Travel Friday for the Minutemen

As our Minutemen make their way to Carbondale IL, we get to do some pre-game reading.

If you have been following the articles I've been publishing links to so far this year, it will not surprise you that David Coulson is picking Southern Illinois.

Bruce Dowd does not like our style of play, but he grudgingly gives us the nod.

The Boston Herald, which does an excellent job covering UMass football, has a game article here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has an article here .

The JG-TC has an article about Saluki redshirt freshman Connor James.

Satuday is going to be a busy day in Saluki land.

The pressure is on SIU .

The Providence Journal has an article about favorite son Liam Coen and Rhody's search for a new coach.

UPDATE: Matty Vautour says that Brad Listorti may be available for the SIU game .

AROUND THE NATION:

Delaware is raising ticket prices in the expectation of another home playoff game.

And New Hampshire is looking for a defense .

Coach Brown's show tonight at 7:00

OK, it seems as if Coach Brown's show will be on tonight at 7:00 pm.

Listen here .

I thought there might not be one because of travel.

Recruiting 2008 -- QB Mike Pierce

UMass is interested in Mike Pierce a 6-0 203 pd QB from Andover, MA. Story here . Pierce went 146-260 for 2,179 YDS 20 TDs.

The Boston Globe has a page on him here .

More UMass-Saluki stuff

The Boston Herald has an article about the friendship between Liam Coen and Rasheed Rancher.

The UMass Daily Collegian has an article about the challenges SIU presents . The collegian has another game article here .

An SIU paper has an interview with Saluki running back John Randle (96-489 5.09 YDS/Carry 4 TDs)

Meanwhile, Saluki WR Justin Allen is confident he can handle our defensive backs.

This article looks at UMass from the SIU side.

And Sporting News columnist Kent Schmdt picks SIU over the Minutemen .

More Playoff Articles

The Salem News has an article about UMass players (and roommates) Chris Zardas and Kyle Harrington. Zardas was injured in the last series in the Fordham game and the article infers that he's OK, which is good news.

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has an article that interviews SIU head coach Jerry Kill.

The Saluki's have their UMass game notes up here (a pdf download)

We're part of the biggest day in SIU's sports history .

David Coulson reviews last Saturday's playoff games.

The Flordia Sun-Sentinel has an article about UMass LB Charles Walker. Some nice publicity for UMass football in talent-rich south Flordia.

UPDATE: Matty Vautour has a game article here, which includes the UMass injury status. Chris Zardas did injure ligaments in his knee (but he may play anyway).

AROUND THE PLAYOFFS:

UNI gets Delaware in the next round .

And UNI found New Hampshire a different level of competition than they were used to.

Baker among those kicking arse

Deven Baker gave fans a little preview as to what to expect at Temple University in the upcoming four years.
He kicked some serious arse, as Jim Rome might describe it, in some recent games this fall.
Deven Baker's most recent game is describe in this article in the Bridgewater (N.J.)
Courier-News
All over, future Temple players are not only part of the story, but THE story for their high school teams.
When they come here, they will expect to make no less of an impact.

UMass-Fordham Web Album

I've added a UMass Fordham Web Album on Picassa. The link is here. There are about 40 images of the game.

Also added a link in the sidebar under the "2007 UMass images section"

UMass-SIU to be televised on MASN

That's the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network . Their program listing does not yet show Saturday's schedule.

The game will also available on ESPN+ .

This page shows the game on MASN.

MASN is found on Dish TV Channel 438 and Direct TV's Channel 626.

Some people are saying that the game may be blacked out in certain areas...

Great UMass minds think alike, I got an e-mail, a comment from blog reader Drew Comeau (and former UMass player) and I found it myself all about the same time. Thanks to all who made sure I had the information.

More info when I have it.

UPDATE: The game will be shown on NESN as per this UMass Athletic Dept post. Yeah! NESN easily has the widest distribution of any channel we've talked about so far.

That's channel 434 on Dish Network.

More playoff stuff

The Boston Herald has a UMass article here .

Keeper has UMass as #4 in FCS, however he has UMass as a three point underdog to SIU (in fact, he has all the CAA teams as underdogs).

Meanwhile, back in Carbondale, the Salukis have a suffocating defense .

