Saturday, September 16, 2017

UConn hoping road woes a thing of the past; Keating gets the call

When Randy Edsall agreed to return for a second stint as UConn's football coach, the to-do list he was faced with was a rather daunting one.

Somewhere near the top of that list has to be leading the Huskies to more success on the road. From the time Edsall left UConn after the 2010 season until today, the only FBS teams with fewer road wins than the Huskies' six are Kansas (0), Army (4), Kentucky (4), UMass (4), Georgia State (4, only playing at FBS level since 2013), Purdue (5) and Illinois (5).

With the Huskies playing Virginia today in its 2017 road opener, obviously it something he was asked to address this week.

"If you are going to be a successful team and be a good team, you have to be able to win on the road and if you want to accomplish goals that you have for yourself, as hard as it is, as tough as it is, we have to find a way to win on the road," Edsall said. "Basically what we have to do is have that mentality as we go, 67 or 68 players and coaches, we are going down there, focused and concentrating on getting a win doing everything we can and block out everything else. We try to prepare, we have crowd noise and all of those things going. This is our first road trip so hopefully we can get that rolling this weekend."

It could be an eye-opening experience for the large number of freshmen set to play in their first road game. The good news is it shouldn't be hard to top some of the recent road performances.
I did some checking and (counting the 2014 game at Yankee Stadium vs Army as an away game) UConn is 6-26 on the road since the start of the 2011 season. One stat that blew me away was that in the six wins, the Huskies were plus 8 in turnover margin but in the 26 losses, the number is minus 28. Points off turnovers follow a similar pattern as UConn held a 38-7 advantage in the wins but were outscored 157-51 in that category in the losses. UConn failed to score an offensive touchdown in nine of those games and 17 times had only one offensive TD. Since the start of the 2012 season.

KEATING GETS THE CALLWhen UConn played Holy Cross in the 2017 season opener, former Darien High star Brian Keating wasn't even listed on the two deep chart. Now he is set to handle the long snapping duties for UConn.
Keating moved up to second string and with Nick Zecchino not making the trip due to health reasons, Keating will be the long snapper today.

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