Teams shake hands 

Game Day Articles

The Springfield Union has one here

The Hampshire Gazette's UMass Sports Page is here. A game day article is here (registration required)

Still drizzling here in New Hampshire where heavy rains forced more evacuations last night.

Hopefully, we'll see some sun this afternoon...

Image to the right is JMU's QB Justin Rascati, a transfer from Louisville

JMU Game is Homecoming

The JMU is Homecoming. UMass Football is a big part of the Homecoming spirit. The Alumni association has a bunch of events planed for the day.

One of the great aspects of UMass Football is the performance of the UMass Marching Band. Under the direction of George Parks, the band is "The Power and Class of New England"

In 1998 the UMass Football Team won the I-AA national championship. The same year the Minuteman Marching Band received the most prestigious honor bestowed upon college bands, the Louis C. Sudler Trophy, which is awarded in recognition of "the highest of musical standards and innovative marching routines and ideas, and which has made important contributions to the advancement of the performance standards of college marching bands over a period of several years."

The band spirit continues even after graduation. Usually during the halftime show at homecoming, the Alumni Band brings more people than most other schools regular bands! And they still rock.

The UMass Marching Band has a gallery of images here . Go there and view them. They'll make you smile.

For the price of admission, the UMass football team and the Minuteman Marching Band are the best bargains in sports. Bar none.

Saturday's Games

Well, this Saturday's games will mark more than halfway to the end of the season. Matt Dougherty has a write up on the UMass-JMU game as well as other I-AA games here . Scroll down to the "Big Games" section.

We might want to look at the current standing in the A10 (note that Blogger gives me only very limited control over formatting):

North

Massachusetts 3 0 1.000 4 1 .800
New Hampshire 2 1 .667 4 1 .800
Hofstra 1 1 .500 3 2 .600
Northeastern 1 2 .333 1 4 .200
Rhode Island 1 2 .333 3 3 .500
Maine 0 2 .000 2 3 .400


South

James Madison 2 0 1.000 4 1 .800
Richmond 2 1 .667 2 3 .400
Towson 2 2 .500 4 2 .667
William & Mary 1 1 .500 3 2 .600
Villanova 1 2 .333 2 3 .400
Delaware 0 2 .000 3 2 .600

This week's games are:

October 15

Villanova at Bucknell 1:00
MAINE AT HOFSTRA 1:30
JAMES MADISON AT MASSACHUSETTS 12:00
RHODE ISLAND AT NEW HAMPSHIRE 12:00
DELAWARE AT RICHMOND 12:00
WILLIAM & MARY AT NORTHEASTERN 2:00
Towson at Liberty 7:00

Both Maine, Villanova and Delaware have two league losses. Another loss pretty much puts them out of contention for a playoff bid. Two of these teams may have problems this week. Maine has not done much at all this season and Delaware is going to have problems with the resurgent Spiders. Villanova should have no problem with Patriot League bottom feeder Bucknell.

UNH, Hofstra, Richmond and William & Mary all have one league loss. The Pride should beat Maine and UNH should rebound against the fading Rams. William & Mary has to play Northeastern at Northeastern. The Huskies are a different team at home and this one should be close. As stated earlier, I think the Spiders have a good chance against the Hens.

The big game is UMass-JMU. Most people on the various I-AA boards are picking JMU who has run it up on the likes of Lock Haven, Delaware State and Hofstra. The Pride is a decent team, but I think UMass would have made some interesting stats against Lock Haven and Delaware State.

UMass is kinda flying below the radar. I like that. And I like the Minutemen's chances this week...

UMass Defense on a roll

The UMass defense has been having a killer season. See articles here by the Boston Globe and here by the Springfield Union.

In 2005 the UMass Defense:

• 1st in the nation in total defense (162 yds/game)
• 1st in scoring defense (5.8 pts/game)
• 1st in pass defense (81.6 yds/game)
• given up 1 (one) TD this year
  
• given up 810 total yards of offense this year

A big part of UMass' dominance is do to the revamped UMass defensive line. This year the DL consists of:

• Keron Williams DE Sr. 6-1 254 (All-A10 in 2004 and having a excellent 2005)
• Justin Schweighardt Sr. 6-1 265 (started in all games since 2004)
• John Hatchell Jr. 6-2 270 (UMass strongest player has made an impact in 2005)
• David Burris Soph. 6-0 242 (new starter for 2005. Was New England Prep Player-of-the-year in 2003)
  

Koegel has another monster game

UMass punter Christian Koegel Jr. 6-0 185 had another monster game against Northeastern.

