This Was a Great Win

[Nostical]

Face it. Most of you were worried. Coming into this game, the psyche of this team and coaching staff was fragile at best. Last year we couldn't get out of our own way. But tonight we turned the corner. And no, I'm not premature in my assessment. Think about this. No fumbles, No offsides, No false starts, No delay of games, One freakish interception.
Play calling was good for the most part. The team was trying to instill the O-line with some cohesion and confidence calling lots of basic running plays. (The two head scratchers were the end of half sequence where we missed the opportunity for a field goal, and the weird throw to an unsuspecting Tommy Meyers on 3rd and 1 from their 40. Two successive Johnson runs would have been my choice, but Verducci couldn't hear me from the stands--lol. On the other hand, who could fault him for trying.)
Shirreffs was able to make plays, and when there were breakdowns he improvised. Our double tight end sets showed promise. Our wideouts can catch the ball. And you could see how Newsome should thrive if he gets the ball in open space.
Our defensive backfield looked solid, our LB's were very active, and our D-Ends, especially 15, looked ferocious. Our punting was better, our kick-offs were deeper.
The mistakes were correctable ones. Celebration penalty, fighting.The most disruptive mistake was the holding call on Levy in the first half that turned a huge gain for us into an ultimate safety for them. But make no mistake, this was a huge win for the team. Many of the players commented about last night being the greatest feeling ever. And it wasn't just the win. It was the exhilarating feeling of knowing they had the goods to get it done. Next week, it's all about defending the option offense of Army. I like our chances. A lot.
The crowd was surprisingly vocal for its size, but you could sense they were skeptical observers, waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing, just knowing the ineptitude that's infected the team for the past few years would take control. But surprise, surprise. The prescriptions are working, the healing has begun. Can I get a hallelujah and amen?!

 

[J187Money]

Will give you an Amen. Reserving my Hallelujah's for winning conference games.

Well said.

 

[weyuo]

Amen brother. Clean up the mistakes and that game was a blowout in favor of the Huskies. Fatukasi...what are you thinking? Shirrefs and the tight ends need to work on their timing. Would like to have seen the wide receivers with a couple more touches. Johnson is the man, Max had a nice play along the sideline and Arkeel was very good. The O-line still needs some fine tuning especially on the left side. I believe it was Nova RB Underwood who "tried" to put a licking on Stewart and instead ended up on the sidelines sucking air. The D had some real nice 3rd and 4th down stops in the second half.

Good win for the Huskies, onto Army!

 

[Husky92]

Face it. Most of you were worried. Coming into this game, the psyche of this team and coaching staff was fragile at best. Last year we couldn't get out of our own way. But tonight we turned the corner. And no, I'm not premature in my assessment. Think about this. No fumbles, No offsides, No false starts, No delay of games, One freakish interception.
Play calling was good for the most part. The team was trying to instill the O-line with some cohesion and confidence calling lots of basic running plays. (The two head scratchers were the end of half sequence where we missed the opportunity for a field goal, and the weird throw to an unsuspecting Tommy Meyers on 3rd and 1 from their 40. Two successive Johnson runs would have been my choice, but Verducci couldn't hear me from the stands--lol. On the other hand, who could fault him for trying.)
Shirreffs was able to make plays, and when there were breakdowns he improvised. Our double tight end sets showed promise. Our wideouts can catch the ball. And you could see how Newsome should thrive if he gets the ball in open space.
Our defensive backfield looked solid, our LB's were very active, and our D-Ends, especially 15, looked ferocious. Our punting was better, our kick-offs were deeper.
The mistakes were correctable ones. Celebration penalty, fighting.The most disruptive mistake was the holding call on Levy in the first half that turned a huge gain for us into an ultimate safety for them. But make no mistake, this was a huge win for the team. Many of the players commented about last night being the greatest feeling ever. And it wasn't just the win. It was the exhilarating feeling of knowing they had the goods to get it done. Next week, it's all about defending the option offense of Army. I like our chances. A lot.
The crowd was surprisingly vocal for its size, but you could sense they were skeptical observers, waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing, just knowing the ineptitude that's infected the team for the past few years would take control. But surprise, surprise. The prescriptions are working, the healing has begun. Can I get a hallelujah and amen?!

