Thursday: UTSA Women’s Soccer Coach Derek Pittman

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Derrek Pittman's their coach, and he joins us on the program. Congrats, Derek,
You're going to the NCAA tournament tomorrow night. How does
that feel?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Phil's fantastic, gay, Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
So I was we were at the football game last
week and we were kind of at a stage in
the game where it was pretty much over, and I
flipped on our stats monitor to the soccer game and
I saw, oh, Memphis is leading three to one, and
there's in the eighty fourth minute, and I'm like, well, okay,
well they tried and Memphis is really good. And then
about seven minutes later I refreshed and it was three

(00:35):
to three, go into overtime. So take us to the
last five minutes.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, really part of our team, Honestly, the entire game.
We had executed a game playing very very well. Thought
Memphis was a bit fortunate on the second goal that
was kind of a shot cross that looped over a
goalkeeper and it's a bit of a gut punch and
then out of a corner tips they were able to

(01:01):
obviously score their third one on the deflection, but to
go up through to one. But yeah, I mean we
made a couple of adjustments right after their third goal,
putting our team in a different shape to kind of
throw a little bit more numbers forward, and yeah, it
changed everything. Leah Dirton did a phenomenal job. About thirty

(01:24):
five seconds after they scored their third goal, ball came,
you know, up to our back line. Leah stepped in,
made a great job of connecting a path about thirty
yards up the field to Brooklyn Bailey's feet, and I
think there's a will miscommunication between the Memphis defenders and
the goalkeeper and Bebe was able to side step them

(01:45):
both and you know, put it into the empty net.
And with you know, a little over four minutes left
to go, we knew we had a chance, and so
stayed in that same shape, stayed in that same formation,
started throwing numbers forward. Michelle Pulo gone on the wall
deep in the corner and was able to earn a
free kick for us after Memphis fowler. And on that

(02:07):
set piece with about two and a half minutes to go,
she served a great cross in caim close. I got
on the end of it to call it a chaos
and then it happened to fall right to Leah Durton's head,
and she she did what she does best all season.
She scored three game winners and obviously this game tire
to put us three to three and send us overtime.

(02:30):
And I just think our kids, like they've done all
year long, proof that you can't ever count us out.
We have tough kids and they're going to compete until
the final whistle, and did a phenomenal job to take
us all the way to penalty kicks and ultimately the
rest is history.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well if it's he with Derek Pittman, he's a soccer
coach at UTSA, So I've never called two things at once.
So it was, you know, third down and one hand
off to whoever. And oh, by the way, somebody just
made a penalty. Came from Memphis. Oh no, it's two
to one. So we were going back and forth on
the football broadcast, take us through the penalty kicks because
from what I was told, I didn't have video. I
just saw the stat monitor flashing every time something would happen.

(03:10):
You got some good performances from your players, and some
of their better players just missed.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Absolutely. Yeah, they won the coin toss, so they chose
to shoot first that we were going to shoot second.
We had been practicing them for weeks and had a
good gauge of who's going to take. It's just a
matter of sorting out the order and what order they
were going to go, and you know, I made a
decision that just went with my gut. I talked to

(03:37):
Jasvin Kessler. She she can absolutely smash the ball, and
they just said, hey, you're taking the first penalty for us,
and then after you bury that first penalty, you're going
to make two saves and we're going to win this
same thing. And it's almost what happened. Memphis shot first.
I knew that, you know, with Ashley Henderson going up

(03:57):
one other better players, I kind of had an idea
which direction she was going to go. Gousler went that direction,
and I think it's just put Ashley off, and she
skied the ball over the over the crossbar, and then
Jason you know, finished hers second DK taker for them.
I Katagawa the talented players. She buried hers. Zoe May

(04:18):
followed up. Does what Zoe May does all the time
is just plutch in big moments. She buried her penalty kick,
and then the third one for Memphis was the young
Lady Lavin, who's one of their better defenders. We had
good information on which church and she was going. Again,
Kessler went the right way, which I think put Lavin off,

(04:41):
and she skied hers over the bar as well and
it missed. And then break Arigan, who was a big
ton for us all turned along buried her third penalty
and then Kessler saved the fourth one again put herself
in the right position. So for Memphis, the miss two
and Kessler say one out of their four kicks was

