Narduzzi on the 2018 class, Signing Day, priorities and more

MORE HEADLINES - Video: Narduzzi's Signing Day press conference | Winter has been a productive time for Pat Narduzzi | Relationships made the difference for Baldonado | Class Breakdown: Pitt's 2018 class on offense | Class Breakdown: Pitt's 2018 class on defense | Try Panther-Lair.com FREE for 30 days | Walk-on QB candidate visits Pitt | FREE ARTICLE: Bates was they key for Pitt commit Erick Hallett

Pat Narduzzi met the media Wednesday to talk about the 2018 recruiting class, and here’s a complete rundown of everything he said.

Pat Narduzzi: Round Two, as far as the Signing Day goes. As a football coach, just to start off there as far as what’s our thought on the process, it was really nice to sign 16 great players in December and then have the month of January to really narrow our focus on what our needs are, who we want and go after those guys as well as look into the future as far as what ‘19s and ‘20s hold and go out to those schools.

Sometimes you find yourself as a head coach - sometimes you send your assistants out there, ‘Hey stay on [a recruit], don’t let [a recruit] go’ and when [that recruit] starts to slip away, you have to go back and get him. You’re trying to keep everybody in line. So I do like the early signing day. I don’t like anything else that would maybe go with that. I don’t like an early visit period, which we’ve talked about before. But I really do like that and then you can kind of evaluate what you have then go out and get a couple more.

So we were able to sign five unbelievable athletes. Really, when you look at our focus - maybe the next press conference, I’ll say, ‘How many guys did we visit and how many did we get?’ I’m guessing we hit probably on 80 to 85%, which I think is unbelievable. Our hit ratio when they step on this campus and see what we have to offer…it’s pretty good. I don’t know if I’ve been around better, which tells you the product here, the people at the University of Pittsburgh are strong.

I’ve always said this, it’s our job as coaches to get them on campus, and once they’re here, the University sells itself. I don’t think people realize how tremendous this campus is, the facilities are and most importantly the people on campus and in academics and all the support we get there. I’m really excited about that.

One thing I wanted to hit on today that maybe I didn’t hit on last time was really the team recruiting we do. It starts with an area recruiter; we’re really focused in on, ‘Hey, who’s area is that?’ Someone’s got to work their area. Then we eventually get the position coach involved in that area, as well as a coordinator and then obviously the head coach gets to go in and see that individual one time when he’s on the road recruiting. So we’re really, ‘area’ and then get our entire team in there on a prospect. I think that’s probably an important thing to understand: it’s not one guy doing it, it’s everybody doing it. It’s a team process and I think it works because there’s more relationships that these players, these families, these grandparents have with all of these other coaches, and I think it’s important.

That was even more what we were able to do in January was get more people in there, because you didn’t spread yourself so thin.

When you look at needs and what we got signed here, we got a tremendous tailback we’ll talk about in a second. We got an offensive tackle, which was a major need. I’ll go back to the tailback; we needed a tailback, we wanted a tailback, but we weren’t going to take just any tailback. Coach Powell will probably get mad at me - I don’t see him in here - Coach Powell would have his guys up there that he wanted and the one we signed obviously was the guy that we wanted bad. And we didn’t think we were going to get him. There were some other guys and he kept moving guys up the board that weren’t really good enough, that weren’t what we wanted to take. So we weren’t settling for less. We got the tailback we wanted and the tailback we needed.

We might not have taken one. If we didn’t get Mychale, we weren’t going to take one.

We got a great offensive tackle of need. With Brian O’Neill leaving one year early, we felt like we needed to get an older guy. We targeted a few guys and landed one - probably would have taken two.

We needed one more and wanted one more corner; we got that down in Texas. And then we took two more big athletes - I don’t think you can ever go wrong taking big athletic guys. We took two of those.

With that, I’ll go ahead and hit down on these guys.

The first one, Rob Harley was really the major contact on this one, Haba Baldonado, from Clearfield Academy International down in Clearfield, Florida. One year at Clearfield Academy but really came from Rome, Italy…Haba is an unbelievable kid. I have not met his mother; I’ve FaceTimed his mother in Rome. If Heather lets me, me and Coach Harley probably need to take a trip out to Rome to see her. It would be a nine-hour there, spend a couple hours and then turn around and get some more.

You talk about a great student - fluent in three languages. He’s a great athlete; we’ve got video of him backflips, the whole deal. He’s a great athlete that I think Coach Partridge and Coach Salem - whether he’s a tight end, D-end - can do a lot of things with the athletic ability.

Erick Hallett, from Cy-Fair High School, right outside of Houston, Texas. Randy Bates, our new defensive coordinator, was really in on that recruit. When we hired Randy a month ago, I said, ‘Hey, we still are looking for a great corner if you’ve got one in your area,’ and bang - Erick was the first guy we were on. We took awhile just to kind of find out who he was, like we usually do; we don’t just jump in and put both feet in. We put one foot in, test the water, and quality, quality parents, two parents at home, just a tremendous athlete, comes from a great high school, won a state championship there so we’re excited to have Erick with us.