This was my take exactly. Well said!

 

[Nostical]

Clean up the mistakes and that game was a blowout in favor of the Huskies.

Exactly.

 

[whaler11]

Listen Villanova can say the same stuff. Clean up the mistakes and they win.

Their playcalling in the red zone is bizarre.

 

[Tampahusky]

Win is a win. I'll take anything to get the ball rolling. Conference championship coming soon!!

 

[junglehusky]

Don't know about a great win, have to see how the season plays out for both UConn and Nova to judge that. But I'll take a serviceable win or an okay win in a heartbeat. As I said in another thread, good baseline.

 

[Nostical]

Listen Villanova can say the same stuff. Clean up the mistakes and they win

No they can't.

 

[phillionaire]

Can't win em all if you don't win the first

 

[06029]

Great? In terms of being 1-0, that is great. Clock management at the end of the half (I did like being aggressive with 1:36 left) was not good. The OL play against a significantly smaller and equally inexperienced DL could not be classified as great with a safety and a lot of tackles for losses. The D giving up 3rd and 22 and 3rd and 9 and 3rd and whatever all night was not great. Nova got around the edge way too often. The D line bit on the ball fakes almost all night. Nova left points on the field and had a couple of bad turnovers too. The game was just as close as the score showed.

As was pointed out to me by someone, FBS should beat FCS almost all of the time. There is a lot of work to do for the D and the OL for Army. A season opening win for the program is great. But the overall play and improvement, while good, does not rise to the level of great.

 

[whaler11]

No they can't.

LOL. The win stands on it's own, you don't need to pretend it was something it wasn't.

 

[Jimdish255]

Great? Not so sure. Hugely important? Yep. A good building block and a sign that Verducci may be the RKG for our offense.

 

[Nostical]

LOL. The win stands on it's own, you don't need to pretend it was something it wasn't.

It's more than that. Villanova didn't lose because of their mistakes. Our mistakes kept us from winning big. We both could have played better and could have made some different play calls but here's the essence:
Levy's holding--rather than on our way--leads to Safety
Meyers bobble--interception takes away our FG
Celebration penalty--gives them life for easy TD

Their QB fumbles snap on 4th-denies them scoring chance.

On balance our mistakes cost us the scoring rout we could have had.

 

[HuskyHawk]

I thought it was a nice win, and they showed flashes of something more. Aside from mental errors I think they can correct, my main concerns were poor tackling and inability to keep ballcarriers from getting the edge running wide. They have to improve both to handle the Army rushing attack. I think they can learn from and build on this.

 

[noeynox]

I was worried. To be honest, I'm not a fan of playing top of the food chain FCS programs. Man for man, there isn't much of difference talent wise between them and programs like ours or FBS programs outside the Top 50. We were underdogs, yet if you lose its big deal and if you win its no big deal.

That said for this team/program, it worked out great. This is a team that is trying to find itself. They played really well for long stretches against a quality opponent. Hopefully they build off that. Seeing a team that looked competent in most if not all phases is such an improvement over last year, but really for the first time since you know who left for Md.

 

[thatguyed]

Great win? Absolutely not. But any W these days has some value. I'd call it a solid win. Let's hope next week reinforces this one, rather than making it look like a fluke.

 

[minidarren]

We didn't need overtime to beat them like the fruit did.

 

[hexlub]

You have to start somewhere. And this is something to build off of.

Was it a great win? No. Was it a win against a solid FCS program. Yes.

The one thing we know is that a loss last night would have been a really, really, really bad thing for this program. Now we just need to worry about the next game.

 

[warbler1055]

Quit being so negative guys. We are a work in progress, we know that. But the effort was there. Tommy Myers, local kid from Coventry, not one but TWO great plays. We found our quarterback. Number 15 was all over the field, putting pressure on Robertson. There were so many positives. Here hoping they will get better with every game!!!

