It’s feels good to be home

Saturday night marks the start of what could be a big month at Nippert Stadium as the Connecticut Huskies are here along with Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit from ABC. While it’s not the nationwide audience that took in the Orange Bowl, it’ll go direct to 46% of the country (pretty much up and down the East Coast, Florida, parts of Louisiana and Tennessee, and as far west as Illinois and north as Michigan and parts of Wisconsin).

The game also starts a stretch of home games that could “Catapult” (thank you Mike Thomas) the Bearcats to an 11-0 mark going into the final regular season game at Pitt December 5th. It’s not quite the homestand that Syracuse enjoyed this fall (six in a row) but it’ll be nice to be in familiar surroundings all of November.

“Our football team’s going to be home for the next month,” said Brian Kelly. “Three games and a bye week. We’ve been on the road a lot, we’ve won eight consecutive road games, I think that says a lot about our football team.”

It also makes one feel fairly confident of UC’s chances. The Bearcats haven’t lost at “The Nipp” since Pat White and WVU “nipped’em” 28-23 two years ago. After Saturday’s tilt with UConn, UC will then have the opportunity to get back at the Mountaineers for that one on Friday the 13th.

Then, after a bye week, it’ll be Illinois on the day after Thanksgiving. The best thing is all three games are sold out, adding to UC’s chances to have the proverbial “November to remember”.

It all begins Saturday night with a 4-4 Connecticut team that’s suffered tough defeats and the tragic loss of starting defensive back Jasper Howard. Like most recent games involving the Huskies, there will be a moment of silence observed at Nippert before the kick-off. A few weeks back the Bearcats also sent Connecticut a “Husky Blue” C-Paw signed by all of the members of the team in tribute to Howard.

Despite dealing with tragedy off the field, on the field the Huskies have competed and could realistically have a better record.

“This is a football team that has four losses and a two-point loss to a pretty good North Carolina team that beat Virginia Tech,” said Kelly. “They lost on a last-second field goal to the #14 ranked Pittsburgh team-so we’re not making it up when we say they’re a 4-4 football team that could easily be 8-0.”

In recent weeks, the Huskies have lost at West Virginia on a late scamper by Noel Devine and just last weekend, after taking the lead on Rutgers in the final minute, Tom Savage hit Tim Brown on a 81-yard bomb to help the Scarlet Knights pull that one out. Needless to say, Connecticut’s had some tough luck losing their four games by a total of 13 points.

“They’re a team that hasn’t finished games off, we’ll have to play very well,” said Kelly.

Of course, adding to all of this will be the additional TV cameras that ABC will bring and the additional “atmosphere” that such notoriety brings. (Translation: students like to be on TV.) Coach Kelly hopes the students that are actually playing in the contest keep their composure.

“We’ve played in a lot of national games-I know our kids are excited anytime they’re on TV,” said Kelly. “Regardless of whether they’re on ESPNU or ABC or Fox, they play pretty hard. I don’t know if there’s that much more significance to it than any of the other ESPN games that we’ve played, other than that we’re 8-0 and fifth in the country (BCS). I think the most important thing is to continue to show Cincinnati football is to be taken serious.”

When you’re at this level in the BCS, there’s some speculation that teams “run up scores” to impress the pollsters, or influence decision-makers. There’s reasonable evidence that this has been done elsewhere, but don’t look for Brian Kelly to do it (at least not intentionally).

“I think about how we can close out a game, how we can finish off a game,” he said. “How we can get that clock to turn to zero, that’s what I think about. I don’t think about, ‘Hey, we need to score here, let’s throw it, get another touchdown and look better.’ I care about winning football games.”

To win this next football game, Kelly and the ‘Cats will have to play much better than they did in last year’s most miserable loss, a 40-16 shellacking in Hartford. Cody Endres was the quarterback in that game for the Huskies and RB Donald Brown ran for 150 yards. Neither will be on the field Saturday. Brown’s in the NFL with the Colts and Endres just had season-ending shoulder surgery. Still, UConn will have an experienced guy behind center.

“Zach Frazer steps in-big, strong physical kid,” said Kelly of the quarterback that actually started this year as UConn’s #1. “He’s a guy that has Big East wins under his belt. They’re fortunate they’ve got a guy they can count on from that standpoint.”

Frazer’s now back in charge of an offense that scored 30 on Baylor, 52 against Rhode Island, 38 against Louisville, plus the close losses that have already been documented. Against Rutgers last weekend, he threw for 333 yards (although he was also picked off three times).

“They’ve been very good, they’ve changed offensive coordinators,” said Kelly of the Huskies attack. “They’ve done a nice job throwing the football and they’ve got two very strong backs. They’re a dangerous football team and if you don’t understand that, they’re going to beat you. They’re there with everybody, they just haven’t closed out and some of it’s been bad luck.”

If you’re a numbers person, the one stat going for UC is Connecticut’s not won here and has generally not played well. Starting in their early years, in 2001, they lost to Rick Minter’s men 45-28. They returned in 2005 and lost again, 28-17 to Mark Dantonio’s second team which was young (and frankly, not very good). Two years ago, the Huskies came in with the #16 ranking and Brian Kelly’s bunch took them to the woodshed 27-3.

That’s three losses by a combined 52 points by teams that weren’t as explosive as this one is offensively.

Just sayin’…