Quick Recap of UCONN Game
By Ross
The Good
– Darius Reynolds earned his “Money” nickname last night. He only caught 4 passes but they were
huge plays. The first big play of the game was a 3rd and long and Jantz just threw it up to Reynolds to make a play. He did and the it led to the James White touchdown. The second was the touchdown catch on the pass from Josh Lenz. Maybe the biggest play of the game was his TD catch in which he hurled a defender late in the game. Darius Reynolds, I bashed you the first week but you have played two great games against the Hawks and Huskies.
– Patrick Neal and the defensive line as a whole played great. When the offense was struggling, they continued to shut down UCONN. The Huskies started almost all drives in great field position in the first quarter but the defense kept them at only 10 points. The Clones held the Huskies to 2.7 yards per rush. Darius Reynolds was great but the defense won this game.
– I tweeted last night about a guy not a lot of people know about. #39 Matt Morton made a big time difference on special teams. UCONN has one of the best returners in the nation in Nick Williams and he started the game with a couple nice returns. After that, he had a hard time finding any yards mostly due to Matt Morton. Matt Morton had a couple nice tackles on Williams and he kept UCONN in their own territory for a majority of the second half.
– James White and Shontrelle Johnson are quite the combo. They combined for over a 100 yards again and James White is one of the biggest surprises on this team so far this year. I don’t think anybody expected this amount of production from White this year.
– I know Steele Jantz started about as bad as you can but he really settled down as the game went on. He started 0-4 with 3 interceptions but finished the game 18 for 29 with 200 yards passing. At the end of the day, Jantz is 3-0.
The Bad
– PENALTIES. We had 11 penalties for 91 yards and continue to beat ourselves. We dominated UCONN and Iowa but penalties kept the Hawks and Huskies in the game. I would love to see a game where we could limit them to a minimum because we would have won comfortably against both those teams.
– We turned the ball over 3 times and all came on picks thrown by Steele Jantz. I’m not going to hate on Jantz because he settled down later and eventually won the game. Like penalties, I wonder what a game would be like without a turnover. We are our own worst enemy.
– The offensive line didn’t perform as well as it should have. Kelechi Osemele was banged up against last night. Thank God we have a bye week to heal Osemele, Jantz, and others.
– Jeremy Reeves got beat a couple times on jump balls. He also had a pass interference called on him, I can’t remember if there was another on him. One of the jump balls, I still don’t know how Reeves didn’t come down with it. Instead, the UCONN receiver caught it and took it in for the endzone. Oh well. I’m not worried about Reeves in the future, he is still a solid corner.