University of Connecticut Athletics
UConn Drops 31-19 Decision to West Virginia
10/13/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
EAST HARTFORD, Conn. (October 13, 2004) – West Virginia quarterback Rasheed Marshall ran for 110 yards and threw for 138 more and Jason Colson ran for 111 yards as the 16th-ranked Mountaineers defeated the University of Connecticut, 31-19, before a sellout crowd of 40,000, Wednesday evening, at Rentschler Field.
The loss drops the Huskies’ record to 4-2, 1-2 in BIG EAST play. West Virginia improves to 5-1, and wins their 2004 BIG EAST opener. The contest marked the first meeting ever on the gridiron between the two schools.
The loss marred a record-setting evening for senior quarterback Dan Orlovsky (Shelton, Conn.). Orlovsky threw two fourth-quarter touchdown passes to tie former Husky signal callers Matt DeGennaro and Shane Stafford with 73 career touchdown passes. Orlovsky finished with 24 completions in 47 attempts for 268 yards, but was intercepted three times, including one that was returned for a touchdown by Mike Lorello late in the third quarter. Orlovsky’s 268 passing yards give him 9,010 in his career, good for second all-time in UConn history. In addition, he passed DeGennaro in all-time passing attempts with 1,329.
After Colson capped a nine-play, 62-yard drive midway through the first quarter with a one-yard scoring run, the Huskies inched within one on two field goals (21 and 35) from sophomore place kicker Matt Nuzie (Trumbull, Conn.), at 7-6 early in the second quarter. After a West Virginia field goal, UConn trailed just 10-6 at intermission. Nuzie has now made seven consecutive field goal attempts, tying for the second longest streak in school history.
The four-point deficit was as close as UConn would get as Lorello’s interception return started a 21-7 Mountaineer run that locked up the victory for West Virginia.
Sophomore tailback Cornell Brockington (Burlington, N.J.) was a star in the Husky offense rushing for 90 yards on 23 carries and had 22 receiving yards. The UConn defense was paced by senior linebacker Alfred Fincher (Norwood, Mass.), and junior linebacker James Hargrave (Pleasantville, N.J.), who had 21 and 15 tackles respectively.
Orlovsky’s scoring passes were to senior receivers Keron Henry (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and Matt Cutaia (Webster, N.Y.).
The Huskies play their final BIG EAST home game on October 23, when they place host to Temple at Rentschler Field. Kickoff is set for 12:00 p.m.
UConn Quotes
Head Coach Randy Edsall:
First of all, you have to give West Virginia credit. They’re a good football team and they’re exactly what we saw on film, a team on defense that has tremendous speed and athleticism and offensively, a team that has a few weapons in their quarterback in Rasheed [Marshall] and a good running back in [Jason] Colson. We knew what we had coming in and I think we didn’t take advantage of some of the opportunities we had this evening. We had some decent field position and didn’t do much with it, but credit has to go to West Virginia.
I’m disappointed in our offense because we didn’t execute the way I thought we should. We had a couple dropped passes that could’ve been touchdowns and we weren’t as sharp in all areas of offense as we needed to be. Again, some of that credit goes to West Virginia and how they played. We got down in the red zone and came with two field goals in the first half instead of touchdowns. I think that’s something that hurts you a little bit when you’re playing a Top 20 team and you want to try and come away with an upset. Our defense kept competing and tried to hang in there.
Quarterback Dan Orlovsky:
It wasn’t like their defense confused us that much. We missed some protection some times, where a guy went the wrong way here, didn’t pay attention to our rules there and forced us to throw the ball late a few more time than we would’ve liked. They didn’t do anything we hadn’t practiced for this week. Obviously, they play a 3-5, its kind of unconventional and they can move a lot of people around. But, we were prepared for the game. We just didn’t execute. I missed some reads, we had some big drops tonight and that hurt us as far as momentum. We had two good plays that could’ve been touchdowns and two or three plays we dropped the ball. Not everyone is going to be perfect but we didn’t execute as well as we should.
West Virginia Quotes
Head Coach Rich Rodriguez On the penalties … That’s the first thing I told the team after the game. We preached it and some of them just killed offensive drives. Obviously one took away a touchdown. You had a couple of drives where you had to overcome 1st and 20s, 2nd and 20s. Its hard to get into a rhythm. Thankfully, we still were able to win the game but we just have got to get them corrected. On playing guys that have not previously played a lot … We have been meaning to play Purnell (Williams) for the past few weeks and we just had to talk ourselves into going ahead and doing it. He’s been practicing very well. He has a great future. He is a very intelligent player. You have a true freshman and at the end of the game, you try to run the clock out and he’s laying on the ground a little extra longer. You tell them to lay on the ground a little longer to kill some seconds and you don’t see too many true freshman actually come up with something like that. We are proud of him.
On the momentum shift … It was a huge, we got lucky break there. That was a huge play. The big play was getting the ball down to the 1-yard line changes the field position and then Mike came up with a big play. We were kind of in a rut. That kind of sparked us a little bit.
On the reverse play … We wanted to do it on a time out or a change of quarter so they wouldn’t recognize the guy coming in. We did plan on running it a couple of other times but unfortunately we got a penalty on two of them.
On the quick kick … Yeah, we’ve done that a lot. When we cross the 50, that’s a regular part of our offense. He had to kick all of them really well but he’s worked on it a little bit. I wouldn’t say he spends all of his time on the quick kick but we’ve gotten on him about getting some of them in the end zone. That really chaps me when you punt the ball inside the 50 and it goes through the end zone and you get it on the 20, that’s not what you are supposed to do so our quarterback did a pretty good job of it.
About other players who played more tonight than in previous outings … Yes, Brad Palmer, our full back, I thought did a pretty good job. We had some little nicks and knacks with Jeff Noechel and he’s the one who got the last interception. He’s a walk on from Fairmont who’s played a lot today. We just have to get guys in there and see who can make plays because we are a little banged up. I was proud of Jeremy Sheffey, played the whole game, started the whole game at guard.
On dropping passes and penalties … I’ve been telling them all season. We can’t beat ourselves. We can’t have West Virginia beating West Virginia.
On Rasheed Marshall rushing and passing … He should have had more than that passing too. He had a few really nice throws that were dropped. He made one or two bad decisions but I thought from the start of the game that he was really sharp mentally.
On the win … It means a lot. We need it for the confidence and just to get back in the grove of things. We definitely wanted a chance (after Virginia Tech) to come out and redeem ourselves. It was a big win for us.
On Orlovsky’s media attention … The attention was meant for him. If it was meant for me, I would have gotten it. Not that I don’t get it but that is for him so I leave it to him and worry about winning.
