UVA football coach Bronco Mendenhall talks with reporters after the Cavs lost 45-31 to Pitt on Saturday.
Opening Statement: “Congratulations to Pitt, it was a hard-fought game and I think a good college football game. Difference today was special teams in my opinion. Pitt’s returner is very, very good. We knew that going into the game and the returns that they ran were the same returns that we prepared for. So clearly their staff did a better job of executing and having their young men execute and coach them in those situations than we did. He was exceptional, the kick return for a touchdown, another kick return to the 20-yard line, a punt return to the minus-33. So that to me was the difference in the game in addition to the one mistake that Kurt makes right before the half with the pick-six. So that game is toe to toe and neck and neck and I think it’s going to be right to the very end. However I’ve got to coach my team more cleanly and at a higher level to make the critical plays in all phases. I thought we tried hard. I think we showed a lot of spirit. There were a lot of things that I liked. Offensively we look more and more explosive. We didn’t sustain it in the second half, but we certainly did it in the first. I think defensively we gave up three drives, and that in and of itself against that team is a solid performance. With those though, penalties kept them going. So a lot to learn, a lot to grow from and I was certainly anticipating and believed it could have been a different result, but they executed better today than we did and that’s reflective of how they were prepared.”
On the effect of Kurt Benkert’s interception at the end of the first half: “I’m not sure to what extent it had an effect on him. But boy what a momentum shift because we were going and all of the sudden think we might get some more points on the board and then it flips. However we want our quarterback to be aggressive, and we want him to have confidence and we promote that. So I’m not going to put all of the outcome of the game on that one play. It certainly was a big play and it certainly was a momentum shifter but that’s part of college football.”
On defending against Pitt’s physicality: “There was one drive in the second half that Pitt moved the ball and scored and it wasn’t through the middle, it was around the edges. We weren’t quite as clean on our fly sweep defense which we were solid the entire game and I think played it better than anyone has all year. I’m not someone that’s one to take moral victories, but I liked our plan and I liked the way we executed it. Even after another short field and a missed tackle on a play that they scored on. I think they made it hard for Pitt to score. There were three sustained drives and we contributed with a penalty on each one. My job is to help the defensive kids learn to play aggressive and hard and clean and we struggled with that on the three drives today but overall I thought we handled it well.”
On the lack of scoring in the second half: “I think some of the big plays we were hitting in the first half, just the separation from the receiver to the DB, we just didn’t connect as much. The long plays are pretty volatile. It’s hard to be consistent. It went according to plan in the first half and not as much in the second half. But I also think playing from behind is a little different than playing from ahead, so I think Pitt started to rush more aggressively, play pass defense more than run defense and were expecting us to catch up through the air and not worry so much about balance.”
On Sims’ shorter kicks in the second half: “We were really intentional on where we wanted the ball to land, based on where their returns went and possibly because of the specificity we were asking him to land, maybe that took a lot of him just kicking it. The second half, those were sky kicks intentionally, we were trying to keep it away from the returner.”
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