Punting in truly terrible conditions (scroll down to gameday images in this blog), Koegel had an impressive effort. So far in 2005 he has punted 22 times for 977 yards w/ 44.4 average. UMass stats here

Against Northeastern:

• He averaged 45.3 yds/punt
• He had two punts over 50 yards

Koegel is ranked:

• First in the A10. A10 stats here
  
• Third in the I-AA universe. NCAA stats here

Note 10/12/05:

The Springfield Union published a article on Koegel today, one day after the UMass Football Fanzone blog led the way. The article is here .

UMass-JMU Game notes are up

Both UMass and JMU have their game notes up.

UMass is here .

JMU has the title page here (and a link to 28 pages of game notes).

The image is of JMU's L.C. Baker the A10 Special Teams Player-of-the-week. JMU Athletic Dept. Image

J.J. Moore lost for the Season

The win over Northeastern was a costly victory for UMass as we lost receiver J.J. Moore RSoph. 6-0 201 for the season with an ankle injury.

Moore was UMass' leading receiver 27-337 yds- 2 TDs. The UMass individual 2005 stats are here .

Moore broke the UMass single-game receiving record this year at Colgate. He went 13-128 yards 1 TD. That broke the previous single game reception record of 11 receptions held by Adrian Zullo (Richmond 1999, Villanova 1999), Jimmy Moore (Hofstra 1998) and Tim Berra (Holy Cross 1973)

J.J. Moore is a great kid who has overcome a great deal in his life. Be sure to read this article by the Springfield Union about him.

Update 10/12/05:

I don't usually do links to the UMass Student Newspaper, but Jeff Howe of the UMass Daily Collegian has a good piece on Moore here

Game articles from Northeastern are up

The Boston Globe's story is here.

The Springfield Union is here.

The Hampshire Gazette is here (there will be more from the Gazette later today)

UMass-Northeastern game 10/08/05

These images are from the UMass-Northeastern game. Rain was steady in the first half and a torrent during the second half.

UMass called off the dogs in the second half. The last four times Northeastern punted we did not even have anyone back to receive.

UMass held Northeastern to zero points and 74 total yards of offense.

Click on any image to enlarge

UMass band pre-game  

Captains move to shake hands 

J.J.Moore injuried 

First Quarter 

Home side faithfull 

Baylark waits for the handoff 

UMass interception on this play 

The cheerleaders were stoic 

UMass runs back an interception 

Shotgun 

UMass comes to the line of scrimmage 

UMass runs 

Run to the near side 

Last series 

The End 

A tale of Two Coaches

Matt Vautour continues to prove that he is the top UMass beat writer with a very nicely written article about Coach Brown. Registration is required (do it anyway. Registration allows access to UMass Sports coverage on the Gazette.

The article discusses Brown's life in football and coaching. It's easy to see why UMass wanted him and he wanted UMass.


There is a good news for Rhode Island Coach Tim Stowers. He received a contract extension through 2008. Coaching can be a rough business. Stowers was fired at GSU for the sin of only going 9-4 one season (after winning one National Championship and making the playoffs three out of six years).

He accepted the challenge of coaching at Rhody and found that he had less than 63 scholarships. Then, Rhode Island's basketball palace went over budget and there was no money to fix the half of Rhody's stadium that they tore down to construct the new basketball facility. It's not easy to win in the A10 with less scholarships than everybody else and half a stadium. It's nice to see recognition of the coaching job he's doing.

Consulting the Stats

The A10 cumulative stats page is here .

Roaming around the page reveals some of the following:

Scoring:

• The A10 has 8 teams scoring > 30 points/game
• The A10 has 2 teams scoring > 40 points/game
• UMass is 8th in the A10 scoring at 21.8 points/game
• UMass is 11th in the A10 RedZone scoring 12-21

Defense:

• UMass is first in the A10 scoring defense 7.2 points/game (and first in the nation)
• UMass is first in the A10 in total defense 184.5 yards/game
  
• Northeastern is last in the A10 in scoring defense 38.8 points/game
  
• Northeastern is last in the A10 in total defense 458 yards/game

Punting:

• UMass is 1st in the A10 with a 40.09 yards/punt ave.
• Northeastern is last in the A10 with 27.60 yards/punt ave.
  