Eastern Illinois TE Jordan Campanella had a big day against SIU. Wish we had Brad Listorti available. Sigh.

UPDATE: UMass has its game notes up. Nothing yet from SIU.

AROUND FCS:

Mark Whipple is not going to Rhode Island.

The Delaware Hens are, on the other hand, going to UNI.

Monday Morning Reading

The Boston Herald has a UMass article here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has an article here .

Three articles about the Salukis: They're thinking about UMass, their quarterback Rick Hill is unstoppable, and SIU is so good they're boring .

They have a message board "Saluki Talk"

Southern Illinios' press guide is only a six meg download here .

By the way, SME network is picking SIU over UMass in the next round (see the playoff chart)

UPDATE: Matty Vautour of the Hamp Gazette has a game notes article here .

AROUND THE PLAYOFFS:

Delaware is the next CAA team to have a shot at #1 Northern Iowa.

UNH is looking towards next year.

Uh-Oh! TV coverage of UMass-Southern Illinois may be a problem

Just received the following e-mail from Jason Yellin, the UMass Sports Information Director:

The UMass at Southern Illinois NCAA Quarterfinal FCS Football game will take
place at 3:30 p.m. ET in Carbondale, Illinois. It will be shown on ESPN
Gameplan. It will also be available on other various channels across the
nation. Those channels will be released later this week.

 Here is the complete Quarterfinal schedule.



December  1 at Boone, North Carolina (ESPN Gameplan at Noon ET)

Eastern Wash. (9-3) at Appalachian St. (10-2)



December  1 at Cedar Falls, Iowa (ESPN Gameplan at 2 p.m. ET)

Delaware (9-3) at No. 1 UNI (12-0)



December  1 at Carbondale, Illinois (ESPN Gameplan at 3:30 p.m. ET)

Massachusetts (10-2) at No. 4 Southern Ill. (11-1)



December  1 at Spartanburg, South Carolina (ESPN Gameplan at 7 p.m. ET)

Richmond (10-2) at Wofford (9-3)

Let's hope NESN or somebody picks up the game. Otherwise it's $21.95 a week. Link here.

Fordham game articles

Image above is a UMass Athletic Dept image.

On the day after one of the most impressive offensive showings in UMass history, we have a lot of game articles.

The Hartford Courant has an article featuring the running of Matt Lawrence.

The Boston Herald has an article featuring the pass-and-catch combo of Coen and Rancher .

The Herald has another game article here .

The NY Daily News has an article about Fordham's last game of the season here .

Jeff Thomas has two game articles here and here .

The Boston Globe has a game article here .

And the Worcester Telegram has another here .

Matty Vautour has a game article in the Hampshire Gazette here.

AROUND THE PLAYOFFS:

The CAA has game recaps for all the CAA teams in the playoffs including box scores here .

New Hampshire came within 7 seconds of upsetting #1 UNI.

JMU fumbled away a win at Appalachian State (and brought a groan from the UMass crowd at McGuirk)

Richmond took care of business against Eastern Kentucky.

CSN recaps the entire playoffs here .

Woah! Major Offense!

Well, on a day that the defense struggled (but notice the defense did its job at the end) the UMass offense was all over the Rams.

Liam Coen added another significant record to his total----best passing yards in a single game with 419 yards. UMass had over 600 total yards. He went 24-37 for 419 and 4 TDs.

Matt Lawrence had a huge game with 167 yards and 3 TDs.

And Charles Walker proved you can beat 'em with brains as UMass took the blitz off and the
fordham QB threw the ball right into his arms.

The UMass write-up (with quotes and stats and stuff) is here .

The Fordham write-up is here .

ESPN game recap is here .

And a NY Times reporter totally screws up up this game story. Can you guess who we were booing? It wasn't the Minutemen.

UPDATE: We'll be off to Southern Illinois next week.

Game Day Fordham

Well, it's 12 degrees here in Jaffrey, NH. We're going to have to bundle up for the game. Let's Go UMass!

The Boston Herald has an article about Masella's Fordham Rams visiting UMass. The Herald also has another game day article here .

Matty Vautour has a game article here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has a Fordham game article here .

The CAA has a game-day page for all CAA teams in the playoffs with links to their audio feeds and the like here .

