Tommy Bowden's Tuesday Press Conference

by Dan Scott - Correspondent - Tue Oct 16 11:38:08 GMT-04:00 2007

Tommy Bowden Press Conference Audio, Windows Media

Quick Notes And Quotes From Tommy Bowden's Tuesday Press Conference:

- Week off was good for injuries. Had we played last Saturday we probably would have been without two starting safeties, two starting offensive linemen and maybe some other personnel. So it was good from that standpoint, and also that we got extra work in on special teams.

- Central Michigan will do some quarterback running plays, do the zone read, a lot of the same things they brought with them from West Virginia.

- We worked hard during the open date, came out Monday and worked pretty good. Interested to see how they bounce back and play the rest of the season.

- I'd like to see us finish the season a little more balanced. Get a little more productivity in the running game. But on the Christmas wish list wins would be first. Statistics second.

- Offensive line: Just continue to work hard. If you do that and you're sound, you'll improve. You've played some pretty good teams and that will have some bearing on productivity.

- I'm not making any decisions based on playing time for next year. I want to win the next game. That's as far down the line as I see.

- Leadership is highly important. A lot of the time it's most effective if you have a lot of seniors. They've experienced more...We just don't have very many. But we have some guys who have done a good job along with our seniors - Philip Merling, James Davis, etc.

- Finishing strong has been more of our mode of operation the last few years. We need to recapture that. We lost some of our luster last year because we didn't. Always looking for a way to motivate and for something for the players to grab on to.

- Coaches Poll: Once they said it was public you have to be careful not to look after your friends. I do it myself, usually late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. I don't mind it being public. I try to vote as legitimate as possible.

- I would hope that coaches have a better idea of who the best teams are than the writers. I would think you all would have a better idea of sentence structure and grammar than I do.

- We try as hard as we can to win every single week. We don't try harder at the end of the year as opposed to the beginning of the year. We didn't lose to Georgia Tech or Virginia Tech because of lack of effort. We never really talk about the glass being half-empty. We talk about it being half full.

- Central Michigan has scored 100 points in their last two games, so this will be a big test for us. Our biggest test to date from a pass defense standpoint.