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BCS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: AUBURN v OREGONJanuary 5, 2011Nick AliottiGLENDALE, ARIZONA Q. Coach Malzahn has a reputation of being a guru. Are you the defensive guru? NICK ALIOTTI: Well, I think you're a guru a lot of times when you have really good players. I have a lot of respect for Gus Malzahn. I won't put myself in any guru category. I would just say this, that we're working hard. Our guys are practicing hard. We've stuck to what got us here. What got us to the dance are the same things we're doing in preparation down here in Arizona and also when we were back in Eugene before we got down here. Like I said before, I anticipate and fully expect that our guys will play hard and play fast and finish. And we'll see what happens on Monday night. Q. Do you see Auburn run a lot of trick plays, too. What do you see on the film there? NICK ALIOTTI: Well, probably the trick plays that they've shown they won't run. So they will probably run some new ones. To be quite honest with you, we are practicing for tricks. We are practicing for everything. That's what you do. That's the curse of being a defensive coordinator. You don't get to say, Hey, wait a minute. We didn't practice against that. Time out, you can't do this. So we're preparing for as much as we can. Obviously, the looks that they are giving us and things that we anticipate that might happen. But really it's playing with your eyes, your hands, your feet, keeping leverage, reading your keys and then playing the game. Q. Do you guys have schemes that you may use that they haven't seen on film yet? NICK ALIOTTI: I hope so. I hope so. Q. SEC is a superior conference, especially defensively. How do you respond to that? NICK ALIOTTI: I don't. I have all the respect for the SEC. They do a great job over there. They have a lot of speed. They play great football. We happen to be playing Auburn, which is a team from the SEC. We are representing the Pac-10 and the University of Oregon. To this point, we've done everything we can to put ourselves in a good position to compete and try to win the football game. And like I said before, I think we will give our best effort and see what happens on Monday night. I make no predictions other than I will be shocked if our guys don't play hard and fast and try to finish as best we can. Q. Chip didn't take the traditional path to his position. Does that color who he is, coming up the way he did? NICK ALIOTTI: Chip did a great job with our offense and still does a great job with our offense. No, he didn't take the traditional path. But I don't know if there is a traditional path to becoming a head coach. Everything he's gotten, he's earned. He deserves to be the head coach, and he has done a fantastic job in the two years he has been there. Q. Chip's offense, I think, it seems like puts a different standard on what successful defense is because you guys are going to have a lot more pressure on you, more plays, more times on the field. Did you have to sort of readjust what you think of as a successful game in terms of yards and points allowed? NICK ALIOTTI: Good question. I have spoken to a lot of you at various times. It's difficult sometimes to feel really good about how you play defensively when you play a lot of plays. And there is two ways of looking at that. If you stop them at three downs, you won't play a lot of plays. We play very fast on offense. Therefore, that puts us on the field quite a bit. We could score in three or be out in three. Most of the times we score in three. And what we've changed is we play a lot of players. So we have become more aggressive with playing about 25 to 30 players on defense, and I think that's helped us by keeping us fresh. Q. What do you remember about Micky Ward talking to the team? How do you think that may have inspired the team? NICK ALIOTTI: Well, we used a few clips of Micky's fights. You know, any time you can relate to a fighter, a guy that hangs in there against all odds. I don't know the whole story about Micky Ward, I will be honest with you. I know Chip does. Any time you can respect what a man did being a fighter and battling all the way to the end, I think that touched home the type of team that we've tried to be all year. Q. You are the longest tenure Duck. What other games in your past can you compare to the excitement you are having? NICK ALIOTTI: Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl, last year's Rose Bowl, the very first Rose Bowl when we played Penn State who was 12-0 and had three of the first nine draft picks with Kerry Collins, Ki-Jana Carter and Kyle Brady. We had a very auspicious start, if you recall. The very first play of the game Ki-Jana Carter went 87 yards. Hopefully, we will do better than that on the very first play of this game. If we hold them to an 86-yard run, we did succeed. End of FastScripts |
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