Coach Brown's Radio show tonight at 7:00pm

One time only, Coach Brown's radio show will air on WRNX at 7:00pm tonight!

Wednesday morning reading

First off, UMass has its Rhode Island game notes up. Nothing yet from the Rams.

The Rams are coming off a loss to UNH last Saturday. They are also hurting in the backfield as their QB Derek Cassidy and their feature back Joe Casey are both hurt.

The Sports Network reports the changes in the FCS/I-AA top 25 due to last week's wins and losses.

The Gridiron Power Index has UMass at #3.

The SME network prognosticates the 2007 FCS playoff brackets here . I like the top bracket for UMass, if that were the actual playoff bracket, we would go deep. The second guy has some useful hints in the notes about who get to host a game.

UMass-William & Mary Picassa Web Album

I've created a Picassa Web album of the UMass-William & Mary game. I've also added a link in the "2007 images" section of the sidebar.

It has about forty images of Saturday's game. Photography is tough at the Tribe. The field has a track around it (making the players seem far away) and the low hight of the stands make for poor sight angles.

OTOH, the new Field Turf surface and the new scoreboard are very nice. It was very hot and humid at the game with air temps around 80 degrees. Down on the field it must have been very uncomfortable.

W&M articles and Polls

Still some news coverage of the William & Mary game coming in.

The Tribe's student news paper rings in with an article here .

The UMass Daily Collegian has an article about Liam Coen's breaking the UMass Career TD record. They also have a game article here.

The Seacoast Online covers CAA teams (including UMass') chances of making the playoffs.

The Sports Network poll has us moving up a notch to #3.

The FCS/I-AA coaches poll has us #4.

The SME media poll has us ranked #4.

Keeper's computer has us ranked #2 and a 15 point favorite over Rhode Island.

The Magic Number is Three

One of the biggest goals of a football team is to control your own destiny.

The 2007 UMass football team has achieved that.

Every other CAA team has at least one league loss. If UMass wins out, we can't be caught.

If we keep winning, we would have the 2007 CAA auto-bid to the playoffs, the league championship and at least two home playoff games.

The next step starts in four days at Rhode Island. Go UMass!

Monday Morning articles

Image above is a UMass Athletic Dept image.

Well, I'm back. It was a ten-hour ride back to New hampshire and I was pretty tired last night.

Three stories about the game from Virginia newspapers. The Richmond Times has an article here .

The Virginia Daily Press has two. One here and another that has some info on former UMass DB coach Bob Shoop.

The Boston Globe has an article here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has one here .

Matty Vautour has another game article here .

In the CAA, Delaware beat Navy, Richmond beate JMU, Villanova beat Hofstra, UNH beat the Rams and Maine beat Northeastern.

The Sporting News has a FCS wrap-up here .

Remember when we played Holy Cross, and everyone wondered what happened to our pass defense? Well the Cross is 6-1 against non-UMass teams and are undefeated in the Patriot League. Story here .

Woah! What a game!

My Wi-Fi connection is pretty slow, so I can't do too long a comment. Enough stuff happened to write a book.

• The Tribe probably scored 24 points off UMass errors
• Two bad snaps
  
• two back to back fumbles by the offense and almost two back to back scores by the Tribe
• An outstanding goal line stand by the defense.
• A monster hit on a kickoff by special teams
  
• The UMass offensive line and Matt Lawrence dominated in the last five minutes
• We were missing two of our starters on the O-line: Hopkins and Diana
• If we ever put all this together, we could beat anyone
• OTOH, we could very well eventually put two bad halves and get beat by anyone

The Tribe's write-up here .

UMass' write up here .

Still raining in Virginia

Raining in Fredericksburg again this morning.

A Saturday article from Jeff Thomas.

A game day article from a VA newspaper.

The Amherst Bulletin has a nice article on George Parks.

Jimmy Laycock's weekly CAA coach's teleconference remarks.

Road Blogging fromFredericksburg VA

Image above is from the back porch of our cabin in Shenandoah National Park before the rains started. Right Click on the image and Blogger displays a full-sized view.

Hello from Fredericksburg, VA.

The weather is not looking good for tomorrow's game against William & Mary. Weather has not been good for this Blog and Mrs Blog as we had three and a half straight days of rain in Shenandoah National Park.

