July 24, 2003

Players' Quotes | ACC Preseason Poll

CLEMSON HEAD COACH TOMMY BOWDEN

"We had started a freshman quarterback, won three out of our last four, beat our state rival, came from behind on an eleven-play drive, six minutes, ten of them were runs. The way we did it, there was a real positive feel coming out, and then came the bowl game. It makes you sick for Christmas, spring and everything else ... It left a bad taste."

"Charlie (Whitehurst) comes from good stock, his dad being an ex-pro player. His dad's done a good job with him. He's only going to be a sophomore, having started four games or whatever it was. He still has a lot to learn - experience is the biggest thing he needs. He'll be thrown to the fire right off the bat, but his background will allow him to mature pretty quickly."

"We're so close to each other, we recruit in the same backyard. (Playing against Georgia in the opener) is a big game. There are eleven games after that though. We're going to prepare to beat Georgia, we're not going to hold anything back, every play we've got we'll put in that we think we can execute, but again, there's eleven more after that."

DUKE HEAD COACH CARL FRANKS

"We need to get in a close game sometime this year, early preferably, and win it. We need to get in that situation. It will build a lot of confidence for our team, it will validate a lot of the things that we're doing ... Getting in a close game and winning will give us a lot of confidence and probably will be worth a bunch more wins."

"Another big asset is our offensive line. Everybody's back, and that offensive line makes (Alex Wade and Chris Douglas) better. Those two complement each other very well, and we probably need to find a way to get them both in the game at times. Chris Douglas has the ability to get outside, turn the corner ... Alex Wade is a guy that can bang up inside, get the tough yards. He really gets people excited about running the football, especially the offensive line."

"You play for a lot of reasons. You play for yourself, you play for your family, you play for school, hopefully you play for your coach a little bit, but you've got to want to play for your teammates, and that's what I think these guys have in common with each other. They don't want to let each other down. They have that feeling of responsibility. Hey, we've been through a lot of tough stuff together. That's really set the foundation for Duke football for the years to come."

FLORIDA STATE HEAD COACH BOBBY BOWDEN

"Last year, it's no secret that we did not have the best chemistry in the world ... that's not the first year I had a team that couldn't get along with each other. I've been through it before, and I know that's a part of life. You hope your kids learn from that and next year can do something about that, and that's exactly what I expect to happen."

"(Greg Jones) is big, strong, powerful, fast and has good hands. He's a fullback that has learned to run like a tailback. I think he'll get better and better and better, and if he can stay healthy I would suspect that he'll be one of the best backs in the country. He (rushed for nearly 1,000 yards) last season, and he went out for the year after the seventh game. He was on the road to attracting some people for Heisman voting."

"The advantage now is that (Chris Rix) is a redshirt junior with 20 games under his belt, whereas Casey Welden, Charlie Ward, Brad Johnson, Thad Busby, Danny McManus, Peter Tom Willis, when they started as juniors, they had no games under their belts. So he's got something going for him now."

"We've kind of built a monster. You go fourteen years in the top 4 or 5, and all of a sudden you're not there, it's a big letdown. I've been in coaching for fifty years. I've had other bad years. It's not like it's the first time I ever lost four games, but we have spoiled a lot of our people, they want more, and I want more."

GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH CHAN GAILEY

"I think (our players) have a better feel for me and I think I have a better feel for them. We know what to expect from each other to a certain extent. The system is a little bit different offensively that we're putting in this year to change from what was in place last year, but I think they've got a certain comfort level with it after spring practice. We've changed some terminology. So I do think there's a comfort level, but it may have to do more with the intangibles than the actual tangibles."

"If you're in this business long enough, (injuries) should average out, and if it averages out, we're going to kick some rear here in the next couple of years because we're due something good happening to us. But it happens. It's just like life. It's adversity and you deal with it and you go on to the next one. You lose a Greg Gathers, you gather up and go. You lose a Tony Hollings, you gather up and go. Our guys fought the fight there. We didn't finish very strong, but during the middle when we had some injuries, our guys fought hard."

"Any time you lose a great player, which Tony Hollings was, it hurts your football team. You don't just replace a guy like that. We've got some talented, tough guys that can come in a run the football and play well, but they're not Tony Hollings. We'll have to work to adjust to what they do best and let them be productive players on our football team."

"The biggest revelation for me after being in the NFL for quite a few years was all the different things that impact a young person's life at the college level. They have so many different things pulling at them, their focus is not just on football, and the challenge of teaching and coaching at this level is to take all these distractions and get this guy to focus in on trying to be a great football player while still dealing with everything going on in his life."

MARYLAND HEAD COACH RALPH FRIEDGEN

"We have our best potential this year as far as a team, but there are so many other things that go into making a good football team. Chemistry. I think that's what we've had the last two years. Our players have played very unselfishly, they've really sacrificed for the good of the whole, and any time you do that you maximize your potential. If we can do that again with the ability that we have and the caliber of players that we have, we have a chance to have a really good season."

"Last year, I told our team after the first three games that the preseason was over and that we had a chance win every game on our schedule, and we almost did that. We won nine out of the last ten games. And all of those kids are back now. Of course, guys like E.J. Henderson and Todd Wike and Matt Crawford are gone, but we have a lot of good players back and they have been the beneficiary of beating a fine Tennessee team in the Peach Bowl, so I'm hopeful that we'll have a good year and that we have the confidence to get off to a good start."

