First, I want to apologize for a mistake in yesterday's article about Cincinnati, as I accidentally confused head football coach Butch Jones' name with that of Butch Davis, who is the football coach at North Carolina. My bad, but com
e on, I can't be the first guy to cross those two names.
Anyway, now on to the important stuff: football. Yesterday, I suggested that Cincy would break out of the bottom of the league this year to make a success out of many of their star players' senior seasons. Today, I'm not so optimistic about UConn. Last year was what made me suggest that the BCS committee and other BCS leagues ought to have veto power to prevent games like last year's Fiesta Bowl (although I bet Oklahoma would have voted to keep them in). The worst feeling I experienced all of last season wasn't throwing away the game in the second half at Florida or watching Storm Johnson's 71 yard run to tie the game in Miami, it was the last few minutes of the regular season finale against Connecticut, where we could have done our part to send a 9-3 West Virginia team to a BCS bowl (they later lost to NC State, but that's neither here or there), but couldn't convert on consecutive goal line plays or keep them out of field goal range, thus making us partly responsible for sending one of the worst teams in BCS history to a Big East championship.
2010 Record: 8-5, Big East BCS representative
This year, the Huskies are going to be experiencing a lot of growing pains, as they saw the coach who just led them to their first BCS game abandon the team for a vacancy at Maryland. Two weeks later, a familiar face came into the picture, as former Syracuse coach and Connecticut native Paul Pasqualoni took over in Storrs. In addition to their coach bailing on them, the Huskies will also have to deal with the loss of their most important player, Jordan Todman. UConn struggled all season in the passing game, so most of the work was left up to Todman and then-senior FB Anthony Sherman. This year, they won't have that luxury as they will have to work with all-new running backs and a battle for quarterback led by a senior who no one would even know if not for his Youtube fame. To be perfectly honest, I believe that K Dave Teggart is the best player on this football team. If the offense can just get him on the field, he'll make sure the Huskies are always alive.
This season will be successful if: UConn has a .500 record at the end of the season. There aren't very high expectations for this team, and I think their non-conference schedule may be the easiest of all the Big East teams this season. If they can beat their non-BCS opponents (they lost to Temple last year, who ended up not even going to a bowl game), then they should have enough room to make their other non-conference games watchable. In conference, they'll likely struggle in their first year under Pasqualoni, but a bowl game may still be in their sights.
2011 Record: 5-7. The Huskies will miss a bowl game this year, finding it hard to get on their feet right out of the gate. They begin the year with an FCS team, but then have to travel to Vanderbilt before coming home and playing Iowa State. unless they can win both of those games, it'll be hard to see them getting on their feet. They'll have a little time to make up for it with two non-BCS teams coming up, but they open their Big East schedule with games against West Virginia, USF, and Pittsburgh, arguably the three strongest teams in the league. They can probably salvage one conference victory against Rutgers, and maybe another if they play well against Syracuse or Louisville, but this is looking like a few transition years ahead of the Huskies.
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