Friday--- August 31, 2012

Well, the nearly 250 mile round trip journey to East Hartford was interesting to say the least. The road was long and so was the game.

First the bad, the UMass offense set probably historic lows in production. We had only 3 first downs against the Husky defense and didn't come close getting anything going in any phase of the game. We rushed 24 times for essentially  zero yards.

The noise seemed to bother the offense and they never got into any kind of rhythm.

Special teams were also a sore spot. We had a punt blocked for a touchdown. UMass had trouble covering returns all night as UConn averaged 21.8 yards a return.

The bright spot was the UMass defense. The DL played superb.  UConn a power running team, averaged 3.4 yards a carry. The Huskies also ran the Wildcat nearly every series and went nowhere. The defense stayed with the offensive shifts. They also developed some pressure on passing plays. The Minutemen's defense gave up 23 points and were on the field all night ----- literally.
If you were watching on TV, you probably couldn't see the players encouraging each other. Nobody quit.

Keep the faith. We knew this was going to be a bad matchup for the rookie UMass offense.

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Official UMass writeup and box score.

Matty V. has the Minutemen shut out in their FBS opener.

He also has FBS football is finally here. Read the last sentence.

Matty says QB competition is on-going.

MassLive has three articles: the UMass offense couldn't get off the ground, the defense was better than the score indicated, it was a rough opener, but we're started.

The Boston Herald said UMass was no match for UConn. They also had UConn roughly welcomes UMass.

The Hartford Courant said welcome to the next level UMass.

The UConn Blog has as good a start as we could ask for.

The UMass Daily Collegian said UMass was blown out.

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The results for the rest of the MAC openers.

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Vanderbilt lost to South Carolina.

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I'll be back later with more.