that. We
set a couple of goals that we feel like we can
accomplish this year, and one of those is to be
state champs.
This is a part of that goal. So it’s very
important to our team.

Q. Jim Grobe said he was kind of
surprised with the execution you had last week.
So much is new. Did it surprise you at all or
did you expect that right out of the gate?
COACH FEDORA: That’s hard to say. I’m
always expecting it. Whether I get it or not, that’s
the question.
But I think our staff just did a tremendous
job preparing those kids, and the kids were very
focused on the task at hand. I think you’ll find out
in college coaching as you look around the
country, that’s the biggest challenge that any
coach has, is to get his guys to play at a high level
week in and week out.
Now that one is gone, put to bed. No one
really cares about what we did last week. It’s all
about what we do this week. So our focus is now
totally on Wake Forest.

Q. Larry, you and Jim Grobe both had
some time spent under Coach DeBerry at Air
Force. Do you see some of the same traits in
Jim’s team?
COACH FEDORA: I tell you what, not only
is Fisher DeBerry a great football coach, but he’s a
great man, a great husband, a great father. He
does things the right way. You don’t ever have to
question anything about the way Fisher does
things, they’re going to be done right.
One of the things I think about Coach
DeBerry that I learned is he’s one of the most
positive people that I’ve ever been around in any
situation. I think it rubbed off on me, I can assure
you. I’m sure it has on Jim also.
I think his teams play like that also.

Q. With such a short road trip to
Winston-Salem, do you have to deviate at all
from your normal pregame routines?
COACH FEDORA: No. As a matter of
fact we try to make all our away games the same
as home games. Our Fridays, the way we have
them arranged are pretty much the same week in,
week out, whether it’s a plane flight or a bus trip.
It’s all built in.
It’s basically the same what we would be
doing a Friday at home, just minus the travel.

Q. Will you stay in Chapel Hill Friday
night?
COACH FEDORA: No, we’re not staying
in Chapel Hill. We don’t stay in Chapel Hill for a
home game either.

Q. Because you opened up with an
FCS team, how much of a good gauge was that
or was that not for the first week?
COACH FEDORA: I guess that’s still to be
seen, whether it’s a good gauge or not. I’m just
happy that we got to play another team. Didn’t
really matter to me who we played, all those things.
It was about us. It was about how were we going
to go out and execute, how were we going to
handle any adversity in the game. Were we going
to have multiple penalties, turn the football over,
make mistakes that are uncharacteristic.
You know what, we didn’t in most of those
situations. So I was pleased with our guys’ focus.

Q. Wake’s offensive line is really
young, struggling with injuries up front. With
y’all’s success Saturday, do you feel that’s an
area you could really take advantage of and be
successful with Saturday? If so, why?
COACH FEDORA: Well, I haven’t looked
at that and said, Hey, their offensive line is a
weakness. I haven’t done that by any means.
I think they may be younger than some of
the other guys on the team, but you have Bolling
who is in his fourth year. You have (Antonio) Ford
in his third year. You have (Garrick) Williams in his
fifth-year. You have (Frank) Sousa in his fourth
year. You have (Colin) Summers in his third year.
I don’t really consider that young. It maybe is on
Jim’s team because everybody has been
redshirted.
Now experience-wise, they may not have
had a lot of experience, but they’ve been
developed in his program. I don’t really look at that
as a weakness.

Q. You mentioned the tempo of the
offense, wanting to get that a little bit better
this week. Any specific thing you can pinpoint
that will help you go faster?
COACH FEDORA: Sure. I mean, our
quarterback needs to be more conscious of where
he is on the field, what’s going on, so that he can
manage that better. Our offensive linemen need to
do a better job of communicating quicker. Our
receivers need to get lined up faster. We get those
things done, we can move a little bit quicker.