 

[whaler11]

It's more than that. Villanova didn't lose because of their mistakes. Our mistakes kept us from winning big. We both could have played better and could have made some different play calls but here's the essence:
Levy's holding--rather than on our way--leads to Safety
Meyers bobble--interception takes away our FG
Celebration penalty--gives them life for easy TD

Their QB fumbles snap on 4th-denies them scoring chance.

On balance our mistakes cost us the scoring rout we could have had.

The game was 13-9 with 9 minutes left and Villanova had the ball at the UConn 36 with a 4th and 1 and couldn't execute a snap.

They blew a tackle that would have ended the first UConn TD drive. They missed a chip shot FG off a bad snap/hold. The QB put the ball on the ground trying to keep his balance for a turnover. Until the Johnson 8 yard run with 1:30 left Villanova outgained UConn.

When you are down 4 with 9 minutes left at the opponents 36 and make a completely unforced error... it seems self evident that you can make the case that your mistakes may have cost you the game.

But whatever - I think 99.9% of the world understands this - you just can't have a rational conversation because your bias doesn't allow it.

 

[Scoe]

I only was able to watch the 2nd half I will watch the replay today, but it was nice to watch an offense not turn it over and to be in a tempo. In the past especially the last 3 seasons watching our offense was like getting your teeth pulled. Our kickoff coverage has gotta improve. I liked the penetration from our Dline and loved the intensity from our guys. I won't say a great win I say a much needed win for our guys, and our fan base. Now we gotta move onto to Army and improve on this. We can't stay the same we gotta get better every week.

 

[noeynox]

The game was 13-9 with 9 minutes left and Villanova had the ball at the UConn 36 with a 4th and 1 and couldn't execute a snap.

They blew a tackle that would have ended the first UConn TD drive. They missed a chip shot FG off a bad snap/hold. The QB put the ball on the ground trying to keep his balance for a turnover. Until the Johnson 8 yard run with 1:30 left Villanova outgained UConn.

When you are down 4 with 9 minutes left at the opponents 36 and make a completely unforced error... it seems self evident that you can make the case that your mistakes may have cost you the game.

But whatever - I think 99.9% of the world understands this - you just can't have a rational conversation because your bias doesn't allow it.

That's a good way to put it. The win stands on its own. We were home dogs to an FCS team. The game proved the teams are evenly matched. Most impressive part about last night's game to me, is that for the most part, our defense made their FCS Heisman QB look very ordinary. I was worried this kid would shred us to be honest, but Shirrefs looked better than he did.

 

[UConn9604]

This was exactly the reason why you schedule a I-AA team, usually to start the season. Visibly, we were more talented than they were -- which clearly was not the case versus Towson two years ago -- but we needed a game like this to work the kinks out, flex our muscles a little bit, and to just play football against someone other than our own guys.

On the offensive side, we saw multiple talented RBs, perhaps our most accurate QB since Endres, two gifted TEs (in Meyers's case, a legitimate weapon), a couple of nice catches from Thomas. A few coachable (but not physical) mistakes on the O-line, and I thought Diaco really blew it by not using at least one timeout to end the half, but other than that, this was a very serviceable win that showed us two things: we have both talent and fire again.

Defensively, I'll be honest, I thought Stewart played far better than some others did, apparently. He was flying all over the field, even if he was late or early at times. I loved the effort. A seemingly quiet game from Vann (I am not concerned), good pressure up front, Adams with another pick, etc. As usual, a running QB gave us a hard time, and that's extremely annoying, but other than that? The same as our offensive game: talent and fire.

It wasn't perfect, not at all, but as I said earlier, it was exactly the reason why we led off with a I-AA team. Particularly for a program with a psyche as fragile as ours, last night was great. Walking out of The Rent was more enjoyable than it has been in far too long. Most importantly, last night gave you the sense that we have our mojo back. I'm pleased.

 

[CallMeBruce]

I feel like Diaco had the guys in position to make plays. They just need to make those plays more consistently. Better tackling, better hands, and guys not committing penalties behind the play, and you're looking at a 3 TD win. Shirrefs looks like the real deal, and I think Thomas and Myers can be huge contributors on offense. The running game needs to get better, and that means the offensive line needs more push, but I'm feeling pretty good right now.