More Kool-Aide! Saturday, September 12, 2009

UMass demolished Albany tonight, 44-7. UMass ended up forcing five turnovers, be it by tipped balls or knocking the snot out of the quarterback who dropped the ball or ripping the ball out of receivers hands sort of like Teddy Bruschi did to the Colts in the Divisional Round in January of 2005. The offense was pretty unstoppable. WR Victor Cruz had two touchdowns, a 3 yard reception and a beautiful finger tip catch which turned into 67 yard touchdown catch (a lot of YAC on that one...probably 40 yards or so). UMass benched all the starters after a while and that gave RB Jon Hernandez (I had never heard of him) an opportunity. He got a 1 yard TD and followed that up with a 58 yard run for a Touchdown UMass's next offensive snap.

Quarterback Kyle Havens was good in his home debut. My initial impression is he's not Liam Coen, but he'll do. Then again, my initial impression of Liam Coen was "Who is number 12 and why isn't Tim Day still starting? This is crap!" so I guess he's ahead of Coen in that regard. Every once in a while he'd made a mistake and it was always overthrowing the ball. And not just barely overthrowing either. I wouldn't even be close. In fact, on the Cruz 67 yard touchdown, I think Havens overthrew another receiver because firstly the other receiver jumped up to try to catch it and secondly Cruz came sprinting across the field and made a spectacular catch. Either it was overthrown or perfectly placed... and based on other plays I'm going with overthrown. Havens needs to work on that.

I do really like Havens' attitude though. He's a junior college transfer and last week after the Kansas State game someone asked him if he could talk about the difference between playing against Kansas State and playing against community colleges. He said "There is no difference. Football is football and it doesn't change." After the media member pushed him he said "I guess there were 50,000 people here, so that's different." This week he had a couple of similarly confident/arrogant answers that make me love/hate players depending on if they're on my team or not.

The one bad thing is wide receiver Jeremy Horne left the game with a slight concussion. It happened in the first half and he didn't return, though Coach Morris said after the game it was precautionary and he should be ok for next week's game against CAA opponent Rhode Island.

BC probably won. They were winning 24-0 at half when I left and when I got to the car and turned on the radio, they scored another touchdown to make it 30-0. Then I decided as that game was almost as boring as the Northeastern one I'd be better off listening to music and I shut it off.

Oh yeah, in CAA news, UNH beat FBS team Ball State tonight. I don't think UNH has lost to an FBS team since I've followed Atlantic 10/CAA football. Looking it up, they beat Army last year, Marshall in 2007, Northwestern in 2006, and Rutgers in 2004. 2005 they didn't play an FBS team, but as that New Hampshire team was pretty much the best ever going 11-1 before losing in the second round of the playoffs, I think they would have beaten whoever that year too.

Last time an FBS team beat UNH was Central Michigan in 2003. Why does anyone in FBS still schedule them? Do they enjoy paying for embarrassing defeats? Is it cause all the cool FBS programs are doing it? The next three victims are Pittsburgh in 2010, Minnesota in 2012 and Boston College in 2013.

Albany @ UMass Friday, September 11, 2009

Tomorrow night is the home opener for the Massachusetts Minutemen. For the second consecutive year and the third time since 2005, the opponent is the Albany Great Danes.

My junior year the Great Danes came and UMass rented lights for to make it a night game. The Minutemen proceeded to give the Great Danes a beating they'll never forget, 40-0. The game was significant because UMass set an FCS record by recording 3 safeties. The UMass game notes say "Ironically UMass tied their own mark with three safeties in Rhode Island in 2007." How is that ironic? Back to the point, the funny part is, at least 2 (maybe all three) safeties were recorded because Albany's long snapper kept snapping the ball 20 yards over the punter's head through the end zone. It was pretty hysterical. He kept coming back to the bench and after getting screamed at by the coaches, he'd practice snapping the ball and he'd do awesome. Then he'd go back onto the field and snap the ball 20 yards over the punter's head and the process would repeat.

Last year, I missed the game but I hear it was a lot more competitive. I mean, Albany scored, so it had to be. UMass still won, 30-15. I don't know much about Albany. They're 0-1 after losing to Georgia Southern 29-26. They have a senior quarterback in Vinny Esposito who was 14-28 with an INT and 110 yards last week. I'm assuming they run some kind of crazy Miami Dolphin-esque Wild Cat Option thing, as another quarterback named Andrew Smith had 8 carries for 99 yards and a touch down. Weird thing is he didn't throw a pass. He's not the featured back either. That's David McCarty who had 24 carries for 66 yards. Maybe they wanna switch that? Smith also apparently returns kicks for them. He returned all 6 Albany received last week for 140 yards. That's not a bad day for the back up quarterback. I'll have to keep my eye on him.

Oh yeah... I'm also going to the first half of BC vs Kent State. I just hope it's no where near as terrible as the Northeastern game was last week. I never want to see anything like that again as long as I live.

Predictions: Before the Kansas State game, I would have went with UMass over Albay 24-21. My logic would have been "UMass has been on the decline since 2006. Albany seems like a team on the rise. I just think that the declining UMass is still better than a rising Albany, but not by a lot." Then by all reports Havens looked awesome and the defense was tremendous. Receivers just need to start catching balls and this teams poised to make a run at the playoffs. (Yeah, we got playoffs in FCS, and we talk about the playoffs). Now I'm drinking the Kool-Aide and expecting UMass to win this game easily, 28-14.

I got nothing for BC-Kent State. Let's go with 24-21. I don't know who will win.

Lastly rooting for Ohio State over USC because I still haven't forgiven Pete Carrol for doing his best to ruin the Patriots.

EDIT: Here's a write up on the Albany back up quarterback. Note the championships won by Esposito referred to in the coach's comments must be conference championships. I don't think Albany's made the playoffs ever, and their conference, the North East Conference, doesn't have an auto bid yet...but I think they will in a year or two.