Some game notes: UMass, following a tradition set by Coach Whipple will switch to all-maroon uniforms for home games and all-white for road playoff games. This will be the first time we've seen them in this color combination with the new uniforms.

Also, teams are only allowed to dress 60 players in the playoffs.

AROUND THE PLAYOFFS:

This Winston-Salem sports writer likes the FCS playoffs, but does not know much about the teams.

If we win this week, we meet the winner of the Southern Illinois-Eastern Illinois game. The Southern Illinoisian has a game article here . Another SIU-EI game article here .

Meanwhile, the Hens destroyed the Hornets in their first ever meeting.

And New Hampshire plays #1 ranked UNI later today.

Kalamazoo report: Golden salary is $575,000

By Mike Gibson
Some strong praise from Western Michigan coach Bill Cubit in this latest Kalamazoo Gazette preview, including mention of Al Golden's salary.
Five-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand dollars a year.
Hmm.
Just as we thought all along.
Al Golden is going nowhere, not because he makes $575,000 a year, but because both Temple and Golden's people, including his agent, wanted to make the deal a lock-solid one.
Temple, for its part, took a risk _ hiring an unproven assistant coach for a salary double what the next-highest coach in the MAC made.
The TU administration needed an insurance policy and Al Golden gave that to them in writing. There is no buyout. There never needed to be one.
Any buyout clause will be written into the next contract, after Golden gets the job done here.
That's where the "this university has made a commitment to me and my commitment to them is that I will build a house of brick, not straw" comment came from. That wasn't something Golden made up as a nice sound bite. It was part of the fabric of the contract between him and the university.
The straw house takes about three years to build.
The brick house takes five.
Al Golden is in this for at least five, hopefully more, years.
Golden realized a day or two before he was even hired that this two-way commitment was the minimum that was needed for Temple to turn this thing around.
For that, among all other things, he should be applauded.

Friday Morning reading

A couple of articles feature senior UMass players this morning. The Boston Globe has an article about the friendship between J.J. Moore and Charles Walker and is worth your time.

Matty Vautour has an article about senior UMass kicker Chris Koepplin that is also worth reading.

Three articles about tomorrow's UMass-Fordham game: the Journal-News has one here , the Daily News has the Rams ready for UMass and the UMass Daily Collegian has a game article here.

AROUND THE PLAYOFFS:

The Union Leader has a UNH-UNI article here.

If UMass wins Saturday, they meet the winner of the Southern Illinois-Eastern Illinois game. TG-TC online has an extensive article on those two teams here .


UPDATE: Bruce Dowd has his weekly "CAA Today" column here . Worth reading.

FCS Playoffs start today with Delaware-Delaware State

Remember to set your VCR for the first game of the 2007 FCS Playoffs today. Delaware meets the team they have been trying to avoid for fifty years, Delaware State at 1:30 pm on ESPNU.

That's channel 148 on Dish network and Channel 609 on Direct TV.

UPDATE: The Hens-Hornets game will also be shown on ESPN and ESPN HD. A big thank-you to the Lawrence family for the update information.

UPDATE II: OK, just to mess with our heads, ESPNU is showing Toledo-Central Michigan. That's not what was shown on the listed schedule on their website.

Looks like the only broadcast of the Hens-Hornets is ESPN as the Lawrence family indicated. Start times seems to be 1:30 pm.

KAEO Shannon James

Coach Brown said in the his Chanel 40 TV show that former UMass All-American Shannon James has been named the defensive MVP of Calgary Stampeders.

Turkey Day reading

Some reading while you recover from your Thanksgiving Day Feast. The image above is from the UMass Athletic Web site.

In case you missed it, seventeen Minutemen were chosen to the CAA All-Conference teams. The UMass web site has an article here . Matty Vautour has an article on the All-conference selection here . I'm a little pressed for time today, so I don't have links to the individual players. The UMass article does.

The UMass Football Blog is in agreement with the picks. However, the Blog feels that UMass DE Michael Hansen belongs in the All-CAA list somewhere.

The PA Times-Tribune has an article about Fordham WR Asa Lucas.

AROUND THE PLAYOFFS:

Charles Burton reviews the first round of the playoffs in his "CSN Way" column.

David Coulson in his "Around FCS" column rails against the inclusion of UNH in the playoffs .

In his weekly "FCS Preview" (a small pdf download), Eric Gemunder praises the selection of UNH in the playoffs.

