Get Your Game Face On! (Or, Dog Fight!)
The Story: The smell of beer, brats and barbecue will be in the air in California’s Central Valley tomorrow when the football team takes the field for the first time in nearly two years for a game at Fresno State (2 p.m., CBS Sports).
WHAT TO EXPECT: We don’t know much about how the Huskies will perform this season, but hopefully, they’re better than their 6-30 record over three seasons since Randy Edsall returned would indicate. Because, frankly, losing sucks.
• They have a durable, proven running back in Kevin Mensah, a two-time 1,000-yard rusher who should be even more dominant in his fifth year in the program. It’d be nice if he could crack 1,000 yards in three consecutive seasons, which would make him the first player to do so.
• There are NFL-caliber players in left tackle Ryan Van Demark, who is the No. 20 senior at his position, according to The Athletic, and junior defensive tackle Travis Jones, who is considered “one of the best-kept secrets in college football.” Nothing gets the recruiting pipeline going faster than putting players in the league once again.
• Outside of Clemson, which went 10-2 last season, lost in the College Football Playoff semifinals and looms in November, the teams the Huskies will face went a combined 38-44 last season for a .463 winning percentage. Now, those teams didn’t play many games, but it’s not like they were blowing the doors down a year ago.
• Although five of the starters in the defensive front seven are upperclassmen, the secondary is inexperienced — and we know what happened last time that was the case. In 2018, the Huskies had one of the youngest secondaries in the nation and allowed points and yards at terrifying rates. Please, please don’t let that happen again.
THE OPPONENT: The Bulldogs went 3-3 last season, Kalen DeBoer‘s first as their head coach, and are much less of a mystery than UConn is.
• Fresno State returns 20 of 22 starters, including everyone on defense. It led the Mountain West with 356.3 yards per game and was second in the conference with 32.8 points per game, but its defense lagged as it finished in the bottom half of all major categories and allowed 430 yards and 30 points per game.
• Quarterback Jake Haener, a senior, completed 64.7 of his passes last season. He not only led the Mountain West with 336.8 yards per game, he was fourth in the FBS in that category behind UCF’s Dillon Gabriel, Florida’s Kyle Trask and Alabama’s Mac Jones — all household names to a college football fan.
• Senior running back Ronnie Rivers was the only player selected to the preseason all-conference team. Rivers ran 100 times for 507 yards and seven touchdowns last season and will be back in Fresno for a fifth year.
OUR TAKE: We think it’s going to be a fun year as the Huskies face a number of unfamiliar opponents in their first year as an independent, but at what cost? We’re well aware that despite our optimism, it’s probably going to end up as another long season. (Heck, even Vegas has the over-under at 2.5 wins, and UConn plays a pair of FCS teams!)
• The Huskies need to show progress. It’s as simple as that. The players need to be better. The coaches need to be better. All the talk of getting better after a year off and hitting the reset button ends if the Huskies end up going across the country and end up on the wrong end of another 56-7 romp this weekend.
• They also need to be exciting. If you can’t win games, you better be fun to watch (though that’s, uh, not exactly Edsall’s trademark). The only thing more demoralizing than being 1-7 heading into mid-November is being 1-7 heading into mid-November with 6,000 people in the stands.
• We need to be convinced this project is working. Edsall’s contract runs through the 2023 season after an extension in March. He’s not making much money — at least, for a college football coach; we’d all gladly trade salaries with him in a heartbeat — and for a state, university and athletic department facing budget troubles, that’s a positive. But there’s a fine line there, and if Edsall can’t win like he did a decade ago, who knows which direction the program will be forced to go?
Morning Reads
• Coach Ray Reid will be back on the touchline as the men’s soccer team looks to put its 1-6-1 performance from the spring in the distant past when it opens its season against Bryant at home tonight.
• The No. 6-ranked field hockey team will head to Chicago for a pair of games as it faces No. 4 Northwestern this afternoon and No. 21 Miami (Ohio) tomorrow afternoon.
• The volleyball team will get a chance to prove UConn is New York’s College Team™ when it faces Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo in a season-opening tournament beginning today.
• Jalen Adams, Amida Brimah and, of course, James Bouknight all excelled while playing in the NBA Summer League.
• Former UConn standout Matt Barnes, who was arguably the best closer in the American League through July, won’t be trusted by the Red Sox to pitch in high-leverage situations until he figures out his troubles.
The Celtics’ Brad Stevens said it was “not fun” to trade Kemba Walker but needed to do so to set the team up for success.
