Bowden Quotes from Clemson Media Day

by TigerNet Staff - Sun Jul 21 11:46:05 GMT-04:00 2002

CLEMSON -- Clemson head coach Tommy Bowden held his annual Bowden Bogey Busters Media Golf Outing at the Walker course last Tuesday. After the golf tournament the media had a chance to sit down with coach Bowden and get his thoughts on the upcoming football season.

Listen to the full Tommy Bowden interview Here: Real | Windows Media

Selected Quotes from Coach Bowden

What do you anticipate for your team this season?

You would like to see improvement. My concerns going into the season would be reducing turnovers. It never had been a problem but it was last year. We didn’t get them on defense and we gave it up too much on offense. We need to improve in that area. An inexperience quarterback and offensive line losing four starters going into Athens is a concern. So you have to make a decision with your offensive game plan because you don’t want to have a lot of missed assignments. Ok so then you reduce the package but then if you reduce it too much and get too generic then they can tee off on you. So that is something we will have to really study during two a days to see how much of the offense we think they can handle.

Are you pleased where the program is heading into your fourth year.

That’s why I mentioned turnovers. I feel like you take away just two turnovers. Not a better game or anything else. One versus Virginia and one versus South Carolina and you have a nine wins with a team that had no one drafted. I thought that would have been a pretty good year with the things Woody accomplished. If you take away those two (turnovers) then I think we are pretty much on schedule. I think I can correct those two things. I’d like to have more wins but I thought we would have been pretty close to on schedule if that had happened.

What do you say to those fans out there, who are maybe nervous about what they are seeing and maybe they thought that you should have some more wins?

I just think that every program that you go to, you take what you inherit and do the best you can. If you look at the situation at Georgia, since we open up with them, you 're looking at a team that Mark inherited that came off of four straight bowl wins and in his

first year he had eight guys drafted, the fourth most in the country. I came off a team with three wins and nobody drafted. So then signing 9 guys, then signing 12 guys. You know every program inherits different stages with talent and injuries. So I kind of look at that. The administration is happy with the progress and they have a good way of letting me know.

Two years ago at this time, you said you wanted to finish in the top 25, and you managed to do that. Last year you said at some point that the program has to take the next step with 10 wins, you didn't know if last year's team was the team to do that, but you would have liked to finish in the top 25 again at least in order to feel some consistency on that. Where do you stand in terms of those type of things this year?

Well, we were close. Like I said, we didn't have to play a better game, we didn't have to play a better half. We didn't have to do much more of anything, just two turnovers and I think we could have finished in the top 25 two years in a row. So we're close, but we didn't do it. When we can do that on a year to year basis, then top 15, then top 10, then a 10-1 season. Those are steps you have to take.

SRC="http://oz.valueclick.com/cycle?host=hs0180350&size=250x250&b=indexpage&noscript=1">

So is top 25 a goal this year?

It's been a goal every year, and then start creeping up.

So will your team be able to accomplish that, do you think?

I'll let you know here in about 3-4 months. I don't know. It's like you look at last year. All of a sudden you lose…it's like going into the season, you hope Keith Adams will come back, Alex Ardley will be able to stay, Paul White and Marcus Lewis get in trouble, Marcus Houskins and Altroy Bodrick out…..That's 6 guys of the defense and you lose 7 seniors. That's 13 guys when you've been there 2 years and when your numbers weren't big initially, bringing in alot of players. So, you never know from an injury standpoint or a discipline standpoint what is going to happen. I can't perceive if everybody stays here, everybody stays healthy. It might be possible.

Let's talk about how the offense may be a little less predictable this year with the fact that your quarterback and tailback are not the same person.

Well last year, you pretty much knew that in critical situations that Woody was going to have the ball in his hands. Shotgun or snap, he was either going to run it or either throw it. And this year, with the tailback situation pretty healthy, those guys will be getting the burden, so we'll probably do a little more drop back throw and handing the ball to the tailback as opposed to faking to the tailback and Woody keeping it off of some kind of misdirection. So there are pros and cons. You lose a little bit of misdirection, but again you have a pretty good runner in Keith and Bernard and whoever the third guy happens to be. You know, any time you spread out, you eliminate some of the field. Hopefully we'll be less predictable as far as who's going to have the ball in their hands.

Listen to the full Tommy Bowden interview Here: Real | Windows Media