In the meantime, UNH is damm glad to be there.

Out in Northern Iowa, they're looking forward to the game.

And Appalachian State is feeling confident.

Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving.

More playoff stuff

If you haven't read CSN's "All about the Division I Championship", you should.

Ditto with CSN's "Division I Championship Notes and Facts".

The Boston Herald consistently does some of the finest articles about UMass football and this one about the aftermath of the Boston College game certainly keeps the average up.

The Herald also covers Liam Coen's playing through his knee injury.

The UMass Daily Collegian does a Fordham article here .

On the Fordham website there is an article on how Coach Mesalla and 12 Ram players were named All-Patriot League.

UPDATE: Matty Vautour has an article about Jeromy Miles and an update about Brad Listorti.

Temple vs. Kent State ... the video

UMass-Hofstra Picassa Web Album

Right Click on the image and Blogger displays a larger view.

I've set up a 27 image Picassa Web album here .

The images are courtesy of the Koepplin family.

More Fordham and playoff news

UMass has its Fordham game notes up here . Fordham has an article, but no game notes yet.

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has a UMass-Fordham article here .

AROUND THE PLAYOFFS:

Three UNH articles here and here and here .

Rhode Island's Head Coach Tim Stowers was fired yesterday.

If we win, we meet the winner of the Eastern Illinois-Southern Illinois game.

UPDATE: We finished the regular-season Gridiron Power Index at #5.

R.I.P. Lasalle

Sorry to bring you down but FCS program LaSalle has dropped their program .

J.J. Moore Co-CAA Offensive Player-of-the-Week

UMass Capitan J.J. Moore was the CAA Co-Offensive Player-of-the-Week against Hofstra. UMass press release here .

Moore had 11 catches for 155 yards (half UMass' passing total) to win the award.

Going into the playoffs, he has 65 catches 891 YDS 13.7 yds/catch 5 TD 54 LONG 81 YDS/Game.

UMass Football Blog News

I would just like to let the UMass Football Blog on-line community know that we had the biggest day in UMass Football Blog history yesterday.

There was more traffic in one day than I had during a couple of months in 2005. Overall daily visits have about doubled since 2006.

I've also had two e-mail recently about placing ads on the blog and of course, Blogger has Adsense.

But I'll never have ads here...

Go UMass and thanks to all the UMass Football Blog community.

More Playoff articles

The Boston Herald has a UMass-Fordham article here .

The Boston Globe has another here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has a UMass article here .

Over at UNH, theWildcats are amazed and happy about going to UNI.

The Sporting News has a playoff article here.

Did you know that there is an East Coast Bowl ? It's Saturday at noon and a couple of players we know are in it.

UPDATE: Keeper's latest ranking has us at #4 and a 24 point favorite over Fordham .

UPDATE II: Matty Vautour has an article about the Hofstra game and another about the upcoming game with Fordham .

Three cheers for Temple's biggest fan

I wish all Temple fans stood up and cheered like this guy.