"I'm looking forward to (Scott McBrien) having a very, very successful year. I have a lot of faith in him that he can be a really exceptional quarterback. There are still things he has to do better, but as far as a grasp of what we're doing, it's night and day from where we were last year."

NORTH CAROLINA HEAD COACH JOHN BUNTING

"I can't give you a number, but I think a lot of freshmen will play. But if they're going to play, we want them to play winning football, and that's hard going from playing some high school team from last year to opening up with Florida State and then Syracuse and then Wisconsin. That's a slightly different level of play. We've got to get them taught, tough, competitive, and we've got to get the entire team to really have some chemistry coming out of training camp."

"It's time to take it to another level. It's time for some seniors, this year, to take over this football team and lead it, hang in there during tough times. It's time when we go into the fourth quarter 21-21 or 21-17 and win that ballgame like we did a little bit that first year. That's the kind of senior leadership that I anticipate."

"It was an embarrassing season at times. We played some good games, but there were some games that got way out of hand. It was really difficult on me in particular to be a Tar Heel, played at the school, played at that stadium, and never win a game at home."

"(Darian) has got to continue to mature in terms of not letting the bad plays affect him and also making sure that he is effective with our scheme - don't try to do too much, do what you've been coached to do. What we've really got to do is find him some receivers. Training camp will be extremely important to find out if we have some young receivers that can help Darian."

"Michael Waddell has had a tremendous spring and summer. He has tremendous speed and talent, and he may be the guy who can turn it around for us -- punt returns, taking some balls back and being a real playmaker in the secondary. He could be the guy that could be a real key for us this season."

NC STATE HEAD COACH CHUCK AMATO

"(Philip Rivers) will own probably every record at NC State and maybe half or more of the records in the conference if, God willing, he stays healthy. But I think he would say, 'You can have 'em all, I'll throw for 500 yards and rush for another 10 touchdowns,' which people forgot last year. And T.A. (McLendon) can rush for 5,000, as long as we win all of the games, because that's Philip."

"If you take from tight end to tackle, that's six players, we lost three of those. And they're all going to be vying for jobs in the (NFL). How do you replace them? They're the reason, they open up holes, it's won up front. If the chemistry of the new offensive line can come in with a new line coach and everything else and do their job, then T.A. can be something special."

"Florida State is the team we're chasing ... They played in a bowl game last year, the Sugar Bowl against the University of Georgia who was the Southeast Conference champion, with a third-string quarterback, and third-string tailback, a second-string center, a second-string guard, a walk-on at defensive tackle, a defensive end moved to defensive tackle, and they came within two dropped passes of beating Georgia in the Sugar Bowl and having another double-digit win season. If you call that slipping, then we are a long, long way. It's the quality depth that they have. Our top 22 are getting closer and closer to Florida State's, but from 23 to 85, that's the difference."

VIRGINIA HEAD COACH AL GROH

"My wife, earlier this spring, said, 'Gee, honey, I kind of liked it a little bit better when we were the underdog rather than being picked so high. What do you think?' I said, 'Why? This is what we came here for, and it was our plan to try to be a top 10 team every year.' So it's kind of like 'You better get used to it because if we're not in this position, then we made the wrong decision to come here in the first place.'"

"I might have three or four or five more years to establish what I want with the team, but (Matt Schaub) has only got one more year, so I would expect his sense of urgency should be and might be amongst the greatest of any of the players on the team."

"Going into last season, we knew we had two good young tight ends, but they didn't have any resume yet. After the season, combined, they had more touchdown receptions than Billy (McMullen) did. Now this is a place where we can go to find some of those yards and some of those plays that we found at wide receiver, and that could be the case at some other positions also."

"Last year's team, as much as any team as I've ever been around, had a great understanding of what it had to do to win. Going into each particular game, they listened during the course of the week to how we had to play these guys, they focused on how to do that. We understood that whether we had to come from behind to win, hold the lead in the fourth quarter, run the ball better, rush the passer better, whatever it might be, they understood what we had to do to win each particular game."

WAKE FOREST HEAD COACH JIM GROBE

"I don't think anybody could replace Calvin Pace, but we've got some good young players on our defensive front. I think we're going to have five or six guys battle for those three starting positions (on the defensive line) ... We've got a chance to get four or five pretty good players up front and hopefully we can roll them through and keep them fresh. That means that our secondary and our experienced linebacker corps will have to step up, and I think they will."

"My key at Wake Forest was to have some security in the opportunity to build the program, and (I've) got that now (with my new contract). We've got the opportunity to be patient, to redshirt most of our players, we don't have to be a flash in the pan and we've got a chance to lay a foundation and to build a program the right way ... The key for us one day down the road is to be in a situation where we have fifteen to eighteen fifth-year seniors, fifteen to eighteen fourth-year juniors, fifteen to eighteen third-year sophomores, and if we can get to that point, then I think we can year-in and year-out be a very competitive football program."

"Cory (Randolph) played at least a series a half last year and did OK. He hit on about 50 percent of his throws, and we want to do better than that. At times, he moved the team up and down the field maybe a little bit better than James MacPherson did, but James was the veteran guy and so we stuck with him. But Cory has the ability to lead our football team - my biggest key with him is that he doesn't turn the football over."