Edsall Hopes Improved Play Carries Over
The Huskies didn’t come back to Connecticut riding high off a second win, but there was a sense of triumph nonetheless.
USF beat UConn 38-30 on Saturday, but the near-win was a confidence boost to a team struggling through another year of rebuilding. The burst of positivity comes a week before the Huskies take on UMass for homecoming, and coach Randy Edsall is hoping it’ll lead to another good week of practice and a strong showing on the field. Maybe, it’ll even lead to win No. 2.
“I think that some things we did in that game we hadn’t been doing before. Now what we’ve got to do is just continue to get better,” Edsall said on Monday. “I thought that we had an excellent week of practice before that game, and we’ve got to carry that over to this week and, again, just make sure that we continue to get better and improve on a week-to-week basis as we’ve got UMass coming in here this weekend.”
Going into this week, Edsall is looking to capitalize on the positives from Saturday’s game, pointing them out and encouraging his players to continue making those plays. While studying video and getting familiar with UMass is important, Edsall said he’s more focused on showing his players what it was about the way they played against USF that kept them firmly in the game up until the end. He wants them to see how their work paid off, and then he wants them to replicate it.
“They’re a good football team,” Edsall said. “[UMass coach Mark Whipple] is an outstanding coach. They have good players, and they do a lot of different things defensively. Offensively, they’re more than capable of putting up points on the board if you take a look at what they’ve done against the people they’ve played. For us, we’ve got to know who they are, but we’ve got to make sure to continue to get better and do the things that we can do to give ourselves an opportunity to win.”
Homecoming will be a chance to secure another victory for the Huskies, as UMass is sitting at 2-6, as well as a chance for UConn to show that last week’s performance wasn’t a fluke.
Both Edsall and Whipple are in their second tenures at their schools, making Saturday’s matchup an interesting display of two coaches with struggling teams desperately trying to rebuild the programs they led in the past.
Edsall said that he can’t speak on Whipple’s behalf, but there are a lot of changes that UConn’s program has undergone in the years between when he first coached at Connecticut and now. Ultimately, as he’s said many times since returning, it’s about small changes and improvements that will eventually produce bigger results.
“The competition is outstand- ing, and what we’re just trying to do is get better each week and continue to improve our roster each way we can each and every year, and it’s one of those processes that doesn’t happen overnight,” Edsall said. “You’ve got to be patient, and you just want to see your guys improving week to week, and I think we are. That’s what we’ve got to continue to do, and then we’ve got to continue to get them bigger and stronger and faster over the winter.
“It’s not one of those projects where it can turn the ship as quickly as maybe some people would like it to be turned. We’re moving in the right direction, and we’re just going to keep doing that and just keep getting better.”