Holy Cross Preview

UMass' second game of the 2008 season is against Holy Cross

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The UMass game notes are not up yet, I'll add 'em when they arrive.

UPDATE: UMass game notes (.html), game notes (.pdf)

Holy Cross game notes are here . The Holy Cross fan site is called CrossSports.com . The Crusaders football message board is here .

Patriot League football web site here .

Besides the usual media outlets, Charter TV 3 will televise the game to central Mass on cable.

Trivia: UMass played the first ever football game at Holy Cross and the first ever game at Fitton Field.

Trivia II: UMass does not have a home game at McGuirk in the entire month of September. Anyone know if that ever happened before?

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Holy Cross finished last year 7-4 and just missed winning the Patriot league championship.

The last time Holy Cross was in the playoffs was 1983 when they lost to Western Carolina 21-28.

Their most notable win was a 31-28 victory over Ivy League champ Harvard.

Chuck Burton has an extensive Holy Cross report over on his blog Lehigh Football Nation.

Some articles about this year's Crusader team here and here .

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The strength of the Holy Cross team is their QB Dominic Randolph. He a 6-3 223 pd Senior. In 2007 he went 297-482 61.2 % completion average, 3604 yards 30 TDs and 8 INT.

Last year against UMass Randolph set a Holy Cross record with 32 completions out of 62 attempts for 296 yards and 2 TDs.

Randolph is also a Payton Award candidate .

The Crusaders return their two top rushers Terrance Glass and Mike Kielt who combined for 930 yards and 12 TDs. They both averaged over 5.0 yards a carry.

Holy Cross also returns four of their starting five offensive linemen.

Their 3rd and 4th receivers are back and Brett McDermott and Jon Brock had a combined 110 catches for 1,263 yards and 6 TDs.

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The Holy Cross defense returns six starters and their two top tacklers linebackers Marcus Rodriguez and Ryan Stewart.

They will have three new starters in the defensive secondary.

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Game outlook:

Uh Oh! The forecast is for rain at Holy Cross as the remains of Hurricane Hanna cross New England.

I hope that this does not turn into another Rhode Island game.

This game has upset written all over it. UMass needs to make a quantum jump in defensive tackling and the offense must get in sync to beat the high scoring Crusaders.

Holy Cross should have its best team in 20 years and they should contend for the Patriot League title. A win over top-five ranked UMass would be their best win in a long, long time.