The Hartford Courant has a article about Matt Lawrence here .

Jeff Thomas has an article about the William & Mary game here.

The Daily Collegian is here .

Matty Vautour has a Tribe article here.

The Virginia Gazette has an article about a Mass native (T.J. O'Neil) playing for the Tribe.

The CAA website has the gameday details for the whole league.

The Sports Network looks at the whole FCS Division games this Saturday.

Bruce Dowd has been doing such a good job in his CAA column this year that I almost forgive him for being a Delaware guy. His latest post is here .

The Top-25 who, what where article is here.

Blog publishing schedule

The UMass Football Blog moves on to a lodge in Shenandoah National Park. The Blog will not be published on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

I hope to have internet connections for Friday and Saturday and bring you the news from UMass & William Mary.

Road Blogging from New Holland PA

Good Morning. The UMass Football Blog is coming to you from New Holland, PA.

Image to the right is by J. Anthony Roberts/Springfield Republican.

The Boston Herald has a UMass-Northeastern game article here .

The Northeastern student newspaper as an article here .

The UMass Daily Collegian has two articles here and here .

Jeff Thomas has a Monday article here .

The College Sporting News recaps the weekend results in FCS here .

The Wareham Band was thrilled to be part of last week's band day.

And last but not least, our old antagonists, Appalachian State was beaten at home by Georgian Southern. That broke a 30-game home winning streak.

UPDATE: Sagarin has UMass at #69---five places behind Nebraska....

Road Trip III and Blog publishing schedule

The UMass Football Blog is off on its third road trip of the year. Mrs. Blog and I will be staying one day in Pennsylvania, three days in Shenandoah National Park and two days in Fredricksburg, VA culminating in seeing the UMass-William & Mary game on the 27th.

BLOG PUBLISHING SCHEDULE:

This Blog will not publish on this coming Tues, Wed and Thursday.

We are supposedly staying at motels with Wi-Fi tonight and on Friday and Saturday. However, regular Blog readers will remember that during my previous two trips, Wi-Fi connections did not work in Pennsylvania and Maine. If I can, I will try to update the Blog tomorrow and on Friday and Saturday. If there are no updates, be aware that I have no connection and will resume publishing as soon as I return (probably Sunday the 28th).

Northeastern Articles

The Boston Globe has a game article here . The Boston Herald has an article here . And another here .

Jeff Thomas and the Springfield Republican have an article here .

Matt Vautour has an article here .

UMass-Northeastern Picassa Web album

Blogger is still not allowing any images in blog posts.

I've made up 48 image in a Picassa web album here .

I'll add a link in the sidebar in the "2007 images' section.

UMass dominates Northeastern

Blogger is not taking any images just now.

UMass and Liam Coen had a crisp first half as UMass was in control all game. With Liam hurt, both sides did not do anything in the second half. Big tailgate crowd. The stadium looked mostly full by the end of the second quarter.

UMass write-up here.

Huskies write-up here.

Richmond beat Rhode Island, Colgate beat Towson and Stony Brook edged Maine in overtime.(Ouch) CAA write-up here .

Game Day --Northeastern

The above image is from the UMass Band Parents site. I could not find who took it. It was too good an image not to steal :)

Well, it's still supposed to clear out and the weather should be good by game time. Hope we have a good crowd for homecoming.

The Springfield Republican reports that UMass expects another physical game.

Jeff Thomas has an article about the 2007 UMass offensive line.

The Boston Herald has UMass-Northeastern game article here .

The Boston Globe has a short blurb in an article about today's New England games.

The UMass-Northeastern Results poll closes at midnight

The UMass-Northeastern results pool closes at midnight tonight (except that Blogger's clock is inexplicably off by a couple of hours)

Wish I were a professional sports writer

Like Randy Hill of Fox Sports. He's got a nice column about BCS teams here .

Relevent quote:

3. Boston College: The roll call of the vanquished features Notre Dame (1-6), Bowling Green, Division II UMass, N.C. State (1-5) and Army. The combined record of the Eagles' foes, however, is a relatively solid 21-24. Yeah, that's how bad things are around the country.

He does not seem to have an e-mail address, which is perhaps just as well.

