Tommy Bowden Tuesday Press Conference

by Dan Scott - Correspondent - Tue Oct 31 11:31:36 GMT-04:00 2006

Tommy Bowden Press Conference, Windows Media, (32:39)

Quick notes and quotes from Tommy Bowden's regular Tuesday press conference:

- Listened to Friedgen on TV and he talked pretty strongly about running the ball and not turning it over. Lot of parity in the league, and if you can do those things you can be successful. He's 6-2 and it's worked really well for them.

- Proctor: Last three games vs. ACC teams thrown for 53 percent - Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest - all Top 25 teams. I'm going to be realistic and look at the experience he has, what he's accomplished and evaluate him on that. Not just hand-picked things.

- Rob Spence has a pretty good track record on how to deal with quarterbacks. If it ever got to a point where a change was being considered, I'd become more heavily involved. But I don't think his performance at this time merits a change.

- I hope we can run against Maryland. If you look at the stats, they would say we can. But that's why you have to play the game. We're going to have to execute the forward pass better going forward than we have the last three weeks.

- We need to find out if we're for real in the rushing department, or if Georgia Tech was a flash in the pan. Maryland's a good team, and we'll get a pretty good idea this week.

- Atmosphere: Important our fans help create that kind of electric atmosphere. Last three games are at home and that should be an advantage to us.

- Will this loss linger? I don't know. This is a game we'll find out.

- Challenges: We used to have the leading rusher in the conference. Now we don't. We used to have the No. 1 rush defense in the conference. Now we don't. Can we get those back?

- Maryland defense is complex with fronts and coverages. They don't play a whole lot of man coverage, and when they do they play zone behind it. Statistically they aren't ranked high in some areas. Their game against West Virginia might have skewed some of those things, especially running stats.

- We've played nine games and this is the first time I've talked about what's left on the table. There are nine conference games left after we play N.C. State. So a lot can happen. But it's all for nothing if you don't beat Maryland.