STORRS, Conn. — It took Connecticut barely a quarter and a half to burst out to a 28-0 lead against the Virginia football team.
At game’s end Saturday, the 45-10 score was not quite as lopsided numerically as the 52-7 drubbing by the Trojans, but was equally traumatic against a Husky team that the Cavaliers beat by 1 point a year ago. Connecticut scored on its first seven drives and found the end zone on its first six, and did not punt until the 6:20 mark of the third quarter with the score 28-3.
UConn “did most everything right; we did little if anything right,” Virginia coach Al Groh said. “It’s not about, in any way shape or form, anybody who wasn’t here. Our team is the team that we put on the field today. I’m responsible for that, I take the blame for that, and there are really no other names necessary to discuss.”
The most staggering statistics were in the ground game. The Huskies rushed for a remarkable 382 yards and five touchdowns, including 206 yards and three touchdowns from starting running back Donald Brown.
Brown “was what we thought he would be,” Groh said. “He was very good — fast, competitive, obviously more than what we could handle.”
Virginia, meanwhile, rushed just 14 times – three of which came from quarterbacks – for a mere 31 yards. Senior tailback Cedric Peerman, who has been hampered with a leg injury for two weeks, was a non-factor, as he rushed for 4 yards on two carries.
“He was doubtful to questionable throughout the week, and just didn’t quite have all his stuff here today,” Groh said. “It wasn’t fair to him to put him out there where he was going to be a target.”
Connecticut also saw significant contributions from two players who had zero career carries coming into the night in true freshman tailback Jordan Todman and senior cornerback Darius Butler. The two combined for 94 rushing yards and two touchdowns; Butler’s lone rush went for the Huskies’ third touchdown on a 13-yard reverse.
Both Brown and Todman broke out for huge open field runs; Brown’s longest of the day went for 63 yards, Todman’s for 48. Each of these runs featured numerous missed tackles, which was a theme for Virginia throughout the evening.
“That’s just sloppy performance,” senior outside linebacker Clint Sintim said. “I know off the top of my head, I think I missed four clean tackles.”
The Connecticut running backs, however, were not the main attraction until the second quarter; it was the dual-threat southpaw quarterback Tyler Lorenzen who methodically picked apart the Virginia defense in the first, passing for 53 yards and running for 42 on Connecticut’s first two drives, both of which resulted in touchdowns.
Lorenzen’s “ability to get drives started early on, throw accurately, get out of the pocket, had us coming and going,” Groh said. “Through a combination of his outstanding play, Donald Brown’s outstanding play and our shortcomings in certain areas, it was coming from every direction.”
Once Lorenzen opened the door, the running backs burst through in the second and third quarter.
“Quite clearly, [the defense] deteriorated from that point,” Groh said.
Virginia sophomore quarterback Marc Verica — who was named the starter Wednesday evening after Groh announced in a press release that sophomore Peter Lalich would not be traveling with the team — had a decent outing under the circumstances. Despite never leading Virginia to the end zone, Verica actually out-threw Lorenzen on the day, passing for 158 yards compared with Lorenzen’s 124, though he had 30 attempts compared with Lorenzen’s 15.
On the first play of Verica’s last series, he gave up his sole turnover of the evening on an interception by sophomore linebacker Lawrence Wilson midway through the third quarter. Following the subsequent 14-yard touchdown run by Todman late in the quarter, Groh pulled Verica for senior Scott Deke, who sparked the Cavaliers’ lone touchdown drive.
Verica “made some decent throws,” Groh said, but noted that “there were a lot of open guys out there too where the ball might have gone.”
Of course, the new starting quarterback was not helped by Virginia’s woeful ground game.
Establishing the ground game early would “be very helpful,” Groh said. “All those runners run the same when there’s no hole.”
With a bye week ahead of them before another road matchup against Duke, Virginia may need to repair its psyche just as much as its physical fundamentals over the next two weeks.
“I don’t know how much of a psychologist I am,” Groh said. “It would be my hope that everyone would take their lead off of my attitude. That’ll be my psychology.”
Be sure to see the photo gallery from the game, here.
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