Stefano Millin from Massillon Perry High School in Massillon, Ohio. A Kent State grad - that’s the offensive tackle transfer that we were talking about. He played against Clemson; I think if you can play against Clemson, you can play against anybody. But Stefano comes in here and I think he’s a leader. I think he instantly brings not only his experience but brings leadership qualities of an older guy. I won’t be surprised if he walks in that O-line meeting room and becomes the dad of the group. Very smart and I think he’s really, really tough. He already warned me, ‘Coach, I like to go to the end of the whistle and I like to talk a little bit, too.’ So he’s got a little nasty streak in him and we’re fired up that Stefano and his family have decided to come here.

Defensive end, another big athlete, Kaymar Mimes, from Long Branch High School in Long Branch, New Jersey. A guy that we didn’t think was going to sign until February, so we weren’t really going crazy in December with recruiting him. Then all of a sudden, at the last minute we hear that he’s possibly going to sign with somebody in December, and we’re like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.’ So we slowed the process down, got back in there at the last second, really put a halt to the marriage; you talk about, we were at the front doors of the church, we locked the church doors up and said, ‘No, there’s no wedding here today.’ We just kind of ended that whole picture and really got back in it, to the point where we could get Kay here on campus.

We stopped the marriage and we married him ourselves. The relationship with him and his family go back a long sway, and that’s where the trust really started. His brother - it’s a different last name; they rotate the last name - Shilique Calhoun, was a defensive end for me at Michigan State; now he’s with the Los Angeles Raiders or the Oakland Raiders, I guess. That’s kind of the relationship, and Coach Salem did a heck of a job on him.

Going back to Stefano real quick, Coach James Patton went on the road and did a heck of a job really sealing the deal on Stefano. Coach Salem was obviously the lead recruiter on Kaymar in New Jersey because he dominates that area.

And then Coach Powell, our running back coach, was on Mychale Salahuddin, our new tailback here who decided around noon from H.D. Woodson High School in Washington, D.C. Again, another just quality, quality kid. What sold us on him, it’s not only his character, his mom and grandma - is that Jaylen Twyman, also a teammate that he had a year before and the quality of person that he’s been in the year he’s been here so far, and not only academically but athletically, H.D. Woodson is putting out some great players and some great character kids, so we’re happy to have Mychale with us as well.

So those are our five guys. It’s a heck of a class. Our coaches did a heck of a job locking those guys up and recruiting them like we do - the real way.

You mentioned Baldonado could play tight end; do you see that as a possibility with the other ends, like Mimes or Noah Palmer?
Narduzzi: They all are, and you know how we like to play guys both ways. Noah, no doubt about it can do it, big athlete. What we normally do, and we may be able to do it in a mini-camp this year a little bit, that’s a long story, but we’ll find out when they come into camp really what they can do and we’ll go through some skill drills. ‘Hey, how well do they catch the ball?’ They might look good and run well, but they can’t catch, well, then they’ll probably stay at defensive end. If they can catch, it’s kind of like, ‘ooh.’ So we’re going to spread those big athletes out and give us a chance to get the best players on the field.

Did the possibility of those guys playing tight end change your approach to recruiting tight ends in January?
Narduzzi: It really did. We had a need. We would have liked to have gotten one pure tight end, but we didn’t want to settle for guys that - ‘Well, the guy doesn’t have this or have that’ - we just wanted to get the best big athletes we could, and that’s what we arrived at.

With Mychale, do you see as someone who could help you this year or more long-term?
Narduzzi: I think whenever we take a player, we don’t want to take a guy just to be a backup. We’re taking a guy to come in and play. Mychale’s going to have a chance to come in and compete right away. We feel good with our running backs we have, so it’s got to be someone that we feel can come in an compete right now, otherwise let’s wait until next year and get one that can really compete fast.

With the way things played out with the early signing period, in January, you had some spots with needs but with other spots, was it, ‘Let’s find the best player available?’
Narduzzi: It’s probably no different. We’ve always had that same policy of just finding the best available. It’s very similar to what the NFL will do. You just were able to do that at the same time. We didn’t have to go hold onto the rest of the class and keep them together when someone else is trying to find their best available. You’re walking in one door and they’re walking in the other trying to get the other guy. It made it easier that we could really focus more on these five individuals as they were coming on visits.

Have you had experience developing a player like Baldonado who doesn’t have a lot of experience playing a lot of football but has the attributes you’re looking for?
Narduzzi: You know, different high schools - there are some kids that have played 15 years in America and don’t have some of the knowledge - this kid is smart. That was a - we’ve recruited international guys from Canada before. I’ve recruited and coached probably three or four of them, a couple of them are probably still playing in the Canadian Football League. So you’ve seen some of the international football players.

This guy is just a little bit different. Just his football knowledge, it’s like he’s been playing for a long time. He understands the game. The competition will be a lot better when he gets here compared to maybe what he was playing in high school. But I think it will all translate.

