Copyright Hartford Courant
EAST HARTFORD — The clock ran out, and the UConn football team walked off its home turf with win No. 6. Two things worth noting Saturday at Rentschler Field. The Huskies bounced back off their disappointing loss at Rice to put forth one of their best all-around efforts of the season, and win No. 6 is no longer the magic number it once was for UConn football. “I’m not going to lie, UConn just reminded me that win was bowl eligibility,” said Skyler Bell, who caught three touchdown passes. “That’s great, get another bowl eligibility. Got to keep that going, get three more wins.” Cam Chadwick, who got three interceptions in the Huskies’ 38-19 win over Alabama-Birmingham, reiterated, “We’re happy, but that’s what we expect, to be bowl eligible.” UConn football responds, clinches bowl eligibility with dominant 38-19 win over UAB The Huskies are 6-3, or, if you prefer to count overtime games as ties, they are 6-0-3. As an independent program, a break-even record of 6-6 does not guarantee them a place in a bowl game, but it would take a long series of variables to go against them to completely shut them out of the 80-plus slots. “It’s got to be business as usual,” coach Jim Mora said. “Listen, we’re bowl eligible for the third time in four years, I don’t know how long it’s been since that’s happened. It’s in the back of everyone’s mind, but I think our goals are larger than that and we talked about that in the locker room, how we handle it, when everyone is patting us on the back.” You’d have to go back to the Big East era, 2007-10, for the one and only time UConn went to three bowl games in four years. After that, the Huskies played in only one bowl in 12 years. To illustrate how far this has come, in 2022, Mora’s first season, UConn eked out an upset win over Liberty in the last home game to get win No. 6. There was apparel for the occasion, and shortly thereafter an outing was arranged at a local bowling alley. It seemed fitting after so many years in the FBS gutter to make a big deal out of this first strike. After the set-back second season, UConn got to six with a tight win over Georgia State at Rentschler Field last November and kept on going, finishing 8-4, and then beating a dispirited North Carolina team at the Fenway Bowl to complete the first winning season in 10 years. Win No. 6, though, did come with some celebration. But in 2025, UConn’s next bowl-eligible campaign yielded its harvest with a smile and a shrug, which is the way an FBS program should be taking win No. 6. A milepost is reached, but there are miles to go. The “bigger goals” Mora mentioned are harder to define than in other sports, and that may be part of the reason, with Halloween hangover being another, that Rentschler was not more full on Saturday, a chilly but sunny day. There were 23,170 tickets distributed, but obviously nowhere near that many people, especially at the start. The student section was nearly deserted. If the Huskies had not dropped three overtime games on the road — at Syracuse, Delaware and last week at Rice — games in which they were leading late in the fourth quarter, there may have been a bigger crowd. Certainly, the Huskies would have earned that. The loss at Rice took some luster off UConn’s win at Boston College on Oct. 18, but now that they have dispatched UAB, the chance to get win No. 7 against an ancient UConn nemesis, Duke, next week could get them off campus to make the 23-mile journey to East Hartford. The team has earned that much. “We have a huge game coming up on Saturday against an ACC opponent in Duke,” Mora said. “They’ve beaten us twice since we’ve been here, so I don’t think it’s going to be hard to get our guys focused on the task at hand.” Even if the Huskies were undefeated, the chance to make the championship playoffs would be beyond their reach. But don’t laugh. American Athletic Conference teams Memphis and South Florida have been in the hunt for the spot set aside for a Group of Six team, and UAB defeated Memphis two weeks ago. UConn’s independent schedule offers only a handful of chances to make a splash, and this week vs. Duke will be the last, best chance this regular season. The Blue Devils (5-3) won a wild game, 46-45, over Clemson on Saturday. Dom Amore: Flagging UConn’s football coach for ‘unnecessary gruffness’ as we navigate this season The reachable goal for UConn is a “better” bowl game than last season. How does one define that? A game that is later in the year, closer to Jan. 1? A bowl in a bigger stadium? A warmer climate? In the eye of this beholder, a worthwhile bowl game for UConn is one in which they play an opponent with a strong football brand, at a venue reachable for thousands of fans from Connecticut. That would give everyone a reason to play in, travel to or tune in and watch the game. “I don’t like to look at that stuff,” Bell said, “because ever since I’ve been in college, even when I was at Wisconsin, guys would start looking at that stuff and we’d end up going to a bowl that’s completely different, so I don’t even look at that stuff. I just go out there and pray for a warm bowl, but you don’t always get what you want.” Projections have the Huskies all over the map and, really, are meaningless because there is no accounting on Nov. 1 for which bowl game committees might negotiate out of a conference tie-in to invite UConn, as the Fenway Bowl people did last year. One scenario, floated by the College Football News, has a repeat of that, with the Huskies playing Clemson in Boston. A match against Memphis or Kansas in the Gasparilla Bowl in Tampa would fill the bill, too. Just keep them out of another game against a Group of Six opponent, that kind of matchup that could prompt a lot of players to opt out, a reality of 2025. To be in the best position, the Huskies need to pad their resume. After Duke is a home game vs. Air Force, a road game at Florida Atlantic. Shrugging off the loss at Rice and dominating UAB was a step in the right direction. Win No. 6 is a first step, not cause to throw a champagne party at UConn any more, but a milepost that shows everyone in the locker room is still playing for ownership of something, and there are things worth playing for. “I was proud of the team, the way they responded from the disappointing loss in overtime on the road,” Mora said. “Those are heartbreakers, and you’re always anxious to see how guys are going to respond.”
