UMass Football News--October 11th, 2019

LA Tech HC Skip Holtz's weekly press conference for the UMass week.

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The Amherst Wire has a short video segment on this week's game.

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Josh Walfish reports Jesse Britt and James Bowe, Jr have left the team for personal reasons.This was the second time Britt left. Britt previously left under Whipple's tenure. Neither are critical losses.

There are usually a fair number of players leaving a program during a coaching change. Different offensive and defensive philosophies change the type of player in the new systems. We did not initially have many players leaving when Coach Bell was hired.

To me, it was more a concern when Coach Whipple could not keep recruits as a number of his commits never made it to  campus. That made weak recruiting results even worse.

UMass could bring 25 scholarship players this year. The total could actually be higher as the Spring enrollees could be assigned to the previous year's class if UMass was under the scholarship limit, as they very likely were.

The Minutemen currently have 18 hard commits in the 2020 recruiting class, so there are number of scholarships to give. Even so, UMass will likely not reach the 85 scholarship limit for next year.

The current #78 recruiting class ranking by 247Sports is the highest in Minutemen history and if we add another five players or so, it will be even higher. UMass still could use another RB, DL's and LB's. Some JUCO signings for TE and defense would be immediate help for next year.

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