After most football seasons, Utah coach Ron McBride spends a day or two talking with all of his returning players, telling them what will be expected in the off-season, in spring drills and into the next fall.
After this 4-7 aberration of a year, McBride, for the first time in his 11 years as Utah head coach, spent a whole week carefully listening to players. He had individuals in his office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and was still talking to some on Friday. He was trying to learn what they think went wrong, what they'd like to see done and what kind of mood they bring into the off-season.
Now he's reflecting on the answers and scouring his own mind for solutions.
He knows the cries of fans and media to do something drastic, like firing some assistants and shaking up his staff. That actually could be what he settles on — the offense was sorely unproductive while the defense ranked tops in the Mountain West — but it will come only after he's thought long and hard. He readily admits the strong loyalty that many fans dislike to those who serve under him, and he says he will not make an assistant a scapegoat simply to appease public pressure.
For those who think McBride could be hired by Arizona, where he was an assistant, he says he doubts the Pac-10 Wildcats would want a coach who went 4-7 this season. McBride, of course, recently signed an extension with Utah that lasts through Jan. 1, 2004.
He won't say exactly what players told him in their one-on-one meetings, but he is satisfied with their outlook. "This group seems like they want to work harder," he says.
That would be hard. The 2000 Utes were most conscientious. "These guys had a great work ethic, maybe the best work ethic of all the teams I've coached here," he said Friday.
That's what's so perplexing. A team with some brilliant stars (like Stevonne Smith, Andre Dyson, Kautai Olevao and Doug Kaufusi) that stayed staunch mentally and physically just couldn't make the big plays when they counted.
Most losing teams give up easily, bicker, loaf in workouts, games and classrooms, get distracted by off-field activities and lose enthusiasm.
The Utes were pretty much the opposite of all that. They rarely pointed fingers. Game films showed effort throughout, McBride said. Off-field incidents mainly involved people who didn't play and were not detrimental to team focus. Not one player mentioned any of those incidents to the coach in his post-season talks with them, "and at the time, they all handled each situation that came up," McBride said. He says players are on-track scholastically. And those who will return are talking positively.
So what happened to the pre-season favorites to win the Mountain West?
Injuries that forced the use of four right guards and three centers and put the starting tight end at both of those positions is one place to start. To an offensive line, continuity is paramount and takes time to develop.
The second place to look is tailback, where blocking was premium with a banged-up line and a team that needed to get the ball to its big-play wide receivers, Smith and Cliff Russell. Adam Tate didn't arrive on campus due to junior-college difficulties until two-a-days were over, so he learned blocking on the job. Dameon Hunter also spent the summer finishing up at junior college and took awhile to learn blocking. By contrast, when Mike Anderson arrived from Mount San Jacinto College two years earlier, he arrived in time to spend the summer working out and learning teammates and plays. And replacing Anderson, now starting for the Denver Broncos, was no easy task.
With blocking disabilities early in the season, T.D. Croshaw and Darnell Arceneaux were exposed far more than they had been last season when they had a healthy line and experienced tailbacks in Anderson and Omar Bacon.
Add in the kicking woes (1-for-11 on field goals to start the season), and overall confidence took a hit.
Had he known such problems would exist, McBride says he'd have asked Clearfield freshman kicker Justin Hamblin to delay his LDS mission. In retrospect, asking Golden Whetman to do punts, kickoffs and field goals was too much. Two of those disciplines are high-pressure tasks, and it might have been better to spread it around, McBride says. And Ryan Kaneshiro became consistent once he got the chance. He was 6-for-8 on field goals and made all 22 PATs, and Whetman's punts and kickoffs got better with Kaneshiro doing the placekicking, McBride said.
McBride also now wishes he'd pushed more to get Tate and Hunter on campus sooner, and if he'd realized how bad right guard Sam White's knee would react to game stress, he would have moved younger players into the position earlier.
Main recruiting needs: Tops is "a couple of receivers that can really go," McBride says, probably junior college players. Also needed are eight or nine defensive players, mostly out of high school, including four defensive backs, three down linemen and a couple of linebackers.
Key newcomers already on campus for 2001: Quarterbacks Brett Elliott (redshirting freshman) and Ryan Breska (transfer from Purdue) and tailback J.R. Perules (transfer from Arizona State).
E-mail: lham@desnews.com