Good morning!
The UMass football team nearly came back from a 20-point deficit to beat South Carolina on its home turf last Saturday. The Minutemen pulled to within 34-28 with two fourth quarter touchdowns, but the Gamecocks ran the last four-and-a-half minutes off the clock to escape being embarrassed in front of 73,428 fans at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Someday UMass will pull off an upset but it won’t be today against unheralded Wagner College of the Football Conference Subdivision, otherwise known as Division I-AA.
Wagner is a small liberal arts college located on Staten Island. It has a 2,200 student enrollment and plays in the Northeast Conference against such schools as Duquesne, Saint Francis and Sacred Heart. More than half its players hail from New York or New Jersey.
The Seahawks were 1-10 last year, including a 70-6 loss to Brigham Young, but opened this season with back-to-back wins against St. Anselm and Concordia by a combined 76-16 score at 3,300-seat Hameline Field.
Their 4-3 record includes a 42-10 loss to Boston College two weeks after the Minutemen lost to the Eagles, 26-7, at Gillette Stadium.
The Seahawks average less than one turnover a game and score 81 percent of the time they reach the red zone. They are middle-of-the-pack offensively, but rank 28th in team defense of the 122 teams in the FCS.
They’ll be overmatched this afternoon against a UMass offense that’s come into its own. UMass has racked up 153 points its last five games after scoring only 35 points in the first three games.
Last week, USC’s radio announcer Todd Ellis (a former Gamecocks’ quarterback) marveled at the schemes UMass coach Mark Whipple had devised to befuddle the South Carolina secondary. “We’ll be seeing a lot of this the rest of the year,” he remarked, referring to upcoming opponents’ game plans.
Despite all the talk about injuries, the first string offense has been intact since week one and injured quarterback Ross Comis has given way Andrew Ford. Last week was his coming-of-age game with 20 completions for 242 yards and three touchdowns.
Ford’s favorite target is a former high school teammate and Gronk-sized tight end named Adam Breneman. Often injured at Penn State, Breneman announced in August that he was returning to play out his eligibility at UMass. He has 44 catches and four touchdowns and his 484 receiving yards are the third-most by tight ends in the FBS.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is the UMass defense is ranked 109th of the 128 teams in the FBS. “UMass couldn’t stop warm butter sliding down a hot knife,” wrote South Carolina columnist David Cloninger.
Saving the worst for last, UMass has kicked just one field goal in eight games while opponents have kicked 13 field goals, and that translates to a 39-3 scoring disparity.
Bill Parcells says you are what your record says you are, and UMass is 1-7. Next week UMass will embark on a three-week odyssey to play Troy (Al.) University, Brigham Young University and the University of Hawaii.
The prospect of a 2-10 season looms large, but first there’s the matter of beating Wagner on Senior Day at McGuirk Alumni Stadium. The game kicks off at noon and USA Today computer whiz Jeff Sagarin predicts UMass will win, 36-18.
Let’s hope he’s right, because losing to the Seahawks wouldn’t be an upset, it would be a disaster.
The tentative 2017 schedule includes a decent slate of home games (all in Amherst) against Georgia State, Appalachian State, Old Dominion, Hawaii, Ohio and Maine.
Road games are at Coastal Carolina, Temple, Miss. State, Tennessee, the University of South Florida and BYU.
UMass is losing just 13 seniors and that bodes well, because going into this week’s games those opponents are a collective 53-36.
Told that Andrew Miller credited him with converting him from a starter to reliever during an otherwise forgettable managing tenure in Boston, Bobby Valentine told SXM: “He’s a 6-7 lefthander who throws 96 mph. We decided to get him out of his windup, get rid of the high leg kick and stop his throws to first. After that it was all him.”
USA Today’s Jack Torry points out that the Indians were named for Louis Sockalexis, who in 1897 was the first Native American to play pro baseball. “Cleveland was (also) the first AL team to sign African Americans,” wrote Torry, referring to Larry Doby. “The culturally elite Boston Red Sox were the last to integrate.”
Listening to Indians’ broadcasters Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus has been preferable to hearing the three am-egos try to one-up each other in the Fox TV booth. Baseball began with radio and still comes off best over the airwaves. … Catcher Jonathan Lucroy turned down a trade to the Indians on Aug. 1, citing “economic reasons.” Lucroy wound up with the Texas Rangers and was 1-for-12 in the ALDS. “How do you like us now?” asked analyst Todd Hollandsworth during his SXM morning show.
Squibbers: Six-foot-5 Georgia freshman quarterback Jacob Eason’s father is named Tony, but not “Champagne” Tony who quarterbacked the Patriots into their first Super Bowl. Jacob’s dad Tony flashed his pedigree at Notre Dame where was a wide receiver. … The Seattle Seahawks miss Marshawn Lynch. They rushed for only 52 yards in five quarters during Sunday’s 6-6 overtime classic against Arizona. Their stout defense will be a good test for the Patriots’ offense when the teams meet in a Sunday night clash on Nov. 13 at Gillette Stadium. … The Oakland Raiders are off to their best start since the year their season ended on a snowy night in Foxborough. That was the night the “tuck rule” became as infamous in football as the “hanging chads” had become in politics. … The UMass website counts the 2014 spring game as a win, upping their record from 3-9 to 4-9. Really. Check it out before it’s corrected. … Kudos to New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick for calling Heineken’s “never flip another man’s meat” commercial for what it is: “just another vulgar ad that fools might confuse with clever.” … Arizona State kicker Zane Gonzalez has converted 20-of-21 field goal attempts, including five of six from over 50 yards. … UMass will play against 26-year-old Brigham Young quarterback Taysom Hill in Provo on Nov. 19. Hill did three years of missionary work and was medically redshirted last season. … I grabbed the flashy new remote on Tuesday night, pressed the microphone button and said “World Series.” Up popped the World Series of Poker. … In Sunday’s NY Times, the Cubs’ Ben Zobrist spoke to writer Billy Witz about relationship issues: “You find a good one, you hold onto it. At this point I’m committed, but we don’t talk a whole lot. We just work together.” Zobrist, who is happily married, was referring to his baseball bat.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.