By Mike Gibson
Al Golden, meet Cap Poklemba.
Oh, you have?
Kinda sorta.
"I've never really met coach Golden," Poklemba said Saturday. "Well, I did give a speech at the pep rally for Penn State and then I handed the microphone to him and said, "Good luck against Penn State coach.' He looked at me like, "this guy is crazy.' "
Well, he is, Al, but crazy in a very good way.
I have a feeling Al Golden would like Cap Poklemba very much if he ever got a chance to know him.
When we last saw Poklemba on the field in a meaningful game, five years ago almost to this very day, the Owls' kicker drove a stake through the hearts of Rutgers' fans in the final seconds of a 20-17 win at Rutgers' Stadium. He then led the team over to the Big East logo in the corner of that stadium and stomped on it with 55 other players as the strains of "T for Temple U" rang in the background.
It was a Delicious moment for the program.
Ever since, Poklemba has been doing his part to make Lincoln Financial Field a homefield advantage for Golden's Owls.
Poklemba is a one-man raving lunatic with a purpose, at times going into the heart of the lower deck to yell out, "I DON'T CARE WHAT AGE YOU ARE, YOUNG OR OLD, I JUST WANT YOU TO GET UP ON THIRD DOWN!!" He then alternately leads the crowd into chants of "Let's Go Temple" or "DEE-FENSE, DEE-FENSE" or "MOVE THOSE CHAINS, MOVE THOSE CHAINS, MOVE THOSE CHAINS ... HOOT" ... after each first down.
Then he runs to the student section and acts like Eugene Ormandy or Leonard Bernstein and orchestrates that section in the same manner. They respond to him with a wall of beautiful sound. Poklemba is only missing a baton.
Golden himself must have noticed, or heard, the nearly 17,000 fans sound like 70,000 strong in a 24-14 win over Kent State on Saturday afternoon because, after the game, the first thing the coach did was run up to each member of the team and direct them to the sidelines to high five the fans.
Or he must have noticed the 21,000 for Homecoming Day sounding like 200,000.
There is one person responsible for this and it's Cap Poklemba.
Al Golden gets it.
So does Cap Poklemba. Nobody asked Cap Poklemba to do what he's done, but what he has accomplished is demonstrate that one man can make a big difference.
It's a lesson all of us can learn and part of the fabric of Al Golden's character.
It's a shame the two have never been formally introduced. It would be nice (i.e., smart) if the university found some sort of kicking coach/promotions position for this dedicated young man soon.
Whatever, in some storage room at Edberg-Olson Hall there is a most valuable player award for this year's Temple Owls and it's going to deservedly go to Adam DiMichele.
Yet somewhere in some box way in the back there should be a most valuable Owl award and it would be nice if Al Golden gave it to Cap Poklemba at the football banquet.
There's not a more deserving Owl, past or present.

It's Fordham!

UMass draws Fordham in the first round. The Rams finished 8-3 in regular season.

Fordham's Head Coach is Tom Masella , former a former UMass coach. Masella is a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award . Also on the Fordham coaching staff is former UMass coach Frank Forcucci.

Fordham's 2007 stats are here .

The Ram's roster is here .

Fordham's football media guide is here (a 34 Meg pdf download).

Fordham has a football message board here .

ESPN has a re-cap of Fordham's last game loss to Bucknell here . The Sporting news has a article about the Ram's turn around under Masella here .

Patriot League press release about UMass-Fordham here .

UPDATE: ESPNU has the filled in bracket here.

UPDATE II: A better printable bracket here .

UPDATE III: The VA Daily Press on the record five CAA teams in the playoffs. The Sports Network has a bracket article here .

Selection Show on ESPNU at 3:30 pm

The NCAA FCS playoff selection and bracket announcement show will be at 3:30 pm today.

The show will be televised on ESPNU. Thats channel 148 on Dish Network and channel 609 on Direct TV.

In addition, two internet FCS radio shows will be airing extensive commentary. SME will be broadcasting here starting at 12:00 noon. College Sports Network will be on from 3:00 to 5:00 pm here .

UPDATE: Print yourself a blank playoff bracket here (a pdf download)

Selection Sunday!

Liam Coen had food poisoning before the Hofstra game. Coach Brown's wife Deborah (who is a RN) to rescue. She hangs a IV for Coen and he goes 22-34 for 309 yards and 4 TDs. Story here .

Newsday has a story from the Hofstra side here .

The Hofstra athletic dept write-up is here .

The Worcester Telegram is here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has a game article here .

The Boston Herald has a article here .

The Sports Network recaps the results from the top of FCS here .

UPDATE: SME has been posting projected playoff brackets for the last three weeks. The latest and last effort is here . In a couple of hours, we'll see how things play out.

UMass wins CAA Auto-bid on a Coin Toss!

The CAA athletic directors met and concluded that UMass and Richmond were essentially tied in accomplishments.

The CAA director held a coin toss and UMass won the toss and thus the CAA Auto-bid.

Details here .

UPDATE: Woah! Things are going to be tough for the committee to pick the last CAA team in the playoffs.

UMass and Richmond as co-champs are in.

I would think that JMU at 8-3 and in clear third place in the CAA is in.

The question is---who, if anyone, gets a fourth bid from the CAA. Delaware lost. How do you parse the teams with three CAA losses? Final CAA standings here .

CAA Champions!

UMass wins the CAA Championship with a dominating Defensive performance against the Pride!

UMass is 22-2 against FCS competition the last two years.

Hofstra could not even score against the second team defense.

Links when they become available.