We’ve had the international students that maybe don’t come from that football - from the United States that we have here. But this kid’s - there’s something different about him, his personality. He’s going to be a fun kid to coach. I can imagine him being involved in student organizations on campus. I think he’s a complete package as far as a person and he’s really smart.

Now that you’ve been through this, is one signing period more important?
Narduzzi: I would say the only way the other signing period is bigger than the other one is if they eliminated it and just had one. They’re both important. We signed really, really good student-athletes in both of them, so how can you say one’s better than the other or more important? You really can’t. It’s kind of nice to have two. But I could go with one in December or - really, the February signing, you can sign all the way to March 31st, so I know we talk about ‘the signing day’ - it’s really a signing two months that they have an opportunity to sign that contract that they may have in front of them.

Has it been a learning process to figure out how to approach two signing periods?
Narduzzi: It is. If I had to do it all over again, I can tell you this: it seemed like there was more competition in January. You almost felt like some guys got over-recruited in January. You were like, ‘Wow.’ Things started to load up and you couldn’t believe so many guys were recruiting an individual because there was only a couple fish out there and a lot of sharks looking for that little fish.

Did you see Milin as a high school player?
Narduzzi: No, I didn’t, and that bothers you because you’re like, ‘Hey, where did you come from?’ But he was a 230-pound tall, skinny guy, I guess, and Kent got him. Those guys slip through the cracks, and that’s probably - when you talk signing periods, I think it’s going to affect high school and high school players more than it’s going to affect the colleges. But we’re going to be affected because we’re going to miss on a guy like that that could have been at Pitt. As a matter of fact, he was on our campus at Pitt back when he was coming out of high school. Just too skinny, whatever it may be, but he’s not skinny anymore. He’s a super player.

Will he be inserted at left tackle right away?
Narduzzi: Yeah, he’ll start at left tackle right away.

Do you feel pretty comfortable that, as you go into high schools, the recruits know what your program is and what it’s about?
Narduzzi: I think so. That’s always a work in progress. I think the amazing thing when people come in, and we’ve had some really, really good walk-ons come in the last couple weeks that we’ve blended in with the rest of the visits, the thing you hear is just the way we do our business on campus. And that’s kind of who we are. It’s like, you’re shocked to hear that, but we continue to build our reputation as people and as a football program based on how we do our business.

So I think it’s a work in progress but you’d be amazed at - bringing in guys that just want to be a priority walk-on that are like, ‘Hey, I’ve been to five or six of these and there’s no place like this.’ That’s how you build your reputation as a program, and I think our coaches and staff have done an incredible job there.

Any word on an offensive line coach?
Narduzzi: No. We’re working on it. It’s won’t be long. That’s the word.

Is that why Coach Patton was able to go out and recruit?
Narduzzi: No question about it. We’re allowed 10 coaches on the field as of January 9th; I’m not sure what the date was but we didn’t have them out earlier than that. But we were able to get James out and Tim Cooper out. We were going to have 10 assistants on the road, so we were able to get with Dustin Gray in compliance and get a switch and have those guys take over for our coaches who weren’t here and for that 10th assistant until Archie Collins and Randy got here. So those guys took over and were able to come in and do the recruiting, which is a great experience for them and obviously it helped us out a bunch. They did a great job.

You signed four defensive backs; do you see any as just corners or just safeties?
Narduzzi: No, we don’t. Looking at those guys, I think Judson might have been the only guy in camp, maybe two of them came to camp. But until we get them here and put them through drills - we think all of them have the ability to play corner; put it that way. We think they all can play there but our field safety can be a corner; he’s playing the same position, just playing off-coverage. So we think they’re all great athletes and we’ll have a place for them. Those are probably your starting four guys out there when we put the freshmen out there in the fall.

One of Mychale’s calling cards is speed and being able to score from anywhere on the field; how rare of a talent is that and do you think that makes getting a player like him more impactful?
Narduzzi: I think any time you have a playmaker with his ability - and the other thing I’ll mention about Mychale is, he wants to play defense, too, okay? We kind of like that. But he’s a hitter. Go put some of his junior tape on and watch him whack people. He’s a guy who can play both ways, so there’s another safety for Coach Bates and Coach Collins and Coach Hill. But he’s a tremendous football player that can make an impact anywhere on the field, catching it, running it or hitting somebody.

How much bigger did the class end up being that you might have expected a year or nine months ago?
Narduzzi: I think that always happens. We always are shooting for a higher number, knowing that there’s going to be attrition, guys looking for places to play. I think it gets competitive. Anytime you’re bringing in more younger players and they start moving up the depth chart and jump in front of people, guys kind of turn around and go, ‘Where’d this guy come from?’ and they start to say, ‘Maybe I have to play somewhere else.’ So we’re always looking at those numbers and it’s always a fluid number. That’s why I can’t say we’re going to take 14 of them; if we plan on 14 and all of a sudden we need 22, then we’ve got a problem. So we’ll just continue to evaluate that. There’s always changes and guys have opportunities to stay or choose to move on; those are choices that we understand our kids have to make.