(05:01):
huge for us. And you know, everybody stepping up and
doing their job to the best of the ability, and
a critical, critical moment.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Tell us to break Carrington story because here was someone
that was injured, was not expected to play at this
stage of the season, was potentially going to play, wait
till next year to play, and then all of a
sudden decided I'm going to rehab this and be ready
to go, and she ends up sending to the championship match. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Now, Breeze a phenomenal human beings. She's a tremendous high
character individual, which we have a roster full of them,
but she's just one that their story is really incredible.
She she tore her acl last Labor Day weekend in
twenty twenty four against Colorado State. Rehabbed all year long,

(05:46):
we thought we'd have her, you know, available a little
bit earlier. It probably just took her, you know, maybe
an extra month to kind of settle in and get
the strength numbers where we wanted her to be and
feeling comfortable to put her out in the season. And
so of September she came to me and started talking about, hey,
you know, we have like six or seven games left.

(06:06):
I want to be a part of this. And I
had a real honest conversation with her and a coaching
staff and say said, hey, let's let's be smart about it.
Let's think about all these different avenues. You know, do
you really want to come back, you know at this
point in time, because we could read shirt you and
you could get still have four years left. And she

(06:26):
was like, no, Coach, I just want to shot. I
just want to be on the field. This team is
really special. I just want to be part of it.
And if that means being in a substitutional, whatever that is,
I just want to earn my right, you know. And
so we agreed to it, but she hadn't been training
him particularly well. So we dropped her from the Tulsa trip. Uh.
And now I've probably looked like an idiot for doing that,

(06:49):
but she really I think in some regards, that was
the kick in the pants she needed. Not that she
wasn't doing everything we had after her. I just think
she'd been a little bit slow in her decision making,
a little bit slow in her play, and she knew it,
and she just wasn't quite up to game speed yet.
And she worked her butt off over the next two weeks,

(07:09):
came back in, played against East Carolina, I played against Temple,
and then obviously it was a massive factor for us
in the tournaments, and you know, started against Memphis, started
against Rice as well, and then for her to pick
up you know, she split seventy minutes against Rice. For
her to pick up the ball, she did beef the
defender on the dribble and with that same acl knee

(07:33):
if you will, or left bag, she buried a shot
in the top corner to you know, to win as
the trophy. So yeah, it's a really cool story and
very proud of her and who she is as as
a person and even more so as a competitor and a.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Teammate, what's in store tomorrow? Will you take on Texas Tech?

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Difficult opponent for sure. Texas texts very talented. They finished
fourth in the Big twelve, but there are RPI's top
twe top twenty five, so they're uh a formidable opponent
for sure. But you know, our players are ready for it.
We talked about this all season long, we ever since
we scheduled TCU and Houston and the likes of those

(08:12):
teams on our schedule. We told them, like, listen, when
we win a championship, it's not another if it's when
we win a championship, whatever that calls, we're going to
get shipped to one of the P four schools here
here in the state of Texas. And we knew we
were most likely going to get Baylor or Texas Tech
in the first round. And here we are in love
it right now, getting ready for tomorrow night. But they've

(08:34):
got a lot of weapons, a lot of talented players.
They've got kids that have scored a lot of goals,
you know, over the season. So we've got a lot
of responsibility to carry out our jobs and our tasks
as a full team. But I think our players are
one prepared for it, and we just got to go
out and perform it and give us give them everything

(08:54):
we got, and I know our Roadrunner fans are going
to be super proud and uh there to cheer us off.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
All right, Thanks Derek for the visit, and good luck
tomorrow against Texas Tech, and hopefully you carry this on
even further.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yes, sir, Thanks Andy bird Belt.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
All right, that's Derek Pittman. Good story from UTSA. He
was the first coach that Lisa compos hired back in
twenty eighteen. He won the conference championship in Conference USA
and now has won it in the American All right,
let's talk about things that we don't need anymore or
that we shouldn't have in the first place, and also
get into those college games coming up this weekend. That

(09:31):
should be fun to be a part of all that's
coming up next. It's five forty four on the ticket.