Colorado University Athletics
MacIntyre Press Conference Quotes
February 03, 2016 | Football
Colorado Head Coach Mike MacIntyre
General
“This is always an exciting day. But first of all, I want to say that I wish the [Denver] Broncos the best Sunday (in Super Bowl 50) for them. I'm excited to watch [Broncos QB] Peyton [Manning] and the guys get it done. Coach [Gary] Kubiak has done a great job there and it's fun to watch. It's also fun because we have a couple of Buffs there, of course [former Butkus award winner] Matt Russell and all those guys. We're really proud of them. When we go to Church Sunday morning, everybody has Broncos jerseys on at our church. So it's an exciting week for them, I hope to see them do it and I'm pulling for them.”
“Now, I would like to start with our class. I'm going to go through each guy and talk about them for a minute and then I'll talk about overall what I think.”
On defensive back Ca'Ron Baham
“It's really cool going into that school (John Ehret HS) in New Orleans and seeing four different Buffs up on the wall, that have been very successful, and three of them still live in the Denver/Boulder area. This young man can fly. He has speed to kill. He was a quarterback, but he will play corner for us; he wants to play corner. He has great savvy, tremendous speed and athleticism, he's put together really well. He's 5-11 to 6-foot, he's about 190 pounds. I'm really, really excited about him. It was fun going to his house, his mother made red beans and rice and Cajun chicken; it was good but really, really hot, had to drink it a lot of water, but it was really good. I'm really excited about what Ca'Ron brings to the table and his excitement. It's exciting for us to get back into New Orleans again, [safeties coach] Joe Tumpkin did a terrific job, and that's an area that we are going to keep hitting hard. There's a lot of good football players there and Ca'Ron brings a lot to the table for us.”
On tailback Beau Bisharat
“Beau Bisharat is a big, physical, athletic, hard-nosed running back. He's 6-11/2, 211-pounds right now – he'll be 220, 230-pound type running back for us that is quick and athletic. Beau is from Sacramento and [running backs coach] Klayton Adams did a great job recruiting Beau. He has great parents, great family. It's been a tough week on them. He committed today and his dad is having heart surgery tomorrow. They've gone from high to low and prayers need to be with his Dad, Charlie, as he goes in for that. He's an exciting player that we're really excited about. It was an interesting recruiting battle. I will say that it went all the way until late last night, late, late on the phone. He wanted to be a Buff and he's excited about being a Buff. He turned down a lot of people. If there is 127 division-I schools, I'm pretty sure he had an offer from all 127. We're really excited about what Beau Bisharat brings to the table, very intelligent young man. I'm excited to watch him run and he'll be a guy that I think will help us immediately next year.”
On defensive back Ronnie Blackmon
“I like to call him, 'Mr. excitement.' He's a corner, very athletic, he also played receiver. He is a very good return specialist, quick, athletic, explosive young man with a lot of ability to make big plays. His ability to run after interception is pretty special. He's also a good return specialist and has a lot of energy and a lot of excitement. When you drive into his high school you drive down Cam Newton Way and Cam Newton does a camp there every summer. It's a hot-pocket for college football. Charles Clark did a great job recruiting this young man from that high school. There's a lot of good players in the Georgia area, to say the least. According to ESPN 300, there's more ESPN 300 players in the state of Georgia than anywhere else in the country. There's a lot of great athletes there and Charles Clark did a great job of recruiting Ronnie Blackmon. You can see his quickness and his explosiveness. I'm very excited about this class' athleticism at the skill position. We're going to have a lot of really excellent, Pac-12 type skill football players that can make plays for us, which is exceptional, you need those big-time play makers.”
