Saturday, November 19, 2011

No title defense for UConn

Yeesh. Just not a heck of a lot to say after a loss like that. But, here goes...
  • Johnny McEntee had big problems throwing the ball again (18-for-43, 253 yards, one interception), but to be fair he wasn't helped by his receivers. We counted at least 10 drops, and the number may well have been higher. Of course, McEntee's penchant for badly overthrowing open receivers didn't help matters.
  • It would have been quite a fun final two weeks had the Huskies won this one. Five teams are tied with two losses, thanks to Rutgers knocking off Cincinnati, and the Big East is anyone's to win. Now, UConn will be unable to defend its title and may well wind up home for the holidays for the first time since 2006.
  • I don't think UConn changes anything on offense, but it's clear this team needs some major improvements in quarterback play if it wants any chance of being competitive next season. McEntee, at least the way he's played this season, isn't the answer. McCummings, as we saw Saturday, isn't an accurate passer. Nebrich apparently isn't ready, which says a lot considering what we've seen from others at the position. Could Casey Cochrane be a true freshman starter?
  • Not sure why UConn didn't elect to kick the field goal earlier (Teggart's 37-yarder came with 13 seconds left and after the Huskies faced 2nd-and-15 and 3rd-and-20). Pasqualoni was asked about it after the game, and said he didn't think about kicking earlier. Not sure if he misunderstood the question, but his reasoning doesn't make sense. In fact, he talks like kicking the field goal earlier was the better option. "Not at that point," he said. "We felt like with 55 seconds to go, we had the time out, we would have liked to get the ball into the end zone and gone for the on-sides kick. We needed a couple of plays. You're on-siding from the 30, so it's difficult if you only have one play. At the end of the day it's one play, you've got to get it launched into the end zone, and that's a hard thing to do from 60 yards out. We were just trying to come up with enough time to run two or three plays. That was it."

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

UConn may be done for the year, but that doesn't mean that College ball is done. With all of the upsets that happened last week, I think it's easy to find another team to root for.
As for me, I've gotten some Outback Bowl tickets. I want to see how Penn State is holding up.

November 22, 2011 6:12 PM 

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