UPDATE: UMass' defense held Hofstra to eight first downs and 168 total yards. Five sacks and 8 TFL. UMass write-up and box score here .

UPDATE II: ESPN recaps the UMass-Hofstra game here .

Championship Saturday!

Well, UMass plays at Hofstra today at 12:00 Noon. Win and the Minutemen cannot do worse than a tie for the CAA Championship! Go UMass!

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has a game article here .

Matt Vautour of the Hampshire Gazette is here .

The UMass-Hofstra game will be televised on ESPNU. That's channel 148 on Dish network.

In other UMass news, Jason Hatchell is still a contender for the Buck Buchanan Award.

The CAA has game information for all of today's CAA games here .

The Delaware-Villanova game (Go Villanova!) will be on TV at 3:30 on SNY. That's channel 438 on Dish Network .

The Sports Network reviews today's FCS games in their weekly "Around FCS" Column.

The Sporting News does there weekly "Top 25 Who, When Where" article .

Charles Burton does his weekly FCS column here .

UPDATE: A kind reader reminded me in the comments section that the UHN-Maine game is also available on NESN at noon. NESN is carried by many cable/satellite networks.

UPDATE II: Another comment has been posted that ESPN has a UMass-Hofstra preview screen here . Nice catch by our reader.

Hofstra Game articles

The Boston Herald looks at the UMass-Hofstra game.

From the Hofstra side Newsday has an article here . The Hofstra Chronicle (student newspaper) has two articles here and here .

Hofstra finally has their game notes up here (pdf download).

The Sports Network has published its Eddie Robinson Award candidate (Award for top coach in FCS) list for 2007. It's here .

Two things wrong with the list:

1. Coach Brown (21-2 against FCS competition the last two years) is not on it.
2. The following quote from the article--"Dave Cohen, Hofstra-In just his second year as a head coach, Cohen overseen one of the biggest improvements in the country this season, as the Pride has gone from 2-9 last year to 7-3 in 2007. The Pride will likely earn an NCAA playoff berth with a win over Massachusetts on Saturday in their final regular season game. Cohen served as the defensive coordinator at Delaware before coming a head coach and helped the Hens win the 2003 national championship. His Delaware defense allowed only 23 points a game in four playoff games that year and shut out colgate in the title game.

Bruce Dowd has his weekly CAA column here . As usual, he can't resist talking a lot about Delaware and not so much about UMass.

Coach Brown's show tonight

Remember to listen to Coach Brown's show tonight via internet feed at 7:00 pm live on WRNX.

Hofsta game articles

UMass plays for a CAA Championship ring Saturday. If we win, we can't do worse than a tie for the League title.

UMass game notes here (nothing yet from Hofstra).

The UMass Daily Collegian has a Hofstra game article here .

There is a comprehensive Hofstra game article from Newsday here . Note that Hofstra's leading rusher Kareem Huggins and All-America kicker Rob Zarelli are hobbled with injuries. The Pride's roster is here , but Hofstra is unusual in not providing links to individual player's biographies.

We are seventh in the FCS Gridiron Power Index.

David Coulson looks at the playoff possibilities here .

And one final article from UNH about the Wildcat's attempt to recover.

Koepplin named Special Teams CAA Player-of-the-week

Chris Koepplin was named the CAA Special Teams Player-of-the-Week Monday.

Chris has done an outstanding job for the Minutemen with his kicking. He's 9 of 13 in field goals for a 69.2 AVE.

Koepplin is also leading the CAA in kickoffs with 55 for 3,606 YDS 65.6 AVE 17 TB and 45.6 Net AVE. He leads the CAA in average and net average.

The UMass kickoff coverage team is only allowing 13.7 yards per return.

Draft Daddy likes Lawrence and Listorti

Draft Daddy has two Minutemen in it's list of 150 small school players that will draw the attention of Pro scouts. Listed are Brad Listorti and Matt Lawrence.

If you have not been keeping up with Matt's statistics, he has gone 238 ATT 1,205 YDS 5.1 YRDS/CARRY 120.5 YDS/ Game. Note that Matt has a better yards/carry than highly touted Delaware RB Omar Cuff...

KAEO Demarcus Roberson

Former (and still one at heart) Minuteman DB Demarcus Roberson had a great year for Garden City CC in Kansas.

