Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi met with the media on Saturday following the team’s annual Blue-Gold game. The defense won the scrimmage on Saturday at Acrsiure Stadium. Here is a complete rundown of everything Narduzzi had to say.

Narduzzi: What a day, what a beautiful day we had today. First, just appreciate all the hard work our kids did throughout the spring, got 15 great days in, got a lot better. We got a lot of concepts in on offense and defense taught, whether it was good to do against a certain defense or good against a certain offense. The main thing is we’re installing, it wasn’t like a game plan for today. Even the scrimmage today was not a game plan scrimmage, you’re just running things that you want to get better at. You wouldn’t maybe necessarily run it against that look, and that’s kind of how we go through the whole spring. I’m happy with the all of install and the amount of information and knowledge that our kids picked up, but obviously I’m happy as heck to get out of the scrimmage healthy. That’s the main thing.

How did you think the new format went today?

Narduzzi: That’s for you guys…I thought it was good. I don’t know, it’s hard to tell, but I thought there was some continuity out there. What did you guys think? Thumbs up or thumbs down? Thumbs up? Ok we’ll do it again.

Was there a consideration to put the first teams against each other on offense and defense?

Narduzzi: No, I’ve seen enough of that. I didn’t want to do too much of that. I wanted to get out healthy, and again the 1s vs. the 2s, and there’s a lot of guys running with the 2s that are 1s. We don’t feel like it’s that big of a difference. You lose your substitution when you have two squads going. Nowadays in football you have a lot of guys who are running with the 1s. When you look at the corner position just for an example, when you go with the 1s. It’s Marquis, MJ, and AJ and those guys are all 1s, and then you have a group of 2s and they are all good football players. And again that’s the same thing for every position. You’re never going to have like you guys are 1s and that’s it.

Is that a safety thing?

Narduzzi: Same thing, but we’re still looking to see who those guys are. We’re going to need three starting safeties.

No, I meant with health-wise playing the 1s vs. the 1s….

Narduzzi: Oh, ok. I thought corners, safety…But yea, a little bit. It’s just a little bit different and again they get so sick of doing that. When we go normal jersey scrimmage we go about half of it as 1s on 2s anyway. We start slow and get them in the flow of things and then we’ll turn it over into some 1 on 1 towards the end.

What does PJ O’Brien bring to that room that’s unique?

Narduzzi: PJ’s got some juice to him, doesn’t he? He can rattle off and he’s got a lot of passion to him. I was happy. We talked about it yesterday about making some plays and I said if you make a play maybe I’ll let you talk to the media and he’s like, ‘Coach I’m going to do that’ and I don’t know if he told you that. So he was probably too excited to get in here because he did make that play. It was a good play, he picked off a freshman quarterback, so I always take that into account, and I’ll bust him about that like you didn’t pick off Phil or Christian. But he’s had a lot of takeovers. I don’t know if he had the takeover thing on his helmet today or not. I didn’t look at that, but he’s had a good spring.

What did you think fo Veilleux on his opening drive?

Narduzzi: I thought he looked really sharp. I thought he looked good. He’s got a great arm and he made the plays with his arm. He looked good.

You talked a lot about turnovers heading into this and the first and second team offense protected the ball. How did you feel both sides handled that?

Narduzzi: I think when we got the turnovers, we didn’t get the turnovers on defense like we’d like. I mean someone had a fumbled snap who hasn’t take a lot of snaps under center and a whole lot of reps during spring ball, so I almost said forget it, and that turnover didn’t count. They take a couple of snaps on the sideline and we’re trying to get it going and we’re trying to stay within that ACC two-hour window for television. I thought our offense did a pretty good job of protecting the football and when you protect the ball you’ve got a pretty good chance to win the football game.

How much fun were you having out there?