On wide receiver Kabion Ento
“He is a long rangy wide receiver. He had a great career in junior college and high school. He was an all-state player at corner. He's just an athlete. He will play receiver for us. He was first team All-State junior college player in Mississippi. I think he made one of the All-American teams also. He's almost 6-3, 180-pounds, can really run, really go up and get the ball at its high point. He's already here at school. He's a great fit. Being around him every day when I was off the road, he has a big smile on his face and works really hard. I'm really excited about what Kabion brings. We will call him 'KB,' it's hard to say Kabion so everybody calls him 'KB.' You'll be excited about watching this guy get in the end zone this year. He has a twin brother that plays at Arkansas Pine Bluff. He's from Arkansas originally, and then went to Junior College in Mississippi and then he's here. So, he's made his full circle. You can see his explosion and athleticism for a big young man. He's really a pleasure to be around and I can't wait to see him on the field.”
On wide receiver Johnny Huntley III
“He's from down in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He's a big, athletic young man. [Safeties] coach [Joe] Tumpkin did a terrific job recruiting Johnny and [fellow recruit] Anthony Julmisse who's from the same school. Johnny is over 6-21/2, he can really run. I love his range, I love his length, I love his ability to run pattern running. He is very, very fast and he can go up and get it in a crowd. I have to talk to these kids, but I guess it's the year of the bow tie. If you look at a lot of these guys and their pictures, a lot of them had bow ties on. I guess I have to get with the trend. Johnny is an exceptional athlete that were really excited about. You can see how he can stick his foot in the ground for being that big and athletic, how he can run, he'll be a big target for our quarterbacks. He's an exceptional young man, very excited about coming here to play. It was interesting because we went down to the Florida area because we had connections and the Georgia area. The way we recruited was looked for guys that were Pac-12 (caliber) football players and went and recruited them and talked to them and said, 'Hey, do you want to play in the Pac-12 or do you want to stay in the south?' They all said, 'I want to play in the Pac-12, I want to go to Colorado, I want to play in California, I want to play in Arizona. So they wanted to get out of that area and come out here and breathe that fresh air, so we're excited about that.”
On linebacker Akil Jones
“Akil Jones goes to Valley Christian High School in San Jose California. Coach (Mashatio?) had a busy day today they had like five different guys sign. It's an exceptional school and we have three players on our football team from that school, who have done very well here in both school and football for us. WE really like Akil, he is a young man who came to our camps, and we say and evaluated him. He's a guy that will move inside and play inside backer; he also has the ability to rush. He's really quick and athletic. He's 5-11 to 6-0 and he's 230 pounds. He's very explosive and very fast. Akil is an exceptional young man and we are glad to have him. Our camps are very important for us when working with these young men.”
“The next young man is Anthony Julmisse, he's from the same school as Johnny Huntley. Anthony is a dynamic athlete. He's more of a get the ball in his hands type of guy. He's quick and athletic, he has good size at 6 foot tall and he's explosive. He's a very passionate young man and can do a lot of different things for us. He's a guy you can put at running back or receiver. I'm very excited about Anthony's speed on the field for us this year.”
On linebacker Drew Lewis
“Drew is a big rangy linebacker. He's comes to us from Coffeyville [Community College]. This is a unique story, his dad Will Lewis is an assistant general manager for the Kansas City Chiefs. He also used to work for the Seattle Seahawks and [Director of Player Personnel] Mike Murphy, who works in our recruiting office they were scouts together. We found out about this young man who's going to transfer here with a ton of credits. He's 6-3, 230 pounds and runs a 4.6 or better. We will have him for three years and he'll play our inside jack linebacker and we can walk him up inside and he can rush inside or outside.”
On offensive tackle Chance Lytle
“Chance is a big youngin; he's 6-7 290 and athletic. He's also a great musician, he loves to sing and he performs in school plays. He's really excited to come here and be a part of what we have here at CU. When he was at our camp here, as soon as we got done with practice, I looked around for Chance and he was in the creek with his dad. He love it here, he said coach is you offer to me I'm cutting everyone out. This is where I need to be. He's a big wide shouldered young man and we're really excited about Chance Lytle.”