The Day before Northeastern

Attached image is a Thom Kendall/UMass athletic dept image.

The CAA has its Saturday matchups around the League article here .

The Sports Network has is "Top-25-this-week" here .

The Sporting News does its "Top 25 who-what-where"

Charles Burton does his weekly FCS article here (and does not pick against UMass for once)

Bruce Dowd covers this week in the CAA (he's a Delaware guy, but usually is fair to UMass).

The Boston Globe has a nice article on UMass' backup quarterback Scott Woodward.

UPDATE: Matty Vautour has an article about UMass keeping its winning streak alive .

Thursday Morning reading

The UMass Daily Collegian has two articles covering the Northeastern game. The first talks about the excellent play of Sophomore UMass defensive end Michael Hanson .

The second is a game article.

The Boston Globe has a short blurb on Liam Coen winning this week's Gold Helmet award. Coen is still in the running for the Walter Payton Award.

Andy Talley, Villanova's long time coach has been named to the list of the "75 greatest living Philadelphians "

In a past post we mentioned the troubles of Pittsburgh University's head Coach Dave Wannstead and the possibilities of repercussions for UMass football if he were fired. This article discussed his fate.

UPDATE: Matty Vautour in his UMass Sports Blog reports that Brad Listorti is still not practicing.

We lost some votes

It looks like we lost some votes out of the Results UMass-Northeastern poll.

This feature has been buggy since Blogger announced it. Try to vote again if you've already voted. If it doesn't work, it's not my fault :)

A look at the CAA playoff possibilities

The goal of a FCS/I-AA team is to make the playoffs. That's the reason for the FCS division existing. With five weeks to go in the 2007 season, it's time to look at some of the possibilities.

In great shape:

• Hofstra. No team in the CAA is in better shape. The Pride is 6-0 and all wins are Division I. With five games to go, Hofstra only needs one win to be playoff eligible. The Pride could loose two of the five and still go 9-2 for the season. That's a lock for a playoff game. Hofstra was 2-9 last year
• James Madison. The Dukes only loss is to BCS North Carolina. They currently have the most league wins (4-0). They should beat W &M and Towson. They are a lock for the playoffs with final games with Richmond, Delaware, W&M and Towson. The games with the Hens and the Spiders will determine who wins the CAA South.
• UMass. The Minutemen do not have a league loss and are 5-1 overall. However, UMass needs to beat W&M, Rhody and Northeastern to stay in the hunt. If UMass looses to UNH or Hofstra, we might not win the CAA North Title and therefore must get a at-large bid. We would need to go 4-1 in the final five games to get a home playoff game. We need to win at least one of the Hofstra and UNH games.
  

Out of contention:

• Towson. With four league losses, the Tigers are out. I thought Towson would contend for the CAA South title this year, but injuries and poor play have put the Tigers in the South's basement
• Maine. Four CAA losses and 1-5 overall means the Black Bears are out of the playoffs and are having one of their worst seasons in recent memory
• Northeastern. Three CAA league losses and a 1-5 overall record means the Huskies have no chance at an at-large bid.
• Rhode Island. Ditto for the Rams 0-3 in the league and 1-5 overall.

On life support:

• Villanova. The Wildcats are 2-2 in the league and 4-3 overall. They probably need to win out just to get an at large bid
• William & Mary. Ditto for the Tribe. 2-2 in the league and 4-3 overall.
  

In a weird place:

• Delaware. If the Hens beat Navy, they are golden. However, if they loose, things get dicey for Delaware. A loss to Navy means the Hens will only have six Div I wins going into their last three games with JMU, Richmond and Villanova. They would need to win two of the three to go 8-2 in Division I

Gotta win out:

• New Hampshire. The Wildcats are 1-2 in the CAA and 4-2 overall. With a number of good teams in the CAA this year, UNH needs to win the CAA North, which they can do with wins over UMass & Hofstra. Three league losses probably means they will be sitting home this year. UNH's win over Marshall probably means the committee would choose them over other 8-3 CAA teams if it came to that.
  

In good shape:

• Richmond. The Spiders have only one league loss and are 4-2 overall. They do have a tough final five with Rhody, JMU, Villanova, Delaware and W&M. Games with the Dukes and the Hens will decide the CAA South crown. Going 3-2 during the next five games probably will get JMU into the post season.