Narduzzi: I wat out there praying like just stay healthy. But we’re having fun, maybe at the beginning I got a little grumpy. Is that why you’re asking, because I looked like I was mad at one point? You want things to be perfect out there, but no I had a good time. I’m just glad it’s over. We had a great breakfast this morning with all the families and seeing all the moms, dads, uncles, aunts. It was a great day,

How impressed were you with the quarterback play today?

Narduzzi: I’m going to watch the tape. Sometimes I think things and open my mouth then watch the tape and say it’s not as good. There’s different plays. We started off with Phil and started off with a reverse and it was just different stuff. I thought Christian came in and we got the ball out of his hands real quick and gave him some quick passes and got the ball out of his hands. I was impressed with them. Christian is brand-new, 15 days into the offense. Phil knows the offense and probably didn’t get as many snaps today. And I love Nate Yarnell. I love his leadership and what he does.

What did you see from Karter and Nahki, the two Conway Award winners? What did they do to separate themselves this spring?

Narduzzi: Nahki, we’ll start off with him. He’s a guy, besides some of the strength stuff he did and improving those things, his motor started turning. I don’t know if it’s the light turned on, but it started to turn on in the bowl practices and bowl game, but it really turned off for spring. I just noticed the strength that he’s playing with, just watching him in team periods when he’s locking his arms out and knocking…he’s putting a dent in the offensive line. It’s like, who is that? Is that No. 4? I haven’t seen him do that before. It was just him making an impact more on that offensive line. You noticed him in practice and then it was a consistency thing for him. There’s times you would see it then you wouldn’t see it for another practice and you’re like where did that go? Can we have that back? He constantly put it together this spring.

Did you see that consistency with Okunlola?

Narduzzi: I did and you saw it with a lot of guys. But he’s so young that you didn’t maybe see the drop off there. To answer the rest of that question with Karter Johnson. He just did a great job blocking. He’s gotten a lot better. It’s another year in the offense for him. He’s a second-year player who I think can make a lot of plays for us. He caught the ball all spring. He just became a very, very reliable tight end for us.

Would you say your team is where you hoped it would be by the end of spring ball?

Narduzzi: Without a doubt. I think we’re sitting in a good place here and like I said there’s been times when I’ve walked out of spring games and Brian O’Neil got hurt one time and Deslin Alexandre hurt his shoulder. I mean those were two major, major injuries that happened freakishly. Those were two and I didn’t talk about those injuries, Jerry, but I’ll talk about it now. Both of those guys got hurt in spring games. Brian O’Neil on a pass protection just hurt his shoulder and Deslin did something like, ‘you got hurt right there? How?’ So just to come out clean, we’re right where we need to be.

What is the significance to have something like the Conway Award?

Narduzzi: I think we’ve been awarding that since 1974 and it’s important. It’s a great award to give out because everyone is fighting to get that. We talk about getting 3% better everyday and we want out guys to improve and again I don’t know if I mentioned this, but that was voted on by our staff. Everybody in our staff room voted. We nominated and went through each position and who is the most improved at each position? And then the next day we voted on it as a staff. It was good to see and they got a majority of those votes.

Are you happy with your roster overall or will you go to the portal at all?

Narduzzi: You’re always going to look. I’m happy with the guys on our roster. And to be honest with you, we’ve got three scholarships still available right now. So we’ve got three. Where is Chris Peak at? Is he here, or is he on vacation today? I thought Chris would know that already. I showed you my cards. But we’ve got three already, but we’re not going to take three just to take three. We’re going to take the right three. I think Bill Belichick had a nice quote, ‘It’s not about the best 53, it’s about the right 53’ and we want to make sure we get the right 53.

Will you look to add through the transfer portal or high school recruits?

Narduzzi: Whatever we find. I know we’ve got an eye on a high school player right now that we’ve watched develop and he’s been on campus in the spring, so you don’t know. It could be whatever. We’ll be out on the streets in the spring and you never know what you’ll find.