On outside linebacker Pookie Maka
“Pookie came to us on the last weekend and Coach Jim Levitt did a great job of recruiting him. Pookie is a pass-rushing outside linebacker. He's 6-3 and long, with a great ability to rush the passer. Pookie is an excellent young man. We are excited to get him from Utah, a neighboring state. I'm excited about Pookie's pass rushing abilities; I call him a heat seeking missile on the quarterback. The quarterback needs to find out where he is and he always plays with passion and effort.”
On quarterback Sam Noyer
“The next young man is Sam Noyer. He's a dual threat quarterback that can throw. He's got two older brothers that play college sports. It was a lot fun going to his home and visiting with his family. Watching Sam on tape, the thing that impressed me was that the pocket doesn't have to be clean for him to make a play. He can go out of the pocket and make plays. He's big, close to 6-4, and he's been hitting the weight room hard. Being able to improvise when the play breaks down, and still look down the field and throw the football is something you saw over and over in his high school films.”
On offensive lineman Colby Pursell
“Brian Lindgum recruited him and did a great job. Colby is from Hart in California and he's a guy who's just kept maturing. He's another young man who came to our camp and we worked and worked with him. When we saw him he was 260 now he's 295, he's big and tough. I call him the road grater, he's got great feet and he's someone I'm excited about, since he's physical fit already to be a heck of a football player. At Hart High school the coach has been there for almost 30 years and they're a great program.”
On wide receiver Derrion Rakestraw
“Derrion Rakestraw is another great young man from Georgia. He's big athletic and long, he plays receiver and corner and he's almost 6-3. He's very powerful and can run with a great stride. He's played multiple sports his whole life and he should win the long jump in the state of Georgia this year. His high school coach was also Charles Clark's head coach when I signed him out of high school. There was really a great connection there and Derrion is really a great player who's explosive, and if he gets bigger and strong he's just going to get more and more explosive. He has great hand and eye coordination, he's the guy that when you throw the ball up there he's the one who comes down with it. He catches the ball at its high point and as he keeps maturing and getting more powerful and stronger in just one sport he's going to be a special player.”
On defensive end/offensive tackle Terriek Roberts
“The next young man we're excited about is Terriek Roberts from right here in Colorado. I saw Terriek as a ninth grader, going into his tenth grade year. He has just kept growing and growing and he's always wanted to be a Buff. He plays multiple sports, and he's kind of a hybrid linemen right now. We're going to get him here and see if he's going to be an O-linemen or a D-linemen. I think he's got a great chance to be a 3-4 defensive end. If he keeps growing with his wingspan he would make a great offensive tackle. So it's he's going to grow into something special for us. He's a Buff through and through.”
On defensive back Trey Udoffia
“Trey is an excellent athlete, has great ball skills. He's a corner that when the ball goes up in the air when he's running with a receiver – the whole deal to me about evaluating a corner is, Does the ball not get caught by the receiver?' Can he knock it out of there? Can he make the play? He does it time after time, he's explosive. I went on my official visit, the one time I'm aloud to go visit him, I went and watched him play basketball. He's 5-111/4, he's 180-pounds, so he's playing point guard. In the game, its half-court offense and he breaks down the point guard goes into the lane, there's two centers waiting on him and he jumps over both of them and just slams it. He showed his explosiveness and ability to make plays. Trey's a guy that I think can help us at corner this fall.”
On offensive lineman Hunter Vaughn
“Hunter Vaughn is another young man from Colorado that came to our camps. He's long and athletic. We're really excited about Hunter. He is getting bigger and stronger every day. He's now up to 275. This guy is a young man who is going to be in the long line of Colorado tackles that have matured and grown. He's going to be an excellent left tackle that will make the quarterback more comfortable. He just has to put on some more weight and he is doing that. A year from now, this young man will be a 290 to 300 pounder that can really bend. Sometime when your six foot seven you're more of a waist bender but he has some bend in his legs. He can keep a great posture and sit back. I'm really excited about Hunter Vaughn and what he brings for us here.”
