Pat Narduzzi addressed the media ahead of Thursday’s practice. Read what he had to say.

Pat Narduzzi: Well we had a good practice five yesterday, six today obviously. Yesterday was full pads - live, and I was really happy with where we came out yesterday. It was kind of like an old Ali-Frazier, but maybe you guys are too young to remember those old…but Ali-Frazier and what I mean by that was it was back and forth as far as an offensive win then a defensive win, whether it be by play or by period.

It was good to see our guys fight back, it’s never going to be a perfect game, it’s never going to be a perfect period you just keep fighting back and I like how the guys competed yesterday.

Questions?

How is Mychale Salahuddin recovering and how has he looked?

PN: Mychale is doing well. We’re just being smart with Mychale, he’s 100% healthy. We gave him one day off so far in the six practices, so he hasn't practiced in all six. We’re still not going live. I still don’t want him getting whacked in that knee, because when it’s live it’s live and yesterday was live and we had guys what we call getting sweep-tackled and taking their knees out. It’s live, so I want to slowly get back into it. I don’t want him to have a setback and have it regress, so he’s doing well and he’ll have his day. We’ll let you guys know when the first day he goes live.

When it’s what we call ‘thud’ and he knows he’s going to stay up and he knows nobody is going to hit him in the knee, which a lot of the periods today are thud today. We have one live period so he’ll get more work today and those other guys will get less work and maybe take it easy on their bodies.

How are the freshman adapting to this lifestyle and is anyone standing out there?

PN: It’s funny you ask that question. I wrote in my notes after going in my special teams meeting. We’ve talked about them and I think our depth is so good at the top and you can almost take that freshman class and say, ‘Gosh maybe we can redshirt them all’ and wouldn’t that be awesome? As a coach it would be awesome. But this afternoon we’re going to talk about OK who are the guys right now after practice six going into practice seven that we’re going to get four games four at least.

Last year V’lique (Carter) we planned on four games and all the sudden it was, ‘hey you’re playing seven.’ I think he ended up playing seven games for us. It’s that four games and then see what happens. So we’re going to plan on those first four guys that we kind of want to get into those four games and so that’s kind of where it is right now.

When I look at freshman that might be able to go. Brandon George comes to mind, SirVocea Dennis comes to mind, Brandon Hill comes to mind of defense. Kyi Wright, you never know. He’s athletic and runs well so those are guys at positions that can also do special teams.

Any feeling on the freshman running backs?

PN: I mean there’s depth in front of them, but the are two more guys that can play special teams. They’re learning the trade at running back right now and they’re going to have their opportunities. As you guys we’re kind of doing post practice meetings here, we’re kind of having a ten minute post practice called ‘showtime’ where they’re able to show a little bit more and we’ll go live at the end. That’s kind of what we’re using that for.

When do you start working on Virginia stuff?

PN: We’ve worked on it all summer. We’ve worked on it all summer as far as scouting reports. Coaches are prepared, but as far as players I mean they’ve had their installs where, ‘hey this is what we’re going to do on these guys’ during the summer and again when we fully come out here, everyday we’re doing stuff that we’re going to do against them. So it’s kind of purposely installed stuff that we’re going to do against them and it wasn’t necessarily because we wanted to get it in, we wanted to get it in early because it’s something we want to do against Virginia.