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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 3, 2010Ralph FriedgenTHE MODERATOR: We now welcome Maryland head football coach Ralph Friedgen. We'll go to coach and ask for a brief opening statement and go to questions. Coach. COACH FRIEDGEN: We have a very big game for this week. Obviously playing the University of Miami with great tradition, great football players and great coaching. We'll have a major, major job to do. I'll open it up for questions. Q. Ralph, obviously the way you can throw, multiple styles of blitz, how critical is that going to be as far as setting a tone against Stephen Morris? COACH FRIEDGEN: You know what, we just kind of do what we do. We tweak it a little bit each week. But some teams handle it well, some teams don't. I'm assuming that Miami sees a lot of that. They're one of the top teams in the country. They're going to be prepared for it. We'll have to do whatever we have to do to be successful. Q. Given that, when you see a new quarterback, young quarterback, does that make your eyes light up and say, We really have the weapons to make this a difficult game for him? COACH FRIEDGEN: I'm fully expecting Harris to play. I think it is tougher on young quarterbacks, some of the stuff that Don throws at you. Again, I think he's one of the top young quarterbacks in the country. We'll see how it all unfolds. Q. Has it helped your team's success by flying under the radar with most of the attention going towards FSU and NC State? COACH FRIEDGEN: I don't know if it's helped our success or not. I think we are kind of approaching each game individually. Going to continue to do that. So it is what it is. I mean, whether we are under the radar or over the radar, we're just focusing on the next game. Q. What can you take away most from the win against Wake Forest and take to Miami? COACH FRIEDGEN: I don't know if there's a whole lot of anything other than we should have some confidence, we made some plays. I think Wake Forest was averaging over 200 yards a game rushing. We did a good job of stopping that. I thought they were a pretty good offensive football team. I see us gaining in confidence each and every week. I think this will be a big task for us to grow in confidence and to see where we're at right now. Q. Ralph, can you remember in your career a game in which all three phases of the game came together so well the way they did Saturday at Wake? COACH FRIEDGEN: Actually, with the exception of two losses we've had, I think our special teams have been playing pretty well and our defense. Saturday our offense played well also. I thought Boston College was very similar. I thought we had a full, complete game at that time, too. I think that's important for us to do that in order for us to have an opportunity to win. Q. There's room for improvement every game. How close to a perfect effort was that last week? COACH FRIEDGEN: I think we're far from a perfect effort. I mean, I don't know if you ever have a perfect effort. There's a lot of things we can improve on. But we took care of the football. We got some turnovers. We played some good offense, defense and special teams. You're doing that, you got a pretty good chance of winning. Q. Coach, forgive me for being out of the loop here in North Carolina. I wanted to ask you about Torrey Smith and returning kickoffs. Historically he has been one of the best in ACC history. Has he not been returning kicks lately and is there a reason for that? COACH FRIEDGEN: He injured his ankle about four weeks ago. It's just getting back to full speed right now. We have not done a good job in our return game. It's probably one of the things I'm most dissatisfied about, is our special teams. I thought we have improved the last two weeks. I thought we had a chance last week to have a return, and we dropped the kickoff. It was Da'Rel Scott that dropped the kickoff. Hopefully we can get that going some. But it's been probably the poorest thing we've done on special teams right now. Last year was the best thing we did on special teams, so... Q. Can you talk about the threat Torrey represents. He has been playing at receiver. COACH FRIEDGEN: Oh, yeah, he's been playing at receiver. He's able to run straight ahead pretty good. It's cutting that's been limited. That's affected him some at receiver also. But I think he's being to a hundred percent right now. I'm hoping we can establish him as a kickoff threat. Q. Ralph, since the game a few weeks ago where you scored seven points against Clemson, what do you feel better about your offense the last couple performances? COACH FRIEDGEN: We've been very fortunate. We've done a very good job of taking advantage of turnovers, had field position. I think Danny has played very well. I think our receivers the last two games have played exceptional. The last game we were able to get a running game going. We didn't run the ball very well against Clemson or Boston College. We were able to run it better against Wake Forest. When you can throw it and run it, you get your offense on track. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for being with us. Good luck this weekend. We'll talk to you next week. COACH FRIEDGEN: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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