UPDATE: The Sports Media Network FCS gurus take a stab at the 2007 playoff brackets here .

Wednesday morning reading

UMass has its Northeastern Game notes up.

The College Sporting News has the week's Gridiron Power Index up (we're #3).

The Daily Collegian notes the excellent attendance at UMass Football games so far this season. The big crowd we had for the Sept 1st opener against Holy Cross was the best holiday attendance I can remember.

A Berkshire Eagle reader writes a letter to the editor mentioning the potential for ecconomic advancement for Western Mass if UMass should upgrade its football program.

UPDATE: Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican writes about the 2008 schedule .Note that I already blogged about this on Oct. 12th (scroll down). The rumor is that Albany will be the NEC team scheduled.

UMass Awards

You may have noticed that UMass has failed to win a single CAA award this year. Same with national awards. Things shifted this week.

UMass QB Liam Coen won the New England Sports Writers Gold Helmet Award for the best performance by a college player in New England.

UMass Safety Jeromy Miles won the Dinn Brothers Athlete-of-the-week for his four pass breakups in the end zone during the Villanova game.

And UMass Linebacker Jason Hatchell is still in the hunt for the Buck Buchanan award.

Tuesday Morning reading

The UMass four-overtime thriller with Villanova was just one of several overtime games last week. The Sporting News has write-up here on several (including UMass).

Keeper has UMass a 24+ point favorite over Northeastern.

He also has UMass ranked 4th in FCS/I-AA.

The Sports Network poll also has us 4th .

Matt Vautour has us ranked 5th in his Sports Blog.

UMass has Don Brown's section of the CAA coaches conference transcribed here .

Woah! Northeastern already has its game notes for UMass up.

You can listen to Northeastern Coach Rocky Hager's section of the coaches conference call here (runs about 7 minutes). They had some clock management problems of their own.

UPDATE: Matt Vautour looks at the muddy CAA playoff picture.

Villanova game postmortems

The UMass Daily Collegian has two articles here and here .

The College Sporting News does the national scene here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican points out some unsettling aspects of the win.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE GAME:

As you have probably figured out by now, I don't usually do very much "fan analysis" such as assigning grades to various units of the UMass football team after games like many fan bloggers do. For one thing, despite what all that high priced NFL commentary says, it is very difficult to determine a team's game plan. Without access to game films or practice, it's pretty much impossible to comment on the success or lack of success of what the coaches and players were trying to do.

However, I can state my perceptions on what goes on during a game, and during the Villanova game, I thought our clock management was poor.

We seemed to struggle to get plays called from the sidelines. That ended up icing our own kicker at the end of the game. The five yard delay of game penalty moved the field goal try from a makable distance to a long shot in a breezy McGuirk.

Our QB Liam Coen also struggled with clock management. He was getting calls late anyway and then wasted time trying to direct traffic instead of getting under center and calling the play. Time after time, we hiked the ball with little or no time left. I think it disrupted the offensive rhythm.

UPDATE:

Matty Vautour rings in with three articles. A game re-cap here . UMass offensive tackle Sean Calicchio may have made the most critical play of the game .

And he covers Liam Coen's slow start .

UMass-Villanova & Band day web album

I have a Picassa web Album of the UMass-Villanova game here . Not too many images of the overtime periods----I was too busy cheering! I've also added a link in the sidebar.

We had a great crowd of 16, 174, which was the 16th largest crowd in McGuirk history and 8th largest since we went to the lower seat configuration. There were lots of people milling around and I think we had over 17,000 on the stadium grounds.

And 90% of the fans stayed through the whole four overtimes!

UMass-Villanova game articles

The Boston Globe has a game article here .

The Boston Herald does a better job here .

Jeff thomas of the Springfield Republican has a good article here .

A Philly newspaper writes about the game from the Villanova side.

The Worcester Telegram, which does a surprising amount of UMass coverage has an article here.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the CAA, Delaware, Hofstra, UNH, Richmond and William & Mary all won. Note that next week's opponent Northeastern was tied with Delaware entering the fourth quarter.

Matty Vautour of the Hampshire Gazette wraps up the available press coverage with a game article here .