He made All-Conference, finished 2nd in the league with 285 yards in kickoff returns, 34 TKLS and 2 INT.

Roberson is drawing recruiting interest from Ole Miss and WVU.

He wishes UMass good luck in the playoffs and has kept close tabs on their run for the CAA championship this year.

More UNH articles and tie breaker info

The UMass Daily Collegian has two articles one about UMass' defensive performance and a game article .

From the New Hampshire side, Seacoast Online has an article here and Foster's online has another here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has an article on the CAA tie-breaker angst here .

George Miller of the 'Hamp Gazette has a game article here .

UPDATE: Keeper has us ranked 7th in FCS/I-AA and rates the UMass-Hofstra game as even.

Update II: Matty Vautour has more CAA playoff parsing here .

2007 UMass Home Football Attendance

Someone asked about the 2007 attendance totals for UMass home football games. Sounds like an idea for a blog post.

2007 Home Attendance:

1. Holy Cross-12,264
2. Towson-8,218
3. Villanova-16,174
4. Northeastern-14,189
5. UNH-14,190

Total Attendance 65,035 (five games). Average home attendance 13,007

2006 Home Attendance:

1. Colgate-8191
2. Stony Brook-9001
3. William & Mary-15,822
4. Rhode Island-15,522
5. Maine-10,166
6. Hofstra-9,211

Total Attendance 67,913 (six games). Average home attendance 11,318.

According to NCAA figures we are 20th out of 126 FCS/I-AA teams in average attendance. That puts us in the top 15% of FCS/I-AA.

However, most of the teams ahead of us are southern/good weather teams. Of bad weather teams we are 5th nationally behind Montana, Yale, Montana State and Illinois State (UNI has a dome).

UMass-UNH web album

I have a longer than normal Picassa Web album here .


I've also added a link in the sidebar. Also included in the sidebar is last week's images of the Rhode island game.

More UNH game articles

The Concord Monitor talks about the Minutemen's eight sacks and 13 TFL against New Hampshire.

From our side, the Worcester Telegram has a article about the game .

The Seacoast Online has a UMass-UNH article here .

The Boston Herald has New England game article and shows why the Northeastern Huskies are a team to be avoided in November.

The College Sporting News re-caps who won and who lost in the FCS division this week.

CAA standings and tie-breaker

With one game to go we are tied with Richmond for the CAA auto-bid.

CAA standings are here .

From the CAA article on this week's games (Richmond section), "Next week's scenario becomes clear for Richmond. A win over William & Mary in the regular-season finale at UR Stadium would give the Spiders at least a share of the outright CAA Football title. UMass (8-2, 6-1), which plays at Hofstra next Saturday, would need to beat the Pride, forcing a conference tiebreaker to determine the league's automatic bid."

The CAA tie-breaker rules are here . It's on page #7 and it's a 2.5 Meg pdf download.

Sunday morning reading

Above is a scan of the UMass-UNh game program cover. Right click on the image and Blogger displays a larger view.

The Boston Herald has two game article here and here .

The Boston Globe has an article here .

The Union Leader has a game article here .

ESPN's game recap is here .

Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has an article here .

Richmond beat Delaware, JMU beat Bill & Mary, Northeastern beat Hofstra, Villanova beat Towson and Maine beat Rhode Island-----CAA all-games recap here .

NOTE: I'll be back later with a web album from the UNH game. However, Mrs. Blog has a "Honeydo" project for me today (storm windows), so it may take some time. It takes a lot of time to review the images and then upload them five at a time to Picassa. Maybe later today...

You can lead a horse to water, but you ...

Temple fans were there in force; just wait and see what happens when the school wins the MAC.
Great photos by Darryl Rule

