UMass Football Blog: 10/01/2005

Monday, October 31, 2005

Coen earns second straight A10 Rookie-of-the-week

UMass' Redshirt QB Liam Coen earned his second straight A10 Rookie-of-the-week (click on the "Awards" tab) for his performance against UNH.

Against the Wildcats Coen:

Tied an all-time UMass passing record with 401 yards
went 31-50 2TD's
currently has a 140.58 efficiency rating and has completed 62% of his passes
Has 1440 passing yards in only six games
On track to get > 2000 yards passing in 2005 despite not playing in the first game of the season.
Should be a strong candidate for the A10's Rookie-of-the-Year.
His full stats are here .

Sunday, October 30, 2005

UMass-UNH images

Below are 17 images from the UMass-UNH game saturday.

Click on the image for an expanded view

It was a great I-AA game. UMass had 529 yards of total offense and threw for a record-tying 401 yards. The difference was two field goals by UNH's Connor McCormick...

Shootout at High Noon

Kickoff!

UNH's Offense

UMass defense swarms

Coen looks downfield

UNH brought its band

So did UMass

UMass' band rocks!

Nice crowd of 12,359

Nice crowd!

UNH bites on the fake

Santos looks to Ball

Baylark scores!

Good form, but we missed

Santos runs the option

UNH has a third and two

UMass threw for a record tying 401 yards

UNH's last drive

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Friday, October 28, 2005

I-AA Preview Newsletter

Where were you in '92? In the year 1992 Microsoft released Windows 3.1 (and sold over a million copies). Intel released its mighty 486 processor chip.

And the I-AA Preview newsletter was started. Currently published by Eric Gemunder 19 times a year during the college football season, the I-AA newsletter is the oldest publication covering weekly I-AA news. The I-AA Preview is thus the Methuselah of web I-AA publications. It's still an excellent publication. Check it out.

It's available weekly via e-mail. Goto (old-time computer pun) Eric's site to subscribe.

Koegel Article in the Globe

A week after this Blog stated that UMass punter Christian Koegel is having an All-American season, the MSM takes notice.

The Boston Globe has a nice article on him here.

Also mentioned is long snapper Jason Leonard. Long snapping is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Leonard's excellent snaps are a big part of the success of UMass' special teams.

Note: Blogger's image posting capability seems to be down this morning. I'll add an images later if the problem clears.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

UNH Game Stories

Various stories about the big showdown in Amherst are up.

The Boston Globe has a story here. Matt Dougherty of Sports Network has an excellent piece on I-AA games this week (scroll down. The UMass-UNH game is the featured write-up).

Matt Vautour's UMass Sports page at the Hampshire Gazette has a couple of game articles here (registration required, but worth it).

Offense Vs. Defense

You may have noted a strange thing if you listened to last week's UMass-Maine game------Maine scored. The black bears had only managed 2 points in the previous two games. And the UMass defense had only given up 1TD this year.

Maine scored on two long pass plays and had another TD called back on a holding penalty. I had noticed that Maine shifted to a four-wideout set enough to take an image of it. Scroll down to the original blog. Maine had been successful in previous years with a "big back" offense. This year their featured RB Marcus Williams had graduated, putting a large dent in Maine's productivity.

The Bangor Daily News has a story on how the Black Bears changed their offense here.

The UMass Daily Collegian has a story on how the UMass Defense successful countered here.

A chess match with live players...

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

James vows to play

The Springfield Republican has an article here about Shannon James, UMass' All-American Safety.

James says he's improving from a brused shoulder suffered at the Maine game and will play against New Hampshire.

James stats so far for the season are: 20 solo tackles, 16 asst. 34 total 3-63 INT 1 forced fumble. UMass team stats are here

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

UMass-UNH Game notes are up

Both UMass and UNH have their game notes up.

UMass has an HTML version here (with a link to a PDF version)

The Wildcats go directly to PDF here.

The Springfield Republican has an article on the game.

The image to the right is Ricky Santos, UNH's record setting QB

10/26/05 update

The Boston Globe has a story on the game here.

Liam Coen A10 Co-Rookie-of-the-week

UMass' Liam Coen was named A10 Co-Rookie-of-the-Week (click on the "Awards"tab ) for his efforts against Maine. Coen went 21-31 (67%) 236 yrds passing and 3TDs.

His season totals are 83-134, 7TDs, 139.8 effeciency average.

Coen's UMass stats are here. The NCAA UMass stats are here (Warning! A real work productivity buster)

Two Articles on McGuirk Field

The Springfield Union has two articles on McGuirk Field. The short term fix is discussed here.

The long term hopes for improvement is considered here.

Note that the lead troops in the quest to improve UMass Football is UMass Friends of Football. The members of Friends of Football have contributed the bulk of the funds raised so far.

All UMass Football fans should try to join the Friends. Even making the minimum contribution to join is a great help. The more members the more clout UMass Football has in the internecine struggles for support.