UPDATE: Another article on Northeastern here . Hofstra, meanwhile is 6-0. Another game article on their 20-3 victory over Towson. Note that the Pride had a tough first half same as we did.

UPDATE II: Scores for the entire FCS/I-AA division here .

Wow! What a game!

UMass wins in quadruple overtime 32-24. The longest game I've been to since 1970 (I missed the four overtime game at Richmond). Whew!

I'm too tired to say much now. It was great in spots. It was ugly in spots.

UMass write-up here .

Villanova write-up here.

I'll be back tomorrow morning with articles and a web-album.

Band Day !

UMass Athletic Dept image above.

Bruce Dowd of the CSN does his weekly CAA article.

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has a game day article here .

Today is Band Day and the weather is great!

UPDATE: Article here about Christopher Whitney, Villanova's true freshman QB starter.
More on Antwon Young's injury here .

Villanova looses QB Antwon Young for the season

Starting Villanova starting QB Antwon Young has been lost for the season. Story here .

As I reported before their back-up QB is true freshman Christopher Whitney.

UPDATE: Matt Vautour has a game article that states a couple of UMass players are questionable for the Villanova game .

2008 UMass Football Schedule

Few schools beat UMass in playing "I've got a secret' with their future football schedules. In 2008, the NCAA is allowing one of those 12 game years.

However, you can paste together UMass' 2008 season by checking the published dates from other schools. Travis Liles has done that here . Note that this is unofficial!

UPDATE: Remember this is probably has a number of errors. It's one man's call.

• 08/30 @ Texas Tech
• 09/06 @ Holy Cross
• 09/13 Nothing scheduled yet (note that one of the open dates will be a bye week)
  
• 09/20 Nothing Scheduled yet
• 09/27 Nothing scheduled yet
• 10/04 Delaware
• 10/11 Hofstra
• 10/18 @ Northeastern
• 10/25 Maine
• 11/01 Rhode Island
• 11/08 Richmond
• 11/15 @JMU
• 11/22 @UNH

Several posters on an Albany message board stated that Albany will be playing @ UMass in 2008. If that's true, then we have one open date to schedule to reach twelve teams. That will be a home game.

Villanova articles

CSN has a "Top-25 in action" article here. Note that the UMass-Villanova section is garbled. They have Northeastern's players and stats where the Villanova write-up should be.

CSN columnist Charles Burton never misses a chance to pick against UMass and does so again picking the Cats over UMass 27-24.

The Boston Globe has an article on the UMass defense.

Villanova does not get much ink in their home town. Wildcat LB Michael Holland will miss a few games in November. He's donating bone marrow to a critically ill cancer patient.

UPDATE: CSN has fixed the typo in the Top-25 article.

UMass Villanova Results poll

The UMass-Villanova results poll closes tonight. It's set for 11:59. but for some reason Blogger's clock is off a couple hours.

Thursday Coach's show running now

Coach Brown's coach's show is running now (7:00 pm). Link here .

Vote for the UMass Football Blog

The 2007 nominations for the Weblog Awards are pending. As you know the UMass Football Blog has been in existence since June of 2005.

Since then I've made 1,672 posts (not counting this one) and thousands of links for UMass fans.

You can go here and click on a button that gives the UMass Football Bog some sort of points that are taken into consideration in the awarding of the "Best of the Web" awards.

The UMass Blog is the 12th or 13th blog down. I'm wedged between a blog about the Kansas City Royals and a Blog titled "Your mother slept with Wilt Chamberlain" :)

LIstorti and other news

UMass fans tracking the return of Brad Listorti have a couple of things to view. The Daily Collegian has an article about Listorti here. Matty Vautour, the UMass beat writer for the Hampshire Gazette writes in his Blog that he visited UMass practice recently and Listorti was still wearing a yellow shirt.

The Collegian has a game article about Villanova here .

The Wildcats finally have their game notes up here (pdf). More news about the Wildcats injured QB Antwon Young here .

And finally, the Gridiron Power Index has UMass at #3 in the nation.

Could Coach Brown be leaving?

As you know, this Blog is a great fan of Coach Don Brown. The Blog likes his football, his recruiting and his emphasis on academics. Coach Brown has stated UMass could be a place he could retire in (at?). The UMass Football Blog hopes he does just that.

