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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
Q. Obviously a lot of things went well Q. Could you touch on a little bit about Q. This week both you and your Q. Jim Grobe said he was kind of Q. Larry, you and Jim Grobe both had Q. With such a short road trip to Q. Will you stay in Chapel Hill Friday Q. Because you opened up with an Q. Wake’s offensive line is really Q. You mentioned the tempo of the 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-stories","category-north-carolina-tar-heels","wpcat-79-id","wpcat-80-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4221,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220\/revisions\/4221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nlast week. Was there anything you looked at
\nand said, We really have to fix or correct this?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> There’s no doubt
\nabout it. There’s so many different places in the
\ngame we got to get better. We have to get better
\nwith our tempo on offense. We still turned the ball
\nover twice. We had three penalties as a team.
\nDefensively, I mean, we still gave up a few
\nthird-and-longs that we would not liked to have
\ngiven up. We had a penalty on special teams. Our
\nkickoff return team was not very good at all. Our
\ncoverage team was not very good on our kickoff
\ncoverage. So we got a lot to work on.<\/p>\n
\npreparing for a guy like Michael Campanaro,
\nreceiver for Wake Forest, some of the things he
\nbrings to the table that make him challenging
\nto defend?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> Well, I think the tough
\nthing about Michael is he’s a great athlete. You
\ncan tell he’s very natural catching the ball. He
\nplucks everything with his hands. That’s not
\nsomething he’s concerned with. If they get the ball
\nclose to him, he’s going to make the catch. He
\ncatches the ball in contact, in a crowd. He can
\nmake you miss. He can obviously take it the
\ndistance.
\nIt’s definitely a headache for you
\ndefensively knowing that when he’s got you out in
\nopen spaces, you have to make that tackle. The
\nkey is make sure you get him on the ground. Don’t
\nworry about the knock-out, just get him on the
\nground. He definitely gives you a challenge.<\/p>\n
\nplayers have specifically mentioned winning
\nthe state championship. How important is it,
\nespecially with this particular team, to have
\ngoals like that to keep them focused on what
\nthey can accomplish?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> I think it’s extremely
\nimportant. I think the first step en route to success
\nis setting a goal. I think that’s the first thing you
\nhave to do is set a goal. We have done that. We
\nset a couple of goals that we feel like we can
\naccomplish this year, and one of those is to be
\nstate champs.
\nThis is a part of that goal. So it’s very
\nimportant to our team.<\/p>\n
\nsurprised with the execution you had last week.
\nSo much is new. Did it surprise you at all or
\ndid you expect that right out of the gate?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> That’s hard to say. I’m
\nalways expecting it. Whether I get it or not, that’s
\nthe question.
\nBut I think our staff just did a tremendous
\njob preparing those kids, and the kids were very
\nfocused on the task at hand. I think you’ll find out
\nin college coaching as you look around the
\ncountry, that’s the biggest challenge that any
\ncoach has, is to get his guys to play at a high level
\nweek in and week out.
\nNow that one is gone, put to bed. No one
\nreally cares about what we did last week. It’s all
\nabout what we do this week. So our focus is now
\ntotally on Wake Forest.<\/p>\n
\nsome time spent under Coach DeBerry at Air
\nForce. Do you see some of the same traits in
\nJim’s team?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> I tell you what, not only
\nis Fisher DeBerry a great football coach, but he’s a
\ngreat man, a great husband, a great father. He
\ndoes things the right way. You don’t ever have to
\nquestion anything about the way Fisher does
\nthings, they’re going to be done right.
\nOne of the things I think about Coach
\nDeBerry that I learned is he’s one of the most
\npositive people that I’ve ever been around in any
\nsituation. I think it rubbed off on me, I can assure
\nyou. I’m sure it has on Jim also.
\nI think his teams play like that also.<\/p>\n
\nWinston-Salem, do you have to deviate at all
\nfrom your normal pregame routines?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> No. As a matter of
\nfact we try to make all our away games the same
\nas home games. Our Fridays, the way we have
\nthem arranged are pretty much the same week in,
\nweek out, whether it’s a plane flight or a bus trip.
\nIt’s all built in.
\nIt’s basically the same what we would be
\ndoing a Friday at home, just minus the travel.<\/p>\n
\nnight?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> No, we’re not staying
\nin Chapel Hill. We don’t stay in Chapel Hill for a
\nhome game either.<\/p>\n
\nFCS team, how much of a good gauge was that
\nor was that not for the first week?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> I guess that’s still to be
\nseen, whether it’s a good gauge or not. I’m just
\nhappy that we got to play another team. Didn’t
\nreally matter to me who we played, all those things.
\nIt was about us. It was about how were we going
\nto go out and execute, how were we going to
\nhandle any adversity in the game. Were we going
\nto have multiple penalties, turn the football over,
\nmake mistakes that are uncharacteristic.
\nYou know what, we didn’t in most of those
\nsituations. So I was pleased with our guys’ focus.<\/p>\n
\nyoung, struggling with injuries up front. With
\ny’all’s success Saturday, do you feel that’s an
\narea you could really take advantage of and be
\nsuccessful with Saturday? If so, why?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> Well, I haven’t looked
\nat that and said, Hey, their offensive line is a
\nweakness. I haven’t done that by any means.
\nI think they may be younger than some of
\nthe other guys on the team, but you have Bolling
\nwho is in his fourth year. You have (Antonio) Ford
\nin his third year. You have (Garrick) Williams in his
\nfifth-year. You have (Frank) Sousa in his fourth
\nyear. You have (Colin) Summers in his third year.
\nI don’t really consider that young. It maybe is on
\nJim’s team because everybody has been
\nredshirted.
\nNow experience-wise, they may not have
\nhad a lot of experience, but they’ve been
\ndeveloped in his program. I don’t really look at that
\nas a weakness.<\/p>\n
\noffense, wanting to get that a little bit better
\nthis week. Any specific thing you can pinpoint
\nthat will help you go faster?<\/em>
\nCOACH FEDORA:<\/strong> Sure. I mean, our
\nquarterback needs to be more conscious of where
\nhe is on the field, what’s going on, so that he can
\nmanage that better. Our offensive linemen need to
\ndo a better job of communicating quicker. Our
\nreceivers need to get lined up faster. We get those
\nthings done, we can move a little bit quicker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"