Pitt defensive coordinator Randy Bates met with the media on Tuesday in El Paso. The Panthers are gearing up to take on UCLA on Friday in the Sun Bowl. Here is everything the Pitt assistant coach had to say about preparing for the Bruins and their experience in El Paso.
Bates: Well I’d like to thank everybody for honoring the sun for one of the most beautiful sun rises I’ve seen for a long time this morning. We’ve come from minus degree weather, so this is phenomenal. Thank you for having us. Everybody has been fantastic so far.
With that, I’ll open it to questions.
What are the keys for your defense on Friday?
Bates: Well the keys, I believe we are playing the No. 3 offense in the country. We’ve got to do a great job of stopping their quarterback, who is a tremendous player, a fifth year senior. They have a great running back also. So they have one of the premier running offenses in the country. So I believe we have to stop the run and that’s what we try to do at Pitt. As usual, that is our number one goal.
How difficult has it been to work without Calijah Kancey?
Bates: Calijah is a phenomenal player. When you get a consensus All-American like him, it’s a tough loss. The thing that’s nice for us is we’ve been playing without him for a while now. He got hurt several weeks ago and we actually played the Miami game without him, so we’ve been working just as we do. The nice thing for us on defense is we rotate a lot of players. Calijah wasn’t the only starter that we have. So we’ve got a lot of kids who started a lot of games. A lot of depth there, but certainly he is a tremendous loss.
You’ve been with Pitt for five years and have had a lot of success. Can you talk about the consistency at your program?
Bates: Yes, sir. We like to think consistency is our motto and over the last five years, I believe we’ve been pretty good with that. Unfortunately we didn’t get 11 wins this year like we did last year, but we’re certainly striving for that. I believe quite frankly to this group we’re one of the better developmental schools in the country. What I mean by that is we lose Calijah, we’ve lost several All-Americans and we’ve got probably a dozen kids that are playing in the NFL just in the time that I’ve been here and we’ve replaced them with other kids. I believe that our staff does as good of a job as anybody in the country in developing guys. We don’t necessarily always go out to the portal to get guys, we’re developing guys and I’m excited to see our next group or next flight of young men play against UCLA’s offense this week.
Narduzzi mentioned that Thompson-Robinson is like Cunningham from Louisville. What’s the key to stopping him this Friday?
Bates: Well he is a tremendous thrower and he also creates on passes with his feet. I think he’s a good runner and they have some run plays, but I think he is game breaker basically on broken plays, where you are trying to sack him and he breaks free. You can’t cover everybody and stop him at all times, so keeping him in the pocket and keeping him from making big plays with his feet on pass plays I think is really critical. So that’s something we’ve really spent a lot of time on.
You had a few of your players catch a ride from the basketball coach here at UTEP. Can you speak on anything about that?
Bates: The guys said and I have not met the coach, but we really appreciate what he did and quite frankly in our profession I don’t expect anything less. I’m sure he is a fantastic coach, but the beautiful thing about college coaches is that they are also great people and so for him to pick those kids up and really welcome them into his car and drive them all that way that way was phenomenal. We really want to thank him a lot and I know Coach Narduzzi at some point is hopeful to meet him. But we really appreciate what he did and it was a great thing to be able to do that.
Would you consider it a Christmas miracle?
Bates: A Christmas miracle? Absolutely! No doubt. It’s ironic that he was there and they were all trying to get to the same place. We’ve all seen those Christmas movies where guys are trying to get somewhere and maybe this was another one someday.
You have been here before, can you talk about the experiences outside of the game that you’ve already had this year and the last time?
Bates: I think the Sun Bowl is one of the best in the country. You guys have great events. We get to see the troops. We get to go to events as we did last night at the museum. I think this is what? 89th year of it? I think there’s a reason for that because you guys do such a great job of organizing it. We’re constantly going to great events and I know our kids have had a great experience already so far and I know they will continue.
Does UCLA remind you of one team more than others?
Bates: Probably the closest is Louisville, because Louisville had the same type of athlete at quarterback. I think they are probably very similar to the Louisville team quite frankly.