On quarterback transfer Davis Webb
“I call him the 'Texas Cannon,' Davis Webb. Davis has an exceptional NFL arm. We're really excited about what Davis will do for us here. You'll see in his highlights that in 2014 he was the MVP of the Fiesta Bowl when they beat Arizona State. He has exceptional ability. He's big and van throw it. He can read defenses.Davis is also a coaches son. As his dad will tell you though, his mom is the best athlete in his family. His mom was an All-American tennis player at Abilene Christian College. It was a lot of fun going to their house and hanging out with them. We're really excited about Davis Webb and his ability to be a playmaker and the things that he does. He's excited about our graduate school and getting into the education school there. He'll graduate in May [at Texas Tech]. He has nine credits left and then he'll be here in June.”
On wide receiver Juwann Winfree
“Next young man is Juwann Winfree. He's big, strong, athletic. I call him the touchdown maker. He can make plays. He's athletic, he's powerful. He's six foot two. He's 2015 pounds and very powerful. He can catch the ball his high point. He's very strong, people just bounce off of him. He's powerful, he's a lot of fun to be around. I've really enjoyed getting to know him and I'm very excited for him to be here. You know when you talk to kids and they always have a smile? He's one of those guys. He always has a smile on his face. He's very articulate and an exceptional young man that we're excited about having here. He's a bit athletic play maker who can go up and get it at the high point and run off and leave them or run through them. Juwann Winfree will be a guy that will help us this fall. We're excited about getting him here in June and getting him rolling.”
General on the signing class as a whole
“I think overall our staff did a great job. They worked at it extremely hard. I'd like to throw out kudos to Lance [Carl] and Rick [George] for all of their help. They came out on recruiting weekends and dinners to help show their support on what w're doing. Also getting into the new facility was big for us this year on the recruiting side of it. It's really fun to stand back and watch the parents walk into the locker room or the IPF or our team meeting room. Their jaws just drop. The other thing that is really important that I think is exceptional for is that we tripled the size of our academic center. When they see that, it shows how truly important it is to us here at Colorado. The second floor of our facility is the orthopedics center. When parents know that there is an MRI machine, an x-ray machine, a doctor there on call for their sons to have the best health, no one else in the country has that. All of those things make it a big deal for us and show how much we care for the student athlete. As you can tell, we didn't have a big class to be able to go after but we were able to go after guys that we felt could be playmakers with the ball in their hands, so that they could go make plays in space. We got guys that could help us this year along with the guys that we have. We feel that we'll be more explosive and have a better play making ability on offense. Defensively we feel like we have some guys who, at the linebacker position, are long and athletic. We have some guys at the corner spots that can help us in the secondary this year.”
On the quarterback situation
“With our situation at quarterback, I've been through six lisfrancs and all of them are different. It's called lisfranc for a reason, it's a serious injury. With our situation t quarterback, it's my job ot get the best quarterback I can to get us ready to lead this football team when we start in September. I'm excited about what Davis Webb brings to the table. I think he is a quarterback that can lead our team and be a starter. With our situation right now, I'm glad we have Davis Webb coming in. We'll see how everything goes with Sefo [Liufau]'s foot. He's working really hard right now and so that's where we sit at this time.”
On recruiting southern states more
“We had contacts down there with high school coaches that some of the new coaches I hired had good in roads with. As we worked in there, we knew we weren't going to just be chasing around looking. We went to specific areas that we knew had contacts to be able to shoot us straight so that we wouldn't be wasting time. I feel like that worked out well. We were able to get some very good athletes that wanted to come west and play at Colorado and play in the Pac-12. I feel good about that.”
On which recruiting regions they will continue to focus on
“We're in California and Texas a lot. But, the thing that I've noticed more and more is that Colorado is a national brand name school. Only 55% of the students that go here are from Colorado. 45% are from out of state. So, half of the people in your dorm are from out of state. Half of the kids in your class are from out of state. So, there are a lot of contacts out there that we have. We're still going to focus on California, Arizona and Texas. But we will branch out to some areas that we have contacts in that have really good caliber athletes that we think are Pac-12 players.”
