OT: Bill Connelly Article on UMass | Page 2 | The Boneyard

OT: Bill Connelly Article on UMass

huskyrob1 said:
Did any of the UMass losses hinge on one field goal or a missed PAT? Like Tarbutt, but UConn could've very well been 5-7 last year and 4-4 in the conference had it not been for Tarbutt's butterflies.
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Sort of a good point that gets lost. We should've at least 4-8 beating either ECU or Cincy.
 
uconnphil2016 said:
Sort of a good point that gets lost. We should've at least 4-8 beating either ECU or Cincy.
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On the flip side all three of our wins were close games. Weren't that far from a winless season either.
 
History Geek said:
On the flip side all three of our wins were close games. Weren't that far from a winless season either.
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You're right. Temple was a pretty big upset statistically, Tulsa obviously could have been lost if not for a great play by Junior Joseph, and I don't even want to talk about Holy Cross.
 
huskyrob1 said:
Did any of the UMass losses hinge on one field goal or a missed PAT? Like Tarbutt, but UConn could've very well been 5-7 last year and 4-4 in the conference had it not been for Tarbutt's butterflies.
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UMass lost to Hawaii when they gave up a TD with less than a minute to play. This is a very winnable game at home but it certainly won't be another 37-0 rout.
 
gopher2 said:
UMass lost to Hawaii when they gave up a TD with less than a minute to play. This is a very winnable game at home but it certainly won't be another 37-0 rout.
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Was the TD a fluke play or did Hawaii drive down the field?
 
huskyrob1 said:
Was the TD a fluke play or did Hawaii drive down the field?
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Not a fluke play. Hawaii drove about 70 yards in the final minutes and scored on a short pass into the end zone.
 
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This will be UMass Super Bowl. But it shouldn't matter. Unless our defense gets worse.
 
gopher2 said:
Not a fluke play. Hawaii drove about 70 yards in the final minutes and scored on a short pass into the end zone.
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Then Hawaii deserved to lose. UConn's two losses that I pointed out, on the other hand were heartbreakers, we had the momentum in both games, but sadly Tarbutt misses an extra point in one game and a very makeable field goal against East Carolina.
 
Palatine said:
This will be UMass Super Bowl. But it shouldn't matter. Unless our defense gets worse.
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With the freshman coming in on defense, I think we will see a marked improvement in our DL and linebackers. Also we already have one grad transfer DE coming and are in the mix for a couple others.
 
huskyrob1 said:
With the freshman coming in on defense, I think we will see a marked improvement in our DL and linebackers. Also we already have one grad transfer DE coming and are in the mix for a couple others.
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The incoming freshmen may in the end be better than what we have now, but they are still freshmen with a lot of learning and development to do. If we are playing a lot of freshmen next year it is going to be another long one. As long as they show signs of being good in 2019 and beyond I could live with that.
 
Now seems like a good time to remind everybody that in the best season ever for UMass football they lost to UConn twice.
 
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Palatine said:
Pasqualoni was the interim defensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys when UConn hired him as head coach. Dallas Cowboys to UConn should have been a big deal. A boon to recruiting.

Instead of making a big deal out of it, Hathaway let P. get branded as the retread Syracuse failure.
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Branding? Results matter. The fact that he was hell bent on the handing the reigns to Deleone pretty much showed he was never going to succeed here regardless of branding.
 
Palatine said:
This will be UMass Super Bowl. But it shouldn't matter. Unless our defense gets worse.
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You are so right. This will be their super bowl and way bigger than their game with BYU, or BC, or UGA. Playing a regional opponent with 6 wins over the last two seasons is way more important to their program than playing the runner up in the national championship game in 2017.

I say this game will matter way more to Uconn than UMass when it is played.
 
Waquoit said:
Now seems like a good time remind everybody that in the best season ever for UMass football they lost to UConn twice.
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I believe they had Marcel Shipp, a future NFL running back on their roster. How we pulled off even 1 win against them that year still amazes me, let alone 2.
 
06029 said:
You are so right. This will be their super bowl and way bigger than their game with BYU, or BC, or UGA. Playing a regional opponent with 6 wins over the last two seasons is way more important to their program than playing the runner up in the national championship game in 2017.

I say this game will matter way more to Uconn than UMass when it is played.
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I bet the attendance for this game will suggest otherwise.
 
Tl;dr

Yeah, I'm buying that!:rolleyes:
 
gopher2 said:
I believe they had Marcel Shipp, a future NFL running back on their roster. How we pulled off even 1 win against them that year still amazes me, let alone 2.
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UConn was a better team.
 
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Waquoit said:
UConn was a better team.
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I looked it up and actually we were better than I remembered. That was the year we made the I-AA playoffs for the first time and won a playoff game before losing by 22 to Georgia Southern in the second round. UMass won 4 playoff games including the I-AA NC game against Georgia Southern.
 
Waquoit said:
Now seems like a good time to remind everybody that in the best season ever for UMass football they lost to UConn twice.
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Too bad we don’t have Shane Stafford this year.
 
gopher2 said:
I looked it up and actually we were better than I remembered. That was the year we made the I-AA playoffs for the first time and won a playoff game before losing by 22 to Georgia Southern in the second round. UMass won 4 playoff games including the I-AA NC game against Georgia Southern.
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I actually was following this closely that year. No doubt Southern took UMass lightly because they had lost twice to a team they smoked.
 
Waquoit said:
What, they needed to beat them 3 times in the same season to make that claim?
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They needed to be better than UMass to make the claim. I was at both games. They were not better.
 
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whaler11 said:
They needed to be better than UMass to make the claim. I was at both games. They were not better.
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One win could be a fluke, backing it up with an away win, less so. I have a friend like you. Knee-jerk contradictory 24/7. It gets boring and predictable.
 
Waquoit said:
One win could be a fluke, backing it up with an away win, less so. I have a friend like you. Knee-jerk contradictory 24/7. It gets boring and predictable.
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Sorry that’s not how sports work. There is a ton of variance in any given game, couple of games, series of games.

They won the games but weren’t the better team.

Funny you used the word fluke. The game at Amherst was the flukiest win since at least 1994. Diaco beating Houston wasn’t even close to what happened at UMass.
 
^ I believe it was a replacement game after BU dropped football in 1997 and left a void in the following year's schedule.
 
The $$$$ in College Football is very very good, even for top D-1 programs' top assistants (6 figures). But at a certain level, at a later time of life, familiarity and comfort is important.
Hence Phil Estes being at Brown 20 years. Mark Whipple going back to the familiar after bouncing around. While the perks are good, moving around can be exhausting for the families.
 
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