But some domino's may fall soon. There has been speculation that Coach Wannstedt at Pittsburgh must win tonight's Navy game to escape the ax. The game is on ESPN tonight.

If Wannsteadt goes, one of the top coaches that should be considered for the Pittsburg job is Mark Whipple. Whipple's son was a walk-on QB for Pitt, but is not on the current roster. He was also the former QB coach for the Steelers.

Rumor has it that Whipple did not get the Boston College job because he wanted his own set of assistant coaches, including Brown as Defensive Coordinator, and BC wanted to keep most of the current staff.

If Whipple should get the Pitt job, this Blog would think he would offer to Brown.

UPDATE: Pitt did indeed loose to Navy.This article says it will cost Wannstead his job.

Villanova News

UMass has its Villanova game notes up. Nothing yet from the Cats.

Villanova's starting QB Anton Young injured himself coming out of the tunnel against William & Mary. He may be out for the season.

Their backup QB is a 6-3 220 pd true freshman Christopher Whitney from Warminster, PA

Comment: As you know there has been a lot of ink about UMass' Alumni Association inability to attract many UMass grads. We need more marketing. In Italy, they know how to increase football attendance .

Tuesday Morning reading

First of all Towson's Sean Schaefer ---was the CAA Offensive Player-of-the-week.

If you have not seen this video, it's awesome. Schaefer drives Towson 77 yards in 24 seconds to win the game against Richmond.

UMass stays #4 in the Sports Network rating.

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has an article here . He says Liam Coen is doing well and should be available for Villanova. Nick Diana is day-to-day as is Brad Listorti. Note that Brown said during the off week he had time to work with some of the younger players and singled out Victor Cruz, Spencer Ridenhour and Reshaude Goodwin for praise.

Keeper has UMass a 19.5 point favorite over Villanova .

He has us rated #2 behind Wofford .

UPDATE: Coach Brown's weekly teleconference notes cover some of the facts in Jeff Thomas' article. Nice to see so many UMass players contributing and more players to come.

Recruiting 2008-- Matt Coyne Part II

I've blogged before about UMass recruiting Bristol Ct QB Matt Coyne.

This article says we're still in the running with the likes of Columbia and Yale . Coyne just became the all-time leading passer in Bristol.

His MaxPreps page is here .

The image is, I believe, a year old.

Rainy Monday Reading

First there is a re-cap of Villanova's blowout of William & Mary here . Note that their QB Antwon Young injuried his knee and had to leave the game in the third quarter.

Neither UMass or the Cats have any game notes up yet.

A couple of re-caps for FCS/I-AA here by The Sports Network and here by Sporting News.

In Saturday's blog post I did a link to a video about Chadron State's Danny Woodhead who was close to the all-time, all division, rushing record. He set the record Saturday. NY Times here and Chadron State's write up here .

Once and future opponents

UMass news is scarce on the wires this morning, but lots of stuff on past and future opponents.

• Two articles on UNH's win over Delaware here and here .
• Towson made UMass's record look better with a win over Richmond.
• Boston College smoked I-A opponent Bowling Green.
• Holy Cross beat Brown.
• Next week's opponent Villanova crushed William & Mary 63-24 .
• Colgate beat Bucknell.
• Maine let the average down by loosing to future opponent Hofstra.

So past and future opponents went 7-1 this week (figuring the Maine-Hofstra game as 1-1)

The CAA weekend write-up is not available yet.

UPDATE: The CAA official re-cap of yesterday's games are here . The run-for-the-playoffs is beginning. The overall CAA standings are here . UMass is one of three CAA teams with no league losses.

Around football

The CAA is going great guns in its first year as both a football and basketball league.

The CAA's game day page with all the audio links and stuff is here .

The Sports Network covers todays games.

If you don't get Eric Gemunder's FCS newsletter the bulk of this week's issue is here .

A Delaware-UNH article is here . Remember the game is on CN8 .

In other news, Appalachian State's QB Armanti Edwards may be out for the season.

And down in DII, Chadron State's Dannny Woodhead is only 121 yards short of being the college football all-time rushing leader (in any division).

