Pat Narduzzi gave a quick — and totally expected — response Monday when he was asked directly if Pitt quarterback Eli Holstein is “the guy” moving forward.

“Right now he is,” Pitt’s coach said.

Smart on Narduzzi’s part to include that “right now” qualifier. There are 11 games remaining and as many as 10 will have opponents superior to Kent State on the other side of the football.

But there was no other decision for Narduzzi to make, and he knew that Saturday immediately after the 55-24 victory when Holstein threw for 336 of the 570 total yards Pitt gained on opening day.

Yet the strong start to Holstein’s career goes far beyond raw numbers.

“You look at the tape, and he just made really good decisions. He’s calm,” the coach said. “It’s his first start. You never know what was going to happen. But Eli was impressive on game tape. You just look at how he just kind of was out there smooth.

“I don’t care if it’s a quarterback or a D-lineman. How are they as far as just his composure on game day, how he carried himself, how he led the offense, how there weren’t a bunch of false starts and mechanical issues as far as just the operation. It was a clean start. That’s tough to do for a redshirt freshman.”

Still, there are issues that need resolved while players and coaches prepare to visit Cincinnati (1-0) of the Big 12 on Saturday. Narduzzi said his team meeting Sunday involved reviewing “the good, the bad and the ugly. There’s always good, bad and ugly.”

“A lot of self-inflicted wounds. The good thing is you saw a lot of adversity out there, which is always good to fight through that. But it was self-inflicted adversity.”

That’s largely true when you consider Holstein’s throw off his heels that was intercepted by Kent State safety Alex Branch on the Golden Flash’s 4 and Pitt’s Konata Mumpfield fumble on a punt return that was returned for a touchdown.

Also, Pitt had a 14-0 lead less than five minutes into the game, but Kent State quarterback Devin Kargman threw two touchdown passes — “Bad technique, fundamentals,” the coach said of his pass defense — and the lead was only seven points midway through the third quarter.

“We let them back in the game because of what we do,” Narduzzi said. “We’ll make corrections. They’re very coachable guys.”

One “ugly” aspect of the victory was pass protection. Kent State recorded four sacks, three against Holstein.

Narduzzi said he has confidence in backup Nate Yarnell, and he might need to turn to him if the protection doesn’t improve.

“If we get our quarterback hit like we did last week, Nate will be the guy in there,” he said.

The problems, he said, were related to “a little bit of everything, some miscommunication.”

“I think one of them was a bad call. We missed a couple things. But just little stuff that we can clean up. Nothing that I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, what are we doing?’ ”

Left tackle Branson Taylor used what Narduzzi called a “kick slide” in pass protection that didn’t work out well.

“We don’t know where it came from, haven’t seen it before, but he came out with a new style of pass protection. But it’s easy to get cleaned up.”

The absence of procedure penalties might have been Narduzzi’s favorite part of the game, aside from the outcome, considering it was the first for offensive coordinator Kade Bell’s hurry-up, no-huddle offense. Pitt had one false start among seven penalties, and that was on special teams. The only offside surfaced on defense, and alignments were clean.

“It comes down to operation, and, again, it starts with the quarterback and getting the call out there,” he said. “But they got lined up pretty quick. You see them hustling around to get lined up. But they did a good job. I think it’s only going to get better.”

Narduzzi said there was a brief, two- or three-day period in training camp last month when the offense had repeated false starts.

“And then we turned the music up real loud and made crowd noise, and then there were none. It disappeared. So it’s a matter of being locked in and focused, and you’d better pay attention.”

On the defensive side of the ball, Narduzzi was pleased with the aggressiveness.

“I felt bad for that quarterback after the game. He took a beating,” he said. “Our guys played hard up front. There was attack up front. There was penetration.”

Of course, there were some “bad” and “ugly.”

“Could have been cleaner tacklers,” he said. “That third quarter first series (when Kent State moved 75 yards and scored in less than 51⁄2 minutes) was the most annoying thing that I’ve seen, and I’ll take that responsibility and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen this week in practice. It wasn’t acceptable.”

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