Third Down conversions:

• UMass is 8th in the A10 in 3rd down conversions 26-62 41.9 %
• UMass is 2nd in the A10 in opponent third down conversions 16-61 26.2 %
• Northeastern is last in the A10 in opponent third down conversions 30-55 51.5 %

Looks like rain Saturday

The forecast for the game Saturday is Rain .

I'll be there, rain or shine. Got a Goretex rain suit and lots of plastic drop clothes.

Come to the Northeastern Game anyway. You won't melt. Sit in the rain and cheer for UMass. Go home feeling virtuous...

The A10 this week

In the 6th week of football, the A10 goes to an all-league schedule on 10/08.

The Sports Network has a review of I-AA football here including several A10 games and UMass-Northeastern.

The A10 matchups this week are as follows. Note that all the teams except for Hofstra have game notes up. The link goes to the main football page for each school. Game notes should be featured or available somewhere on the main page.

• New Hampshire@William & Mary
• Villanova@Richmond
• Maine@ James Madison
• Townson@ Rhode Island
• Hofstra @ Delaware (Pride Vs Hens is the A10 Game of the Week .Lists TV Coverage if you want to see the game. Also read this article on the Hens injuries)

The UMass kicking game

The Springfield Union has an article on the UMass kicking game here .

During the weekly coaches show, Brown stated that UMass was going to work on the kicking game during the recent "bye" week.

UMass has had two long returns by Steve Costello called back by penalties. Costello is, in fact, an outstanding kick returner as well as defensive back. If he plays in the pros, that could be one of his assets. One of those returns was in the Colgate game and could have won the game for UMass.

I could not find a posed or head shot of Costello in the UMass image galleries. The shot to the left is his "Bio" mug shot.

Autumn in New England

The Boston Globe has an update on the UMass-Northeastern game here. Also covers the other New England Schools.

Image is by me taken yesterday on a walk. Foliage is not at peak yet.

UMass game notes for Northeastern are up.

The UMass website has the game notes for the Northeastern Huskies game on 10/08/05 up here

The image of UMass NG 6-2, 270 John Hatchell is by Thom Kendall from the UMass Athletic Dept image gallery.

Northeastern has their game notes up

Northeastern has their game notes for UMass up here .

They also get their starting QB Anthony Orio Redshirt Fr. 6-1, 220 back from injury. Remember that he took the Huskies into overtime against Georgia Southern.

Atlantic 10 October 1, 2005 attendance

Below are the attendance figures for 10/01/05. Home team listed first.

1. 10,778 Towson-Delaware
2. 8,012 UNH-Villanova
3. 6,125 Brown-Rhode-Island
4. 6,065 Hofstra-JMU
5. 5,734 Maine-Albany

Current A10 statistics (team and individuals) can be found here .

More on the Offensive Line situation

Every year it seems that a football team coming out of pre-season camp will have injuries concentrated in one or two positions.

This year the UMass offensive line was the area hit the hardest.

UMass lost All-A10 Rob Kane to graduation. The pre-season projected starting OL looked like this:

• LT Colin Stoetzel 6-6 290
• LG Matt Austin 6-5 285
• C Alex Miller 6-2 300
• RG David Thompson 6-3 310
• RT O.J. McBride 6-3 298

Both pre-season tackles ended up being injured. Stoetzel is a UMass captain and has been a starter since he was a red-shirt freshman. O.J. McBride was also a senior and started for us against North Carolina State and Kansas State.

Matt Austin was the "fifth" offensive lineman last year.

With three of the projected starting linemen out, UMass has been playing Redshirt freshman Sean Calicchio, Rutgers Transfer Brent Caldwell and Redshirt Jr Mike Pearson. The situation was so bad that TE Chris Hopkins 6-2 260 has been working with the offensive line.

Matt Vautour reports in this article (registration required) that O.J. McBride may be lost for the season. Coach Brown said as much during his weekly coaches show on Thursday.

OTOH, Colin Stoetzel may be back for the JMU game and Matt Austin may be improved for Northeastern. The return of two projested starters in Stoetzel and Austin should make an improvement in our running game and offense in general.

Interesting that Rutgers transfer Jon Carnes Redshirt Soph. 6-4 290 is still not eligible. Listening between the lines on what Brown said, it seems it's about 50-50 if Carnes will be available this year.

The two UMass Athletic Dept. images are of Stoetzel and Austin.