Highlights from Tommy Bowden Press Conference

by TigerNet Staff - Tue Sep 07 12:38:33 GMT-04:00 2004

Tommy Bowden Press Conference

Clemson head coach Tommy Bowden on:

The death of his brother-in-law and nephew

I think any time something like that happens, especially the first death in the immediate family, that it reintroduces you to your priorities which for me are my Christian faith and my family and my profession. You don’t want to minimize the significance of what I do. There are thousands of people where it is very important. It generates millions of dollars but again my Christian faith helps me understand what the most important thing. I think a person in my position at this point in time has to learn to compartmentalize the situation.

Funeral is going to be Thursday. I’m not sure exactly what time so I could possibly miss Thursday’s practice.

What he sees in the Georgia Tech defense:

Really, really complex. They give you a whole bunch of looks up front…a lot of twisting, looping and stunting as opposed to sitting in a base front and rushing. They give their players a really good chance to be successful by a lot of movement. I see probably more movement up front than what Wake Forest did last week.

How to combat all the movement on defense:

When they are all over the place you have to kind of limit your blocking schemes and makes your protections more difficult. Of course you don’t want to get too complex because then you have missed assignments.

Chansi Stuckey performance standing out even more now:

Yeah. The intangibles like one blocking a punt and then about blocking a punt and getting off the ground sprinting 40 yards and throwing a block. That just doesn’t happen very much. Our receiver as a group had no drops. He had no drops and had some critical catches and ran after the catch.

For his first start as wide receiver and he has three years left. I hope three. But pretty good performance. I hope he stays healthy. As we talked all along I thought he would be an exciting player. There were some question marks. Could he replace Derrick (Hamilton)? It looks like Derrick made the best decision (laughing). Derrick made the right decision no doubt about it.

If he keeps his hunger and work ethic he is going to be a really good player. It all depends on how he handles success. But he initially went into it with a very positive mind. I think some of the success of his immediate production was the fact this was something he wanted to do and approached us. We had brought it up to him but he declined. He just didn’t feel comfortable with the move last year this time. I think so of his eagerness now was he saw success there.

Duane Coleman returning to action this week:

I don’t know. We are going to try. I don’t want to mislead you. He is going to try to go, but even he does he probably will not play much, but he could. He is back in the mix. He is a distance fourth (string) right now. He might go out today, and he hasn’t taken any collisions or hard cuts, and he might not be able to do it. He has always set this as a goal.

Being concerned with the short yardage production:

Yeah. Some. I think we can correct it. We didn’t have that much problem last year.

The play of Kelvin Grant:

Good. Effot and assignments. That’s good because I was hoping he would perform like that. He’s going into his third year and that is the year where some guys catch on and play a complete game.

GT's Reggie Ball versus Wake Forest QB:

The threat from Reggie is a little bit different than it comes from Wake. Wake attacks the perimeter more with an option game where with Reggie they do a little more drop back passing. The threat comes from when the protection breaks down with his ability to run as opposed to a Wake Forest option.

Addressing some of the tackling problems:

We are going out in full pads today. We missed a lot of tackles. We need to improve on that. We can’t achieve the goals we want with as many missed tackles as we had. We didn’t do some things offensively like finishing blocks, short yardage and goal line blocking. We are going to address those today in full pads. They are an older and experienced team but I want to correct those as quick as possible. We are not just going to talk about those. We are going to go out and physically try to address them. With the weather the way it is it is going to be difficult. We can stay dry….It might be on that track on the eighth lane one on one, but we are going somewhere to try to get that done. I wish we could go out side and get that done.

On rushing yards gained

"We do some things like the shovel pass draw that count as passing yards, but I consider them running yards. The bubble screen we ran to Chansi that gained about 12 or 13 yards I consider a run. So when we look at it you add probably about 30 yards to rushing yards which gave us about 110, I've got make sure I keep that in mind."

On playing such a competitive game early in the season

"I think that game (Wake Forest) created some situations that you can't create and you see how your players respond. If it were to come down to a last minute kick, Stephen Furr has kicked in overtime with success. If it comes down to a last minute drive, we have been there offensively. Defensively, if we need a last second stop we have been there. If the same situation arises in this game, as it very well could be, another 60 minute game, then I have a pretty good idea of how our team will respond mentally because we have already experienced that this year."

On Charlie Whitehurst

"As tall as he is, he can stand up and still see in the pocket. He can do some things you really scheme from a coaching standpoint. Saturday we saw the composure and experience he has, and he does things that maybe we couldn't do with another guy. If Charlie has another productive year in this his junior year then maybe you could mention him with Phillip Rivers or Matt Schaub but he just hasn't had the snaps that those guys had to start mentioning him in the same breath. He does have that potential, though."

On the Georgia Tech series

"We will prepare for a 60-minute, four-quarter game because in this rivalry, games like last year's score really don't happen. For six years in a row it was a three-point game, that tells you an awful lot about this series."

DB Justin Miller

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DL Eric Coleman

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DL Maurice Fountain

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