Wow! What an effort by the UMass Defense!

Don't let the 1 point loss obscure maybe the best ever defensive effort on the part of UMass.

The Navy option ran up 700 yards of offense against Colorado State in the poinsettia Bowl. They ran for over 400 yards against Colorado State last week.

Check out the defensive stats for the UMass-Navy game!

• Navy had only 14 first downs
• 268 total rushing yards
• 44 yards lost rushing
• Only 87 yards in the second half

Navy was fumbling because a UMass player was in the middle of the Navy backfield all day. Note the two batted pitches when a UMass defensive player went flying by the pitchman.

The totals could have been even better. In the first half the defense was in position, but the burly Navy backs were running out of UMass tackles. In the second half, we wrapped up and Navy had only 87 total yards.

Note that our star LB Brad Anderson was suspended for the game. If he had been available , we would have made life even more miserable for Navy.

In a blazing hot Navy-Marine Corps stadium the UMass defense played one of the best (if not the best) ever defensive efforts in UMass history.

Image above by Larry French.

UPDATE: Matt Vaoutour has an article on the Navy game here (registration required, but worth it)