On interesting recruiting stories
“I didn't sleep over at anybody's house. I might have woken up with bad body odor or something and it would have been over. But, we do all kinds of things with our guys with recruiting. We're going house to house to house and working it. The things that we do, I like to go to the parents' work and see them there. It's always cool to go there and they introduce to people. That's a special deal. So, I like going where the dad or mom works and get to know them and see them in their element. Of course I'll see them at home and there's a lot of things we do there. We'll go to games, different things and see the kids play their games and get to know their friends.”
On the possibility of redshirting QB Sefo Liufau
“Right now my whole situation I will keep answering the same way. He has a broke lizfranke that is a serious, serious, serious injury, okay and so my job is to get the best quarterback ready to play when we open up against CSU that can lead this that I think is going to be a good football team. So we'll see how that goes and I think bring in David Webb is a key for us to makes sure we insure success this year.”
On signing five wide receivers
“We only signed one the year before we last a couple that we were after the year before, we were after guys like this and didn't get them. So when we had guys we thought were Pac 12 footballers that we could get we weren't going to slow down. I'm excited about the guys were got so we were down numbers at receiver last year because we only signed one guy, so that's why we were able to do that. Two of the guys we signed are junior college guys so it mixes up the class and doesn't make it heavy one way or another.”
On recruiting bigger wide receivers
“Bill Parcels use to say bigger is better, bigger better faster, always bigger. But you always need quick guys and do different things like that. We felt that we have been able to get a combination of all of that and we felt like we had some quick reciters that were smaller now so we felt like we were hunting bigger guys. If you are just hunting just a receiver then all of a sudden you can end up with a lot of smaller guys. We decided to go after the bigger guys this year because we have two or three smaller guys that are real athletic that can make a lot of plays for us so we wanted to add a bigger athletic guy, really for that outside sport where you see people throwing them up, guys making plays and that's kind of the way the game has changed and those guys are what we have. We need more one or two and we feel like we have some guys who can do that.”
On facilities impacting recruiting
“Yes it did. It was interesting some of these kids came last spring and went through it with a hard hats and then when they came back for their official visits and saw it solidified, it solidified a lot of them. It's exciting for the 2017 class because they see the whole thing the whole time and they see the commitment level and all the things that they have. It's definitely an all factor for sure.”
On what aspect of the facilities each recruit was most impressed by
“It just depends on each kid. Some kids love the recover pools, some kids, love the weight room, some kids love all the TV's on walls of the players lounge, some kids love the stereo systems and a couple of the kids love the loops. You mean I can take my clothes and put them on a loop and put them in this thing and they come back right there and I got clean clothes in 24 hours, they like that too. A lot of them like the Gatorade machines they have I the players' lounge. I think it's a culmination of everything that they liked, it's a special place. They loved the meeting rooms, and I would say that 99.99 percent of the m loved the cafeteria that for sure. The food we have up there and what we have.
On Beau as a running back
“Yes it did go down to the end [running backs coach] Klayton [Adams] had been recruiting for a long time and that was an exciting finish and were really exciting beau's here. Yes he wanted to play running back and that's what we want him at is a running back. That what we have always seen him as, as a running back. Yes he is different than all our guys all our guys are smaller in stature, he is a big dude now. He's powerful and he can run and he has speed so I'm excited about his dynamic that he will bring to us.”
On the need for corners
“We signed three corners, we feel like all those guys are really athletic and were excited about what they can do. We looked or guys that can play man coverage. The game has changed with all the run pass options teams where they are running and reading if you play quarters or you play cover two they are dinking and kicking you and there is nothing you can do so you have to get up and play a lot of man coverage so those guy have to be able to do that. All of those guys are point guard type guys, athletic type guys who can flip their hips and that are what we were looking for.”
On other needs in this class
“We had receiver needs and then we also needed a running back. We got some linebackers that should be able to come in and help us this year. We felt that we were good with our d-line since we had one kid on a mission and three others red-shirted last year. So I felt good about where we are.”
