Clemson-Central Florida Postgame Quotes

Sept. 1, 2001

Recap| Stats| Notes

Coach Bowden Post-game Quotes

Overall feelings on the game: “We prepared the team for a sixty0-minute game, and that’s pretty much what it was. If you look at Central Florida’s history, whether it be Nebraska, Alabama, Auburn, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Ole Miss, they were pretty much true to tune. They come in, have a couple big games a year, they’re well coached. They have good skill guys. They had a great plan.”

On the fake field goal and Ron West pretty much do that. That’s kind of their area. Ron West pretty much schemed that. They have a tendency all year to do that. We planned to run our second field goal, but the timing was right for the first. [Jeff Scott] is a typical coach’s son. He studies the game, he knows what to look for and how to look for it.”

On taking risks: “I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t think I can be described as conservative, even though we were ranked tenth in the nation in rushing last year. People think it’s pretty much a pass-happy offense and that we throw it 28, 29, 30 times a game, and would like to run the ball. But if there are opportunities in the kicking game by fakes off field goals and punts, I think it’s a part of the game that should not be neglected as far as trickery and deception.”

On game situations: “I don’t know if ever in my career I’ve had to bring the ball off the six-inch-line twice in one half. The second half we had the ball on the six, and we punched out, and usually it’s three and a punt. So there are a lot of things we need to correct on offense and a lot of things we need to work on. But you look at that field position that we had a lot during the game, the percentage of scoring from the six-inch- line, going 99 yards, the Baltimore Ravens can’t hardly do that. Twice we knocked it out, once maybe to the 35-yard-line, and then maybe to the 50, completely changed the field position, took time off the clock.”

On the youth of the team: “Derrick Hamilton, a redshirt freshman, made a key catch. Ben Hall, true freshman, Roscoe Crosby, a true freshman, there’s still a lot of youth out there on the field we’re having to depend on to win games for us and make plays. Hopefully in a couple years we won’t have to do that. We’re still at the recruiting stage where we’re going out there to sign guys that are possibly a little bit better than what we already have here.”

University of Central Florida Head Coach Mike Kruczek:

“I think dropped passes and fumbles are part of the first game as well as part of the youth. As far as the pass-dropping, that’s been going on most of the summer. We just have to get better. When you throw the ball as much as we do, you have to come up with those kinds of catches. We can’t on third-down put it on the ground… we have to convert.”

One crucial turn-over down in the red-zone on a fumble on a first-down means points for us. That’s hurt us in the past. It’s something that we’ve worked on and I think we’ve gotten a little better with. The number of turnovers wasn’t as great, but we’ve got to eliminate them completely for us to be a team like Clemson.”

“They came after us a bit with the blitz, and we were throwing our short stuff underneath. We have to come up with catches.”

On the kicking game: “We’ve got a young team. We put a number of young people on that kick off return (the one that came back on us) to try and sub for the guys that were playing on the segments, and we paid the price for the substitutions. It cost us field position.”

On Clemson’s fake field goal: “I’ve never had that happen, I have to revisit what happened. That should never happen. The defense did their job, they did a great job of bending but not breaking against this ‘great offense’. It was just the special teams that let us down a little bit today.”

“We’d seen it (the trick play) in the past and we had it in the back of our minds that they might play it. We had a guy spying on him, I don’t know what happened, I couldn’t see from my angle.”

On Woody Dantzler: “Dantzler as we all know has these organizational qualities that are as good as anyone who has ever played the game. He broke it ten a few times and made some big plays. But we knew that he was going to make his plays- we had to minimize those plays and I think we did.