Rich Rodriguez has become one of the more well-known individuals walking the sidelines every Saturday during the college football season for a variety of reasons.

Whether it was his outspoken character or the spread offense he played a part in revolutionizing, Rodriguez heads into Autzen Stadium Thursday night in his 13th season as a head coach and third year at Arizona. With a 20-10 record as head coach, Rodriguez is guiding an undefeated team through Pac-12 play while enduring the turnover of having both his starting quarterback and running back departing.

With an extra week to prepare for Marcus Mariota and a year to look back on his team’s 42-16 win over the Ducks, Rodriguez spoke to members of the media on Tuesday during the Pac-12 coaches’ teleconference.

What was the most important thing about last year’s performance against Oregon?

Probably two things. First, offensively, we played what I like to call a clean game. We didn’t have any turnovers and only a couple negative yard plays, one of them being a five-yard penalty. We gave up a couple semi-big plays, but not any important big plays. We tackled really well in space so that is going to be the key again. We need to play a clean game on offense and limit the  amount of big plays on defense.

What has Marcus Mariota’s progression looked like from last year to this one?

He’s the same in a lot of ways. Now he has even more command of the offense. He’s playing at an extremely high level. He’s playing at the highest level that any  good player has played in the last couple of years.

What do you do with a guy like your quarterback Anu Solomon, who has never played in an environment quite like Autzen Stadium in his short career at the collegiate level?

The same things we’ve been doing. This is going to be another learning experience. This will be a test for him and I’m sure he’ll make a few mistakes, but he has the type of mentality that if he does make a mistake or two, he shakes it off and keeps playing.

Is there a common theme or characteristic that sets a team apart when you have a team like this one that has been able to win close games consistently?

I hope it’s the fact that our guys don’t worry and don’t get too concerned about the scoreboard and just play the 60 minutes. Every coach thinks about it. We talk about it quite a bit, in fact, before every game. No matter what happens we’re going to play 60 minutes and that at the end of it we’ll look up and see what the score is.