A looks at tomorrow's game

Tomorrow’s game against of the Crusaders of Holy Cross should be a good test of the 2007 UMass team.

The Crusader have made a steady improvement under HC Tom Gilmore. They went 3-8 in his first season, 6-5 in 2005 and 7-4 in ‘06. They lost to Colgate 28-29 in the last game of the season. One more point and we would have been playing them in the first round of the playoffs last year.

Holy Cross returns seven starters on offense and six on defense.

QB Dominic Randolph led the Patriot League in total offense and passing ave w/ 248.6 yards/game. He had Liam Coen like completion average of 61.5%. The Crusaders also return their two top rushers Mike Kielt and Terrance Glass. Also returning is the top receiver Justin Maher .

That’s the good news. The bad news for Holy Cross is that they will have three new starters on the OL. Two of the three losses on the OL were All-Patriot League players.

The strength of the Crusaders on defense is their secondary. Holy Cross returns all four DBs led by all 1st Team All-Patriot league CB Casey Gough. More about the All-Patriot League corner back here .Holy Cross plays the 3-4 defense and will be starting two new DL and two of the four LBs. Holy Cross must also replace both kickers.

Summing up

Holy Cross is good enough to receive some top 25 votes in the preseason polls. However their graduation losses were severe enough to drop them to fourth in the Patriot League pre-season poll. The strength of the 2007 Holy Cross team will be its passing game. This Blog thinks the UMass Defense Line should be active enough to pressure Randolph.

UMass wants to show that it can run after loosing Steve Baylark. With four new starters in the the Crusader front seven, this would be a good time for the UMass OL and running backs to show what they can do.

Fast Fact: Holy Cross had seven wins in ‘06. They beat Georgetown, Marist, Fordham, Brown, Dartmouth, Layfayette and Bucknell. Those seven teams went a collective 26-49 (.346)...

If UMass brings its “A” game and not its press clippings, we should do fine.

UPDATE: Matt Vautour has a game article here .