Narduzzi on upsetting Virginia, the run game, defense and more

Narduzzi: Great W by our football team. I’m just excited for those guys in that locker room right now. It’s tough to go on the road in the ACC and get a W. We do it the old-fashioned way: running the football for 250 yards. Darrin Hall was a beast today. And then stopping the run - I think they had less than 50 yards rushing, which would be the lowest for the year. Hats go off to the football team. We did a lot of great things. Obviously there are a lot of little things that we can continue to improve on. We still have to eliminate some of the costly errors and penalties, but we’ll take it on the road and move onto the next one.

The running game - you guys keep going to it, other defenses know what you guys are going to do and they still can’t seem to stop it. Are you just doing it that much better than they are on the other side of the ball?
Narduzzi: I guess. I mean, you tell me. We just kept going to it. We were just okay in the first half; in the second half, we came out rolling. I think our coaches did a great job of making some slight adjustments as far as what we were doing and how we were doing in the first half. That’s what you do as a coach: put the kids in position to make plays.

Our offensive line blocked their tails off. My hat goes off to every one of those guys up front and the tight ends and George Aston, he’s a monster in there. And again, Darrin Hall, there he is, he’s coming back again, second half of the season, he’s in.

Was it a plan to go to Hall more or was he just kind of the hot guy?
Narduzzi: He was the hot guy. The plan was - he practiced great all week, so…Jerry’s not here so I won’t talk anymore.

You said the second half was better; they’re both pretty bruising runners, did they just wear the defense down?
Narduzzi: Yeah, that’s kind of what we do. That’s Pittsburgh football. It’s Pittsburgh tough. Got that one for the city of Pittsburgh and I’m happy for our kids.

This is the second week in a row when your defense has stepped up in the fourth quarter; you didn’t have a three-and-out tonight until the fourth quarter. Is that just guys turning it up in the end or -
Narduzzi: Guys turned up. We gave up a cheap one early; that seven points we gave up in the first half on a long pass, our guys kind of wiped it off but it was really just a mess-up, period. We made a check and we didn’t execute it very good. It hurt us.

But they really played good the whole game. When you hold somebody to 50 yards - they’ve run the ball pretty good on everybody. You look at the defense a week ago and you look at what we put on the field today, our kids worked hard all week, coaches did a great job putting them in position and that’s how you play Pitt defense.

What did you do to take Perkins out of it?
Narduzzi: I guess we got him a couple times in the backfield. I don’t know how many sacks we got, but that’s the first thing. We put pressure on him and forced him to have to make some throws or make a decision and, again, hats go off to the defense. The defensive backs did a great job of covering people and not giving him anything open, so there were a lot of coverage sacks.

Did you get any kind of clarification on the targeting call?
Narduzzi: No. I mean, it is what it is. I think it was kind of - I thought he had his face up. I think he tried to put a lick on him and Patrick Jones is a tough kid; what are you going to do? Sometimes it happens. It wasn’t anything he tried to do intentionally and that’s the big thing. It wasn’t like he was trying to launch or anything. Just playing aggressive.

You changed V’Lique’s number again; is that a strategy to try to sneak him out there and catch them off-guard?
Narduzzi: His jersey ripped.

I’m just kidding you. Yeah, just to sneak him out there. We tried to sneak him and I think it’s always tough - if you can do that and the player doesn’t mind changing his number up, at least throws them off a little bit. It didn’t work too well anyway. I knew they would kind of take the jet sweeps away like they have the last couple years, so we knew that was probably going to be an issue. But we wanted to find out what could go anyway.

You know, just all week they’re talking about 19, 19, 19, so at least make them adjust early to find out who he is.

Was there any doubt in your mind sending out Kessman for the long field goal after the missed extra point?
Narduzzi: No, it was a bad - it was an okay snap, we just dropped the snap on the extra points. Obviously we would like to be a little bit closer. How long was that? Another 52 or 53-yarder, we had no reservations at all. He kicked it earlier and that wasn’t on him.

We tried to make it a two-score game and that was a gigantic kick. It gives your defense a little bit of a breather knowing that they have to go down the field twice on you. The way we were playing, that just gave us a little comfort.

Did you get a chance to see what the call was on Damarri Mathis?
Narduzzi: I’m guessing it was a celebration. I still didn’t get the word on what it was. We’ll coach that up. In the end, it doesn’t matter because they had one timeout left, so it pretty much iced the game. But just having fun and I’ll have to see it on tape or a TV copy to see what he did. I heard he just stood there kind of like that, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t think he did anything, I don’t think he said anything; I think he just - what it looked like, he was having fun. We have to be smarter than that.