Stark and indisputable visual evidence of a Temple fan-dominated side of the field
By Mike Gibson
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
I thought about that while watching a usually sure-handed Temple tight end drop a sure-handed touchdown pass.
I thought about that while watching another sure-handed Owl, Daryl Robinson, drop a pass over the middle with plenty of real estate in front of him.
I even thought about it while watching the most glue-fingered Owl, Bruce Francis, foul up what looked like a promising pass off a double-reverse.
Al Golden and George DeLeone led their horses right up to not water but champagne yesterday in a 31-0 loss to Penn State and they took one sniff, reared their hind legs and walked away in the opposite direction.
If they had just had a taste.
One touchdown, to Matt Balasavage, would have made it 14-7.
Who knows how far Daryl Robinson would have gotten in the open field?
Or what would have happened if Bruce Francis been able to get a grip?
The defense of Mark D'Onofrio had been playing with a swagger all day.
Had the offense helped out by putting points on the board, maybe they would not have been as tired as they were at the end when they gave up a couple of relatively meaningless touchdowns.
Maybe next week.
Maybe next year.
It's all part of the process, as Golden likes to say.
This time, the coaches did their jobs about as well as expected.
The lesson learned was to catch those balls, execute those plays, put points on the board.
Penn State did not stop Temple on those plays. Temple stopped Temple.
Just once, it would be nice for this thirsty program to sip the same kind of drink Appalachian State and Stanford tasted earlier this season.
That something will have to come another day.
There is only one thing more frustrating than to contemplate what might have been and that's musing about what should have been.

Defensive Dominance

Image above is from the UMass Athletic site.

Just back from the game. The UMass defense was awesome. We sacked Santos eight times . The stunting, blitzing defense looked like the defense of old. Great game. In the post game video, Coach Brown said all eleven positions on defense blitzed during the course of the game.

Nice job by Matt Lawrence winning the Bill Knight Trophy and Liam Coen becoming the all-time UMass passer.

UMass write-up here. New Hampshire writeup here .

I'll be back tomorrow with a web album and game articles.

Go UMass, CAA North Champions!

UNH and Senior Day

Above is an image I took at the UMass Media Day of the 2007 Seniors. Right Click on the image and Blogger displays a full-sized view. If anyone wants the full-rez version, e-mail me. My e-mail link is in the Profile section.

The Boston Globe has a game day article here .

The Union Leader has two game day articles here and here .

This article has an injury report on the Wildcats.

Jeff Thomas and the Springfield Republican have a game day article here .

The Sporting News does its weekly "FCS Top-25, Who, When and Where" article.

Hopefully, today's introduction of the Seniors won't be their last game at McGuirk. I'm hoping that we'll have a good day against the Wildcats.

Go UMass!

TV for UMass-UNH

Remember the UMass-UNH game will be carried live over the internet on CN8 .

I have Dish network and the game will also be carried on SNY. That's channel 438 on Dish Network.

Recruiting 2008-- OL Travis Poston

It looks like 6-6 317 pd OL Travis Poston will be attending the UMass-UNH game this weekend. Story here .

I blogged about UMass' interest in him back in May.

Welcome to UMass, Travis!

Article on Jeromy Miles

Nice article on UMass Free Safety Jeromy Miles in today's Globe.

Wildcat Weekend!

Here it is. A bona fide big game . UNH at UMass.

Four articles from the UNH side: the Concord Monitor here, the Union Leader here ,the New Hampshire student newspaper here and lastly the Nashua Telegraph here .

Bruce Dowd does his weekly "CAA Today" column here .

Charles Burton does his weekly "The CSN Way" column here .

UPDATE: Matty Vautour has a UMass-UNH game article here .

Coach Brown's radio show tonight

Don't forget to listen to Coach Brown's internet radio show on WRNX tonight at 7:00 pm.

Rivalry game coming!

Working up to Saturday's game against UMass' rival New Hampshire.

Saturday's game is Senior Day for Matt Austin, Mike Ormar, David Burris, Matt Lawrence, Charles Walker, J.J. Moore, Jason Hatchell, Matt Stolte, Rasheed Rancher, Ceasar Rosario, Chris Koepplin, Nick Diana, Breyone Evans, Brad Listorti, E.J. Barthel and Chis Hopkins. Jeff Thomas of the Springfield Republican has a story here.

The UMass Daily Collegian has an article about Ricky Santos and the UNH Wildcats.

Speaking of Ricky Santos, he all but guaranteed a UNH victory in this article.

The Collegian has another UNH game article here .

David Coulson does his weekly FCS article here .

Eric Gemunder was covering FCS/I-AA football when nobody else was. His weekly FCS review/predictions article is here .

In other news, Rhody's win last week over UMass may not have been enough to save Coach Stowers job.

UPDATE: Matty Vautour has a look at the UMass-UNH rivalry here .