GAINESVILLE -- Torrian Gray spent a decade coaching at his alma mater, but Florida’s new defensive backs assistant left Virginia Tech to come home.
Gray, 41, is a native of Lakeland and talked Thursday about the opportunity to return to the state where his mother and six siblings still reside.
“To have a chance to come here, I was ecstatic about that,” said Gray, who played for the Hokies in the mid ‘90s and coached 10 NFL draft picks at the school in the last decade.
“To come home was just exciting to have that opportunity.”
Florida hired Gray on Feb. 4, and on Thursday he addressed a number of topics including DBU, recruiting with the Gator crest, learning a new scheme and evaluating Florida’s secondary talent.
What are your early impressions of Florida’s secondary?
“I’m very impressed with the top-end talent we have. We have to develop some depth there, but it’s pretty impressive the guys we do have coming back. I’m excited to start working with those guys. After those guys, we’ve got to build a lot of depth.”
So who is really the Defensive Back University?
“I think you got three or four schools that call themselves DBU, maybe more. Virginia Tech was one of the schools that called themselves DBU. Florida calls themselves DBU, LSU too. I hear Texas. I guess it’s whatever you think. We think we’re DBU here at the University of Florida, and we’re going to roll with that.”
What is your philosophy on recruiting?
“It’s about building relationships, finding out who are the people that you really need to get close with and who’s important to the student-athlete that you’re recruiting. You always want to try to get in and build a great relationship with the student-athlete and who’s going to be important to that student-athlete’s decision.”
Did you have any prior relationships with Geoff Collins or Randy Shannon? How different is the scheme at Florida versus what you implemented at Va. Tech?
“I hadn’t had a lot of relationship with Coach Collins, or Coach Rumph or Coach Shannon for the most part. Getting to know those guys the past couple weeks has been pretty neat. The scheme that we do here is almost a lot different from what we do at Virginia Tech. It’s exciting for me.
I get to grow as a coach and get to learn Coach Collins’ scheme and what those guys are doing. … At Virginia Tech, we kind of got into playing a lot of man coverage. Almost every play. Our zones were matchup-zones. But you can only do so much in college football. You're either playing man or playing zone, but it's just kind of from the concept and the way we did things is a little bit different than here. At the end of the day you can only do certain things, but it's still a lot different.”
After 10 years in the ACC, how different is it recruiting at an SEC school now?
“Being in the ACC, and you come down to Georgia and it seems there was an awe or something about the SEC, an aura that you went up against sometimes. Some kids it didn’t matter, but for a lot of kids it did. If I’m spot recruiting Florida, sometimes it does matter. For some kids it didn’t, but there seems to be an aura for a lot of student-athletes about the SEC. It’ll be fun to see if that works in our favor now.”
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