Huskies fail to bounce back after first miscues
UConn football players, coaches are befuddled
With six seconds to play in the first half of UConn’s game at Tulsa last weekend and the ball at the opposing 1-yard line, quarterback David Pindell shuffled out of the pocket, rolled right, eyed a wide-open Hergy Mayala in the end zone… and tossed the ball high, out of the receiver’s grasp, as the clock hit 0:00. Instead of 7 points on the drive, UConn entered the locker room with zero.
The play was certainly a blow, but it didn’t have to be fatal for the Huskies, who trailed 28-13 at halftime. In fact, some teams might have rallied around the mishap, reassuring each other that the game remained in reach and that they had 30 more minutes to make up for the error.
UConn, however, responded differently. The Huskies came out flat in the third
quarter, allowing three straight touchdowns (on top of the four consecutive TDs Tulsa had already scored) on the way to a 49-19 loss.
UConn’s failure to bounce back from that pre-halftime miscue was likely near the front of coach Randy Edsall’s mind after the game when he complained that the Huskies lacked the “heart” and “grit” to keep playing hard after things begin to go wrong, and that to some players the game wasn’t “important enough.”
In the days since, Huskies players and coaches have expressed their frustration and befuddlement at the team’s failure to overcome adversity.
“One bad thing and guys start to hang their heads,” receiver Kyle Buss said Saturday. “Instead of worrying about the next play and what they’re supposed to do on the next play, they’re sulking about the previous play. And then it just continues to happen play after play, and before we know it, we’re down 30 points.”
“We’ve just got to have a tougher mindset and a tougher mentality,” Pindell said Wednesday. “We can’t let adversity hit us. One person sees that, then it’s like a domino effect. You can’t show emotion [when things go wrong], you’ve just got to be able to respond.”
Several recent UConn games have followed a similar pattern: The Huskies score early, hold steady for a quarter or two, then collapse either just before or after halftime on the way to a loss (often by a wide margin). Against Cincinnati on Sept. 29, UConn scored first and then didn’t record another point, falling 49-7. Against Memphis the week after, the Huskies were tied until late in the first quarter on the way to a 45-14 defeat. After hanging on for all 60 minutes against South Florida, UConn blew a 14-3 lead to UMass in a 22-17 loss.
But Saturday’s game at Tulsa might have been the most stark example of the pattern. At the end of the first quarter, UConn led 10-0 having scored on consecutive drives while holding the opposing offense in check. After Tulsa picked up 7 points on an eight-play 75 yard drive, the Huskies responded with a field goal. But back-to-back Golden Hurricane touchdowns, backto-back UConn punts and Pindell’s poor throw just before the half left the Huskies down two scores. Things fell apart further in the third quarter, when Tulsa notched three touchowns and held UConn scoreless.
The consensus among UConn players and coaches seems to be that the Huskies reacted poorly when they fell behind, hanging their heads and losing composure.
“We came out, shut them out in the first quarter, got a touchdown on offense, and we were like ‘OK, we’re feeling good, feeling good,’ ” defensive coordinator Bill Crocker said Wednesday. “And then all of a sudden, it’s almost like sometimes we’re waiting for something to happen, and then it did, and then it’s like ‘OK, we gave it our best.’ We’ve got to be able to fight through that and be a little bit mentally tougher than we’ve been.”
UConn’s failures during the second and third quarters could owe to factors other than mental fragility — such as fatigue that sets in when young players play more snaps than they can handle — but offensive coordinator John Dunn said the problem gets back to the team’s chronic inconsistency. It’s an issue the Huskies will have to address if they hope to keep games close over the final three weeks
“We have to find a way, whether it be drive-to-drive or quarter-toquarter, to just find a way to be more consistent,” Dunn said. “No one’s perfect. But just be more consistent.”