UConn Opens Season With Big Win; Many Questions Remain

Huskies Still On Track For CFP Appearance

The Story: Three players rushed for touchdowns as the football team equaled its win total from a year ago with a 24-21 victory over Wagner at Rentschler Field last night.

UNDEFEATED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD: Look, as expected, it definitely wasn’t the slightest bit of a quality win, and while there were flashes of brilliance in all phases, the Huskies needed to show some uncharacteristic (and surprising) resilience to be able to hold off a middling NEC team that CCSU will surely throttle in November.

Perhaps most important for the Huskies was that they answered Wagner’s first two touchdown drives with one of their own, never allowing the Seahawks within seven points and with the ball once Clay Harris made a 30-yard field goal in the second half. And, they got back to that old-school Randy Edsall identity, pounding the rock 60 times — just shy of 75 percent of all snaps — and daring the opposing defense to stop it.

OFFENSE IN CONTROL: Quarterback Mike Beaudry went 14-for-21 for 158 yards with an interception, and he also showed off his wheels at times, including with a two-yard touchdown run that gave the Huskies the early lead. The running game was fantastic, with Kevin Mensah rushing for 144 yards and a touchdown and Art Thompkins, the graduate transfer from Toledo, impressing with 91 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries and two catches for 12 yards. Wide receiver Matt Drayton lived up to the preseason hype with five catches for 51 yards, both team highs, and seemed to have built a rapport with Beaudry early on.

Most impressive was the Huskies’ second drive, a 12-play, 80-yard march that didn’t even take six minutes and looked like nothing we saw last year. UConn ran the ball 10 times on that drive, taking the load out of Beaudry’s hands and into those of its capable running backs. The touchdown play was also a thing of beauty, emphasizing the experience Beaudry and Thompkins both have: With Thompkins giving every last effort to keep Wagner linebacker Cam Gill from getting to the quarterback, finishing him off with a monkey flip despite his poor leverage, Beaudry calmly lunged for the pylon and tucked the ball around it, holding on as he hit the ground to score the six points.

But Beaudry also had one crucial mistake, throwing an interception with around eight minutes left in the third quarter that was returned 71 yards for a touchdown by Myron Morris. Beaudry was targeting Thompkins, but his throw was behind his teammate and Morris, reading it all the way, swooped in. It was especially tough because the Huskies took over at the Wagner 36-yard line and only went seven yards before the pick. “Man, my first touchdown pass was to the other team,” Beaudry joked afterward.

DON’T BACK DOWN: Anything was going to look like an improvement over last year, and it was good to see players wrapping up opponents and taking them to the ground, deep balls being broken up and batted away and, yes, even a quarterback dropping to the turf in the backfield (and not because of his own clumsiness). The Huskies controlled the line of scrimmage, with Lwal Uguak finishing with two of UConn’s three sacks, and D.J. Morgan made an immediate impact with a team-high eight tackles. The Huskies shut Wagner out in the first half — they only had four quarters in which they didn’t allow points last season — and held the Seahawks to 185 yards, the fewest an opponent has gained in almost four years.

Still, there’s a lot more to do. The second half wasn’t nearly as impressive as the first, including a rather poor sequence in the third quarter in which Wagner’s blockers engaged everyone in the Huskies’ front seven and opened a hole wide enough for Dymitri McKenzie to drive a tank through (and cast off a pair of tacklers along the way). McKenzie should have also been dropped for a loss late in the game but he escaped two tacklers and gained nine yards before being taken down, and a crucial late-hit call on true freshman Eric Watts with about four minutes remaining led to a Wagner touchdown on the next play.

(The flip side, of course, was that a phantom facemask call directly led to UConn’s victory, so all things even out.)

CRUCIAL ABSENCES FELT: The Huskies were without a pair of their more highly regarded wide receivers in graduate transfer Ardell Brown and freshman Cam Ross, each of whom have minor injuries that should be healed within the week. On defense, UConn was without defensive tackle Caleb Thomas, who Edsall said is suspended for four games because of an NCAA issue related to a school staffer messing up something with Thomas’ summer classwork. “We ask these kids to do what they are supposed to do, they do it, somebody drops the ball and they get penalized,” Edsall said. “It’s just not right.”

SO, WHO STARTED? All the subterfuge and obfuscation of the past week came to an end when the Huskies actually took to the field, revealing their starters for the world to see:

WHAT DID EDSALL SAY? “You’re down your two top receivers in the game with Ardell and Cam, that makes a difference. Now you’ve got to have a game plan that’s a little bit different than what you expected. We had to do that. I think Mike did some good things and then I thought he did some things he could have been better. I thought he was just a little bit inconsistent but I thought he managed the game well and showed that he has good poise and good toughness.”

WHAT ELSE DID EDSALL SAY? “I’m never going to apologize for winning. I don’t care if we’re supposed to beat somebody 62-10, like somebody thought we should. I’ll take a win any day of the week. A win’s a win, and for our program, we needed a win, regardless of how it was.”

THE BOTTOM LINE: It’s clear the Huskies will try to establish themselves on the ground this season — something they should always do, to be honest, playing in the Northeast — and will give Mensah and Thompkins every chance to be the ones to lead the offense. But, we’re still concerned. This wasn’t going to be the blowout of FCS games past, but we hoped for a little bit more from the Huskies that would at least make us feel optimistic for next week, not next season. Despite the 10-point lead and the ridiculous 202-53 advantage in total yards after the first half (it ended up 392-185 in the Huskies’ favor), the game never seemed out of reach. As hard as it is for us to say, with what UConn showed last night, it’s hard to see another win in the cards.

In the grand scheme of everything, it’s one game, and it was virtually a preseason game at that. Illinois, up next on Sept. 7, isn’t a good team but is significantly better than Wagner. That one will offer a more valid evaluation of where the Huskies are. As long as we’re seeing continued growth by midseason, the optimism is there.

Still, why can’t UConn be one of those teams that magically wins eight more games than the previous season?

Morning Reads

VITAL INFORMATION: The second year under Dan Hurley will be a vast improvement as everyone knows what the coach is expecting, according to Christian Vital. (Hartford Courant)

FINGERS CROSSED: Guards Crystal Dangerfield, who underwent hip surgery, and Evina Westbrook, a transfer from Tennessee, are still waiting to see whether they’ll be able to play in the season opener. (Hartford Courant)

NO SENSE IN WAITING: Although Saylor Poffenbarger is just beginning her junior year of high school, she knew she always wanted to play for UConn and didn’t find any use in waiting to commit. (Hearst Connecticut Media)

LEAVING IT LATE: Freshman Jackie Hartnett scored her first goal with eight minutes left as UConn salvaged a 1-1 draw at CCSU last night. (UConnHuskies.com)

READY TO ROLL: The men’s soccer team will open the season tonight when it hosts Ryder at UHart. (UConnHuskies.com)

AN EARLY CHALLENGE: Ranked No. 4 in the nation, the field hockey team kicks its season off in California with games against No. 15 Northwestern tomorrow and No. 21 Stanford on Sunday. (UConnHuskies.com)

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGHS: The volleyball team will open with three games in three days when it travels to Air Force to compete in the Service Academy Challenge. (UConnHuskies.com)