Friday morning reading

Bruce Dowd covers last week's game in the CAA (with a lot of ink for the UMass-BC game) and also previews tomorrow's CAA games here .

CSN covers this week's top-25 games here .

Charles Burton and Ralph Wallace cover the in's and out's of FCS/I-AA polling here .

Charles Colson covers last week's results in the FCS here .


EXTRA CREDIT READING: Maine is playing Hofsta. Story here . The game will be shown on tape delay on ESPNU at 10:00 pm.

Also UNH has a big game against Delaware at home on Saturday. The Wildcats already have two league losses. One more and their chances of going to the playoffs for the fourth straight year are problematical. Stories here and here .

More UMass-BC articles

The UMass Daily Collegian has one here .

The Salem News has one of the best stories I've seen about the game here . It interviews BC tight end Jon Loyte who is from the Gloucester area about the game.

Relevant quote: "They were very physical - one of the most physical teams we've played," Loyte said of UMass. "They aren't the biggest team we've seen, but they had a bunch of hard-nosed kids. They were gunning for us all the way."


The article also mentions UMass DT Kyle Harrington and Fullback Chris Zardas.

UPDATE: UMass has Coach Brown's comment (during the CAA Coach's conference call) about the BC game here .

Recruiting 2008-- OL/DL Marquis Hillery

UMass is recruiting Marquis Hillery a 6-3 320 pd OL/DL from Roxbury MA. Story here . This story also mentions him.

Hillery is only seventeen. He could well grow some more.

Marquis, UMass is the best!

Brad Listorti returning for Villanova

Matty Vautour has the happy news that All-American candidate Brad Listorti will be returning to the starting lineup for Villanova (registration required).

Coach Brown expects the rest of the walking wounded Liam Coen, Nick Diana and Courtney Robinson also to be available.

This Blog also has high interest in two other players. Brandon Freeman returns from a one game suspension and he has played well for UMass this year. Also, Boston College transfer Reshaude Goodwin has only been with the Minutemen for six weeks or so, but is picking up the defense quickly and I think he will be a considerable help in the latter half of this season.

Wednesday morning reading

The University of Northern Iowa jumped over us in the polls last week. Their coach mentions us in this article .

Matt Vautour has an article on UMass football here . (registration required).

The CAA looks at this week's league games here .

The big game this week that is meaningful to UMass is Delaware @ New Hampshire. UNH already has two league losses. A third loss could severely impact their chances of making the playoffs. CN8 will be televising the game available over the internet here and so will Comcast Sports. Kickoff at noon.

Stats and stuff

The Sports Network covers the top 25 in FCS/I-AA .

The Gridiron Index (the mother of all polls) says we're #3

Keeper's system says we're #1 .

Jeff Saganin says we're #4 in FCS/I-AA and #81 overall.

A couple of articles from the Springfield Republican I don't think I've linked to are here and here.

UMASS FOOTBALL BLOG NOTES:

• Visits to the Blog have just about doubled from last year at this time
• About 6,000 visits/month
• About 13,000 page views/month
  

Monday Morning reading

Not a lot of after game stories on the web this morning. Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has one here .

The College Sporting News has a recap of the FCS here .

Freshman LB Johnny Evans was stabbed (not serious) in a fight at after a UMass dance. Story here.

A Blog reader reports that the Berkshire Eagle has a story on the I-A study here . Thanks for the link!

Over at the Wiz of Odds, a Maine player is nominated for the "Cheapest shot of the Year"

UPDATE: Matty Vautour has a game article here . He also looks at the state of UMass football right now. Note all Gazette articles require registration, but it's worth it.

Matt also looks at the UMass secondary. I agree with his assessment of the UMass defensive backs. In the first couple of games there was problems with getting on the same page. However, all that talent is starting to come together. I think the 2007 defensive backfield has the potential to be the best ever at UMass. If they continue to improve at this rate they will be the top unit in FCS/I-AA and earn several players a ticket to the NFL.

Boston College Web Album by Drew Comeau

As Blog readers know, former UMass OLB Drew Comeau visits from time to time. He was a four year letter winner for the UMass defense from '86 to '89.

He attended the UMass-BC game and has sent us a number of of images from the game. I've made them into a short Picassa Web Album.

The Album is here .

Wish I could have been there.