BAD BOY MOWERS PINSTRIPE BOWL: RUTGERS VS MIAMI

December 28, 2023

Mario Cristobal

Yankee Stadium

Miami Hurricanes

Postgame Press Conference

Rutgers 31, Miami 24

MARIO CRISTOBAL: To play our last game of the season, this team has always found a way to keep fighting, to keep battling all the way to the end.

But things that we really thought we would emphasize and get results of during the bowl game were areas that always show up in bowl games, right? Turnovers, special teams, penalties, which are the result of discipline.

Obviously a slow start for us, but a real good second quarter, and a good start to the third quarter. The middle eight was really good. The block punt was certainly a game-changer. Then found ourselves fighting our way back, but not enough at the end.

That being said, questions.

Q. (Off microphone)?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: I thought he played hard and did a lot of really good things. He would love to have that one interception back. That was a cloudy look and had some pressure. But he really made some explosive plays. He found his way out of the pocket too when that pocket collapsed a little bit.

Made some really good throws. Some others he would like to have back against a team that's a top-10 defense, particularly in the passing game.

So I'm just really proud of him. I thought he played a good game.

Q. Mark Fletcher went out of the game early, and then Wesley I think in the start of the fourth quarter. Do you have any updates on their status, how they're doing?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: Mark hurt his foot. They took X-rays. The X-rays were negative, but there's certainly something else going on there.

Wesley sustained an upper body injury. I think we'll have more information in a little bit.

Q. (Question regarding Xavier Restrepo and Isaiah Horton.)

MARIO CRISTOBAL: Both those guys played really well. Restrepo has done a really good job all year. Made some big catches today as well. We were hoping to get that one right before the half. But always plays hard, always throws his body around. And he is a very reliable yet explosive player. He did a really good job today. Certainly he would trade any record for the win.

Isaiah Horton continues to develop. We felt that towards the end of the year he was developing into that guy that could split time as a starter, and he showed why today. He made some really good plays, some real tightrope sideline plays, and he's a guy that's going forward where we're counting on doing a lot of big things.

Q. It looked like your defense struggled with their run game a little bit. When your guys are struggling like that, is there anything you as a coaching staff do schematically to help them out, or does it fall on the players to figure it out on their own?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: It falls on everybody. Schematically you want to do everything possible to give yourself a chance, right, your fun fits. And I thought they did a really good job of hanging in their double-teams, the back press in the hole and biting that Mike linebacker and then spitting that thing out and bouncing it a couple of times, forcing the safety to make a play.

A couple of times I felt that he baited those guys inside and broke it, and we loss contained, and he got outside. Other times he just ran through tackles. There were times we didn't tackle well, particularly early in the football game.

Really good running back. Really good running backs, I should say. Their offensive line did a really good job. Got to give them credit as opposed to just saying that we could have done better. Got to give them credit. Obviously we have to improve. We've done better.

Schematically, you start mixing it up. We played everything. We did bear. We brought some Mike plugs, Will plugs, outside pleasure, inside pressure, cross-blitzes. At times we got home and made some plays; other times they got us for some chunk plays.

Q. Obviously this is a big win for Rutgers. You know Greg Schiano pretty well. What do you see from this team with the number of players that he has coming back and maybe what's the ceiling for the other team?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: Good football team. They play hard. They play physical. They play disciplined.

Q. Overall, you mentioned just the block punt. What do you think for the momentum of them overall itself?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: It changed the momentum for sure. They're in overload. We saw it. We were trying to get the ball off quick. The snap was high, and the punter is discombobulated and the guy snuck underneath the shield on the back side of it. He couldn't get in his normal rhythm that he does because of the snap.

Obviously a block and a touchdown at the same time, that's massive. Massive in terms of momentum in the game.

Q. Obviously the game just ended a couple of minutes ago. Might be hard to take a bigger-picture look at things, but just what do you think this game means to the team and the team going forward? Obviously everybody talks about how a win can vault a team into next year. Obviously you don't want a loss to drag your team down going into next year. How do you look at this game and the big picture of things?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: You are looking at it with honesty. You look at it with reality that there are so many good things that we have done throughout the season that show progress, and yet we find ourselves showing a lack of discipline in crunch time, right, and special teams blundering, and turnover on downs is a turnover.

Those are things that you have to just attack collectively as a group, as an organization, coaches, players, everybody. There's no pointing fingers in there. You win together. When you lose, you lose together.

The one thing this team has put on tape all year long every single game, up by a bunch, down by a bunch, every single game ended up being a tight game, and this team battled.

Our DNA in that sense has improved a bunch. We know how to compete. Now we've got to compete and combine better execution and discipline and coaching to go with that.

Q. You mentioned some of the mistakes. How much is that sometimes a product of having to incorporate a lot of new guys who are playing for the first time this year?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: They're going to have to cut their teeth. They're going to have to learn from some of the things that come with playing, but I think the entire country is facing that.

The last thing I would like to do is go back there and say, hey, it's your first time. It's okay. I think when you play new players, that's an unspoken just kind of -- you know? It's going to happen. You just keep finding ways to encourage them, to give them opportunities to get better, to keep push them and help them with information to help them just have a better performance throughout the game.

But it's painful. It hurts. I know it hurts them. They wanted this win. They wanted it badly. We prepared hard. We prepared well. Some things showed up today, and other things didn't.

I think when we talk about -- we've taken the route of we knew we had to enhance the roster and we were going to play a lot of young players. If it comes with it, well, we just have to coach them up better, teach them better, and get guys doing it the right way the whole time.

Q. You mentioned the penalties. There were a lot of them. Some late hits, a bunch of stuff. Seemed like a chippy game from our vantage point. Would you agree with that, and why do you think that?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: It did. It got there. It's your last chance. We're in a really strange dynamic in college football; right? No one really knows what roster is going to look like what following all these bowl games. Guys know don't know if they're going to be at one place or going to be the another.

There are some things that -- I don't know. It's just a different dynamic, and everybody is trying to play their best and trying to play hard. There's a lot going on. Sometimes you go over that line, and there's no excuse for it. It's not winning football.

Both teams had their share. I think they had six penalties. We had five penalties, and both teams could have avoided a bunch. Obviously I have to focus on our team avoiding those because they're selfish. You know? You have to play guys who don't do that or find guys that don't do that the fastest way to hurt your team.

Q. You mentioned the fight in your team at the end there. What's the value as you look to the offseason knowing getting that late touchdown, getting the onside kick and pushing through to the end there in this game?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: It's just never over until it's over, and all these -- I mean, bowl games are, in essence, like rivalry games; right? You're never all the way finished with it when you're ahead, and you're never all the way out of it when you are behind.

At the end of the day, we had the ball with two time-outs and the ability to get four or five plays and was hoping to save those -- use one on a chunk play and use another one on a chunk play, and hopefully get two shots at the end zone.

But gave ourselves a chance just by battling, just by everybody doing their job. When we don't do our job, sometimes we jump out of a gap and miss a block. Sometimes we hold. Sometimes we overstep. We try to make a play instead of doing our job, and that's usually when we've hurt ourselves.

A lot of value in battling. If our team continues to grow in the sense of being more competitive, in the sense of always battling and just continuing to improve on that, we'll be a good football team. We have work to do.

Q. Rueben Bain, end of the game, I think seven tackles, three tackles for a loss. Obviously he came in as a very talented guy. How have you seen him grow throughout the year, and where do you think he's headed in the next year or two of his college career?

MARIO CRISTOBAL: It means the world to him. That's what it is. He is really talented and plays really, really hard, and it means the world to him, and need a bunch more guys like Rueben Bain.