The new field turf looks great! I spoke with some of the field workers and they thought the "UMass" logo came out especially good. They liked the Maroon & white colors with the gray and black shading. The press box, the performance center and the field turf are outstanding, but there's only so much lipstick you can put on the stadium itself. It's still an old 50's structure.
There were no UMass coaches or players around. The door to the new weight room was propped open and I asked one of the workers if I could look inside and they said "Sure, why not?". I didn't want to push it so I just took a few images from the doorway. The weight room is going awesome.
Click on the images for a larger view. I set up a Picasa web album with ten or so images here.
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The UMass website has video from the "We built it" weekend.
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Dan Malone has MAC West season preview. He also teams up with Collegian sports editor Mark Chiarelli for a podcast about the changes to the UMass football team.
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Dan also continues the "Top-25" UMass players for 2014 with a post on Blake Lucas. Lucas' UMass bio here.
We will hope that Lucas got his "sophomore slump" season out of the way last year. In 2013, the Minutemen lost two games by one point. Sometimes the margin of victory (or loss) is razor thin. UMass finished 9th in the MAC going 12-19 .632 AVE.
Other kickers on the Spring roster are RSFR Marcus Colin and true freshman Matthew Wylie.
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A Bleacher Report writer includes Victor Cruz as an athlete everyone should root for.
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