New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
UConn ready to step into the heat
Huskies to play first contest in 21 months at Fresno State
Out of sight and essentially out of mind since November 2019, the UConn football team on Saturday will leave behind its 21month hibernation — and step into a furnace. The forecast for the 2021 season opener at Fresno State is 105 degrees.
It will be a dry heat, sure, with humidity only around 23 percent. Still, Jim Sweeney Field at Bulldog Stadium will bake under sunny skies and the sweltering environment could negate what UConn might have as an advantage in the element of surprise.
Fresno State has no way
of knowing much about what it’s facing, regardless of whether the Huskies turn out to be the new and improved version coaches and players have predicted.
The only UConn film that exists for the Bulldogs to study is from 2019, and it is essentially useless. Many players on that film are elsewhere. Returning players have transformed their bodies. The entire Huskies operation is said to be completely different in a positive way, and everyone in Storrs is geeked up to head west and prove the rest of the college football world wrong.
Add that Fresno State plays Oregon in Week 2 and you have the perfect recipe for a classic “ambush game” — if it weren’t all coming together on a sizzling FieldTurf frying pan about 200 miles west of Death Valley.
“I’m not concerned about it at all, because I can’t control it,” UConn coach Randy Edsall said. “To me, it’s no big deal. … I think our kids are in really good condition. It might be you have to play more guys and we’re ready for that. We might have mentioned the weather a couple times, but I’m not going to dwell on it because I can’t go out there or all of the sudden have cloud cover or make it 70 or 80 degrees. So why should I put anything of a negative in these young men’s heads before we even step on the field Saturday?”
Fresno is used to the heat. UConn’s only countermeasure? Hydrate, hydrate some more, keep hydrating — and closely monitor players before and during the game, not only ensuring their safety but creating a scenario where they can function in ways they expect to.
The Shenkman Training Center thermostat doesn’t reach 105. UConn players have had this date circled for a long time — through one winter and the next — to the point where they described actual game prep this week as surreal. Having Mother Nature present this type of challenge was not part of the anticipation or meeting-room discussions until recently.
“We’ve been talking about that since training camp started,” Edsall said. “It’s really taking care of your body and making sure you’re always hydrated and everything else . ... We had only 2-3 days (during preseason camp in Storrs), maybe, where it was really hot and we were in the pads. But you’re talking humidity. The dry heat is different. Yeah, it’s hot, but it’s different.
“I’ve run in Phoenix in the summertime and you don’t sweat because it’s dry heat. But it’s all about just taking care of your body . ... I can’t bring dry heat in (to Connecticut). And it gets to the point where you’re going to have to probably play more guys than you normally do. And that’s why we give a lot of guys a lot of reps. You’re going to need some of those guys to play.”
Edsall hasn’t announced a starter at quarterback. It will be one of two sophomores — Jack Zergiotis or Steven Krajewski. Numerous other positions on the depth chart list two players as “Or” instead of first-team or second-team.
The Huskies are 6-30 the past three years, 2-10 in 2019, when it closed the season — and its time as a member of the American Athletic Conference — with a 49-17 loss at Temple. The program’s last victory was 56-35 at UMass Oct. 26,
2019, its first over an FBS opponent in 23 games, since Oct. 21, 2017, 20-14 over Tulsa at Rentschler Field.
Now it’s on to life as an independent, to the resumption of Edsall 2.0. After all the reps behind the closed doors of Shenkman, all the meetings in the Burton Family Football Complex , it’s on to facing an actual opponent. Like extreme heat, the pace and physicality of play can’t be duplicated in camps or workouts.
“These kids haven’t forgotten how to play football,” Edsall said, confidently.
When asked about the potential for his own sideline rust, Edsall went fullblast sarcasm.
“I went back and re-read books on how to coach football for the last year and a half,” he said.
He added, sans sarcasm, “I know this: My bunghole isn’t going to get puckered, that’s for sure.”
UConn isn’t worried about the fallout from its layoff.
Or the heat.
“We’ve been talking about (playing) forever,” senior left tackle Ryan Van Demark said. “All the 6 a.m. lifts, all the conditioning in the winter. It was all leading up to this moment. The fact that it’s finally here, it’s surreal. It’s the last ride for me and a bunch of the other guys, so we’re ready to go. We’re fired up.”
UConn will fly to Fresno Thursday and practice in the area Friday (forecast, 101 degrees). Saturday’s kickoff is at 2 p.m. — 11 a.m. local time. The game is on CBS Sports Network.
“We did our part in the offseason,” said senior long snapper Brian Keating, of Darien. “We had a fantastic offseason. They worked us out really hard. We’re in really good condition. So we have to control what we can control. We’ve been practicing outside and we’ve been dealing with the humidity around here. Once you can block out that noise and just focus on your craft — and, obviously, hydrate — it’s just a normal game. So we’re excited for it. Bring it on.”
Edsall said he has coached early-season games in 100-degree heat, and others that were probably played in the 90s but felt hotter due to humidity. He is more concerned with how the Huskies will handle Fresno State than any elements. The Bulldogs were 3-3 in the pandemic-truncated 2020 season, 4-8 (2-6 Mountain West) in 2019.
“I think they’re going to be well prepared to go into it,” Edsall said of UConn players. “I told them (Tuesday), it will be a little bit faster than maybe what we anticipated and you’ll have to adjust to that. We’ve prepared the best way we can and I know our guys are going to be ready to play. I’m not worried about how they’re going to compete, the kind of shape they’re in, everything else. Now, can we go execute at a very high level for 60 minutes on a consistent basis? That is going to be the challenge. I know the guys are going to be ready. All of us have to be ready to make adjustments as we go through the game.”