Narduzzi: 'It is hard to win ten'

Pat Narduzzi met with the media after his team’s 31-14 win over Syracuse on Saturday night. Here is a complete rundown of everything he had to say in his press conference.

Narduzzi: Another victory. We started a little bit slow. I think our guys were maybe looking a little bit towards next worried. I was worried sitting in the hotel watching games all day, but we came out and just played OK in my opinion. We’ve got a lot more execution and we’ve got to do a lot better next week in the championship, but my hat goes off to those players in that room. They made a lot of plays. It’s been 40 years since we won 10 ball games. It is hard to win ten. I don’t care who you’re playing or what you’re playing. You saw some of the upsets in college football tonight and like I said tonight and like I told our media the other day, you never know what’s going down, but ten wins is monumental. Again, proud of those guys - they made all the plays, as coaches we didn’t do anything. They did it.

Questions.

How much of the focus this week was keeping them focused on this week and not look ahead?

Narduzzi: That was kind of our deal, getting No. 10. Just trying to use that as the motivation and get them through the week and not have them start to look ahead. I think maybe one bonus was during the week was knowing who you’re going to play, so you only had one opponent: you had Syracuse. I’m sure guys were kind of looking over their shoulder going, ‘Whose next? Who are we going to play?’ And you sit in the hotel and figure it out last night when we watched North Carolina State have a heck of a victory, and then you knew it was going to be down to two and then we sit in the hotel today and watch Wake have a great win, a great football team and Dave Clawson does a great job.

Can you talk about what you did to bottle up their running attack?

Narduzzi: Tucker’s a good football player, but that’s what we do. As I said to our staff during the week, I said I don’t know if I’ve been a place where it’s been long time since someone is really going to come out and they are going to run on us, OK? Our local guys know that we want to make people one dimensional. I think we’ve got a pretty good scheme in what we do, some people may whine about putting our corners out there on an island, but that’s what we do and we trust our corners and they did a nice job today and we were able to bottle it up and that was the plan and I have all the confidence in the world and that’s what happened today.

What do you think changed for your defense after the first drive?

Narduzzi: Just relax. Every game is a little bit different and I don’t care Game One or Game 15, there’s always nerves out there. They did a good job of executing, and just kind of like OK, relax. Just having our composure after the first series and they dink you a little bit and the same thing they did on the second drive, a couple of now-gos and started to — at first they were just dinking us on little stuff and just stuff you have to say OK that’s what they’re doing and now we know what we’re facing.

What has made you guys so good on the road this season?

Narduzzi: Execution is what it comes down to. Great coaching and execution by our players. Road warriors. It’s impressive going on the road and doing that and we get to go on the road again, so that’s a major advantage when you’re kids have confidence on the road and getting it done.

Can you talk about Pickett’s performance?

Narduzzi: I don’t know what his stats were today, I know Jordan Addison caught two touchdown passes and he’s up for the Biletnikoff. Syracuse did a nice job playing a lot of cover-three and dropping a lot of guys at times and again we just kind of had a good game plan and we didn’t go crazy, we just knew what we planned on and we didn’t want to rest anybody, but we didn’t want to show a whole bunch. It’s a tribute for our offense for what they did, it jut comes down to execution. We had a pretty good run game going today, we had the better run game today and Kenny Pickett has been outstanding all year. If you watch, he makes great decisions and his one interception was like a punt. We would have liked to score on that but it was a double move and they didn’t budge on it and we probably should’ve broke it off, but they made a play.

How is Abanikanda?

Narduzzi: Izzy, we think he’s pretty good. We’ll see when we get back this week. Hope to have him back.

What did you thin k of the O-Line’s play?

Narduzzi: We played a lot of guys today, that was the other thing. We were just trying to get them fresh, I mean Wake Forest is at home watching us play and we’ll get home at 1:00, 2:00 in the morning, and they’ll got about 12-18 hours on us on being fresh, so we’ve got to get our guys fresh this week and come back and it’s going to be a fun week.

You bottled up Tucker, but how about Shrader? He hardly got anything either…

Narduzzi: Well he’s part of the run game, so it’s a two-headed monster back there and we know that and those guys carry the ball and we got after it pretty good today and sacked him times and didn’t get much going. He got one at the end there against our twos in that four minute, two minute - whatever you want to call it. They did a nice job, that’s what we do.

Drexel traveled but didn’t play, was he available?

Narduzzi: He could’ve gone, but again it was working those guys with some linemen out and we’ve been able to do it with different pieces in there and it just makes us that much better. So we’ll just keep working it, but I expect to have him back this week too.

How does Bartholomew continue to impress?

Narduzzi: He’s tough. I told you guys back in spring ball, but he’s like a grown man and he is. 86 is a football player and Lucas had a great game too. He had some nice catches, nice YAC after the catches, some nice hard runs but Gavin has played well, Lucas has played well. It’s nice to have a tight end, you didn’t think had a tight end in our offense a year ago and now you have one and it helps out a bunch.