UConn commit Sha-ki Holines' Commerce High squad out of Springfield, Mass. lost to South Hadley 28-8 in the Western Massachusetts Division II semifinals on Tuesday night.

Holines had one reception for no yards in the loss as Commerce finished the season with an 8-4 record.

Speaking of recruiting, this is obviously a pretty big weekend since it is the Huskies' home finale. It is also a pretty unsettling time to be hosting recruiting targets with the news that the Huskies were passed over yet again by the ACC in favor of Louisville.

UConn coach Paul Pasqualoni addressed the potential impact of last week's win over Louisville could have when he met with the media yesterday.


"I think it certainly has an effect," Pasqualoni said. "A game like that against a top 20 team with the amount of exposure ... We knew it was on SNY but part of it went on ESPN at the end. A lot of kids saw the game. You get facebooked after the game, 'congratulations Coach, great game.' Kids are watching, prospects are watching, a lot of people are watching. People in football, some of the guys in the NFL were getting around getting ready and they are watching. Part of the group you feel good for are the guys from UConn who are in the NFL playing when they go into the meeting Saturday night, they can dish it out a little bit. That is one of the fun things on a Saturday afternoon or Saturday night when they show up at the hotel, they usually have their college sweatshirt on, their college hat on, they are bragging and giving each other a hard time on who won and who lost that is all part of it.


"There are still quite a few guys we are involved with. In recruiting there are a bunch of guys who make a decision and then there is another group that haven’t made a decision and want to take visits have top schools. We are involved with some kids who have some pretty high-level programs they are looking at."

When Pasqualoni mentioned that he was receiving congrats via facebook, I couldn't let that comment pass without asking a follow-up question. If I were to rank people I have encountered in terms of their social media prowess, I'm not sure I could come up with anybody on the list who is less likely to be captivated by the lure of facebook and twitter so naturally I asked him if he had dreams of one day being "facebooked" after a big win when he started his coaching career.

"When I started coaching there wasn’t even a computer," Pasqualoni said. "We got three channels in the state of Connecticut. You got Channel 3, Channel 8 and if you were lucky you had UHF and you got Channel 30. That is what you had. You had an antenna, you didn’t have cable, you dialed the phone etc. etc. That is the way it was so I didn’t envision anything. I got in this to teach. I was an elementary school teacher. If anybody told me I was going to be a coach after six years in the NFL when I was at Highland School trying to figure out how to get third graders organized, I would have told them they were nuts."

I also asked seniors Nick Williams and Ryan Griffin where social media interaction ranks on their head coach's priority list.


"I don’t know how into he is with the social media," Williams said. "He didn’t mention it to us about facebook. I don’t know how up he is on facebook, he is an old-time football kind of guy."

As for Griffin (who does not have a facebook account) he said "somebody must have signed up for him."