Walk us through the controversy on the kick return. It seemed the special teams was coming after you…

Narduzzi: They were mad. The referees said they didn’t see anyone within a foot of him. The punt team, because we had the two young punters, I said that our punt return team was going to be ‘thud’ and we were going to try to not take them to the ground. I’ll just blame it on the new spring game and we’re going to have to clean some things up. I was back behind Rodney when he took off, so on punt return it was ‘thud’ and on kick return it was ‘whiz’ and I might have forgot and ‘whiz’ is sometimes like when we’re in pass skeleton and not tackling…We didn’t want Rodney or C’Bo to get hit. They take enough hits. We didn’t really need to see the older guys. That’s why I didn’t give MJ any reps on punt because we didn’t need to see him returning punts. I’ve seen enough of him returning punts, but maybe I forgot it was ‘thud’ and we’ll look at the tape. And (Rodney) hit it and the guys in the booth are like he’s gone and I didn't see anybody touch him and I was like (shrugging) hey let’s let it go.

How would you say the punt team looked today?

Narduzzi: You know what, I haven’t looked at the stats yet to be honest with you. But I’m looking at Caleb Junko with a 49.5 yard average and one inside the 20 and Junko has been on fire all spring. Jeff Yurk didn’t have a great day with his 38-yard average, but I think our punt team and I thought Junko. We went back and looked and I think I told you at spring ball No. 1, we spent a ton of time on our punt team. We’re going to be better on punt team and we’re not going to be where we were. But as we went through everybody else’s punt team in the country. We evaluate everybody. It came down to the punter. People that were good, it wasn’t like we were doing anything different, it’s just like having an offense without a quarterback. The quarterback is the main guy, the guy that’s touching the ball so we had to make improvements and I think Caleb Junko has done an outstanding job.

Do the winners still get a special menu at dinner?

Narduzzi: It’s supposed to be the winners. There’s a lot of controversy there, the kickoff return we’ll have to check the video tape. MaybeI’ll be nice and give it to everybody. It’s a little bit different. The draft is different. It was going to be steak and lobsters for the winners, so that would be the defense. And the offense would be eating tofu and beans. Tofu…woof.

Harrison and Derrick Davis each had 9 carries. How important was it to get those two more reps than maybe Rodney and C’Bo? And how do those two figure in to the offense?

Narduzzi: We wanted to see those young guys go and we know what Rodney can do and C’Bo can do and it looks like they had three carries a pop and some pretty good yardage with it, it looks like if I’m reading it correctly. We wanted to give all those guys a look and see what we have. We feel good with the stable of running backs we got and Tj being a baby right now, but he’s gotten better through the spring. And Derrick Davis is a big back, he’s thick. I looked at him walking out there and said God he’s big. He’s got some big legs, big calves.

Who do you feel like are your two top freshmen on either side of the ball?

Narduzzi: I would say on offense, and gosh I wish I had the list in front of me. I’ll tell you what the guy that’s probably been the most impressive on offense as a freshman has been…I would say Isreal Polk right now. I’m impressed with him and he made somebody miss, and I don’t know If…I would say Israel Polk. It’s nice to have another Izzy. I would say Israel polk had a really nice spring and he’s really smart and there was times they were making him play the x and the z, so he’s playing two positions as a freshman, so that’s impressive. I would say on defense, and I would say it’s probably not a question at all it’s Braylan Lovelace. He looks like a man right now. He looks like a guy who could play for us right now. I’ve been really, really impressed with his maturity as a linebacker and his physicality and intelligence.

I noticed 2023 signee Zion Fowler on the sideline, how will he help the team this year?

Narduzzi: We had a bunch of our freshmen who aren’t here that are still in high school and are going to prom next week. But Zion was one of them on the sideline. We had a few of them. I think they were on spring break because he was here the whole week listening and catching up on the offense. But we think he’s a guy who can go up and get the ball. He’s a guy who can leap and has got good wheels. We’l find out where he is mentally. The big thing is mentally, we know they are physically talented, but can they mentally pick up the offense?