Mario Cristobal addresses challenges of preparing on a short week

Miami head coach Mario Cristobal will have to get his team ready for a quick turnaround this week with the team playing Thursday night against Bethune-Cookman. The second-year head coach said during his Monday press conference that the biggest challenge is having everything be condensed.

“The challenges: that it’s a short week and you’re constricted time-wise,” Cristobal said. “Want to make sure that you set standards for a reason and you hold yourself to those standards, whether you have a short amount of time, whether you have injuries, whatever it may be. We have a chance to play again four days, five days later, in front of our fans over at Hard Rock. It’s nothing but positives. Are some guys banged up? Maybe, we don’t know yet. It’s early. But are guys gonna have to step in and play and play at a high level? Absolutely.”

The Hurricanes are 2-0 and coming off a statement 48-33 victory over Texas A&M. Quarterback Tyler Van Dyke had one of the more noteworthy performances of his career, throwing for 374 yards and five touchdowns.

But Van Dyke isn’t the only one who has been proving himself in the early weeks of the season. Multiple players are stepping up.

“I think the best opportunity about this week is that guys are continuing to earn or not earn opportunities to play,” Cristobal said. “Everybody wants to play. We’re playing a lot of guys. We’re playing a lot of guys…Playing time around here is going to be earned. You’ve got to be trusted. You can’t negotiate yourself into a playing more. You can’t have people try to call for you and try to rationalize why you should play more. We’re don’t do that.”

Miami has two more games this month, versus the Wildcats and then at Temple before embarking on the ACC slate in October.

Cristobal is still figuring out the rotation at positions as they are keeping the competition open for players to earn as much time as possible.

“Playing time is earned. It’s respected and the film doesn’t lie. Because of that, we keep competition very open and push it on all phases, special teams, offensive and defense. Every phase. Every part of it,” Cristobal said. “You’ll see the guys that really want to play develop more and push harder. Maybe some guys that weren’t sure of what they need to do to play, it’s made crystal clear with them. That they got to earn it. That it’s not going to be just handed over. That I think is going to help our team in a good way.”