Notes From Tommy Bowden's Sunday Teleconference

Quick notes and quotes from Tommy Bowden's Sunday phone session with the media:

- The open date helped us in a lot of areas. I think you could tell it on the offensive line. I thought they did a good job.

- Communication improving on line. Last year those guys had all played together for a long time. Defenses move a lot late, and you might only get half a call out. It's anticipation. Hopefully that's where we're improving.

- Thomas Austin: Major adjustment from guard to center. If someone plays over you at center you have to worry about snapping the ball first. Big adjustment. He practices snapping every day, but different animal to do it in game competition. He was originally real erratic, but feeling more comfortable now.

- Hard to read a lot into Saturday's win, because the rest of the teams we have on the schedule have better talent. Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Florida State and N.C. State all had better talent.

- Maryland: Defensively they always give us problems. We never score a lot of points against them. They're well coached.

- Right now we can't rush the passer. We're last in the conference in sacks. We're going to have problems the rest of the way as the talent level picks up...We've got to get a lot better up front. We're getting single-blocked a lot, and that's not good...I don't refer to stats a whole lot, but being last in sacks kind of jumped out at me. Got to make sure the effort is there...Got to make sure we're going the right things in practice to get better.

- Harper has been real consistent for seven games. From the first game on, he's been real accurate.

- Chemistry between Harper and Kelly is because they're both older guys, both fourth-year juniors. They have a lot of confidence in each other, and Rob (Spence) directs a lot of plays toward Aaron as the primary receiver.