PREVIEW: Boston College vs UMass
By Quinn Kelly
After a gut-wrenching loss last week in the Land of Eire, the Eagles look to come back stateside to collect their first victory of the season in the Battle of the Bay State. UMass and Gillette Stadium will play host to BC Saturday at 12. BC will go in the 17 point favorites to hand the Minutemen their second loss of the year. UMass is coming off a hard fought loss of their own down in Gainesville last weekend.
I won’t bother to do another recap of BC’s loss, as it has been covered at length already. I do feel, though, that the UMass/Florida game is worth taking a closer look at.
People are heralding UMass for their performance against the Gators, and being the good BC fan that I am, I’m here to knock them down a few pegs. Sure, UMass kept it close against the 25th ranked team in the nation, but frankly, I’m not impressed. After matching punts on both sides’ opening drives, the Gators struck first with a touchdown. UMass quickly answered, rattling off a 9 play, 75 yard drive capped off with a touchdown of their own. After holding the Gators on 4th down the next drive, UMass got the ball and began to move again. This time, they wouldn’t find the endzone, punting from the Florida 39 after a 55 yard drive. It would continue to be punt after punt until finally, with 8 seconds left in the half, the Gators broke the draw with what would be the game winning field goal.
Just with that, I’ve already summed up the UMass day offensively for you. In total, the Minutemen gained 187 yards on the day. 130 of them came on back to back drives in the first quarter. After the second drive, Florida’s defense seemed to wake up and went on to shut down UMass, who would spread the remaining 57 yards over 8 drives in the final three quarters (this excludes the drive at the end of the half and works out to be just over 7 yards per drive, for those keeping track at home.
For this reason, I laugh at people calling this a close game. This was a Mayweather fight folks. Florida never hit a big knockout punch that put UMass out, but it was never in doubt who was going to win the fight. Florida’s offense just had to land a series of body blows until the clock ran out and they’d tallied more. They did this in the form of 2 field goals and a touchdown and 2 point conversion in the fourth quarter.
So no, I’m not impressed, and neither should you be. Sure this was a big bad Florida team that UMass hung with, but it was also facing a quarterback in Luke Del Rio who was making his first ever collegiate start. It doesn’t surprise me that he scuffled a little bit and they took a while to get going. That’s why big time teams put the UMasses of the world on their schedule week 1.
Now, onto what we should expect from UMass tomorrow afternoon. Firstly, get ready for a stark difference between the triple option offense of Georgia Tech and the abysmal running game of the Minutemen. UMass rushed for an average of 1.3 yards per attempt on 35 carries last week. While this statistic is hampered a bit by sack yardage, if you take that out they still averaged less than 2 yards per carry. The passing attack is far superior to the running game, and should prove some challenge for the Eagles given their trouble last week with a team who is built almost solely to run the ball. UMass had far better luck moving the ball through the air, getting passed the Gator’s defense for a few big plays. The big play killed us last week, so look for the secondary to key in on preventing it in week 2. Ross Comis is not a particularly efficient passer, completing just over 50% of his passes last week, but he has a pretty good arm and some decent speed on the outside to try to find.
Who to Look Out For:
Watch for Andy Isabella to try to provide spark to the UMass offense. Isabella had 95 yards receiving on just 3 catches against Florida. He is the big play threat that could punch a stronger BC team in the mouth and send them reeling.
Final Thoughts:
There is no reason BC doesn’t walk out of Gillette with a big win under their belt. They are the far superior team. They have one of the better defenses in the nation, while UMass’s offense looks inept at most times. Even though UMass’s defense held a pretty good offense in Florid to 24 points, they still gave up 363 yards. Bend-don’t-break defenses don’t give you consistent wins, nor get you wins against better teams when your offense isn’t functioning. The Eagles will score on UMass, and they will win by a decent margin. They need a big margin, and expect that if they get up and in control, they’ll lay it on. I’ve already given my formal prediction, but to reiterate, I’ll take the Eagles beating the spread and winning by at least 3 touchdowns. Towles lights it up, the defense rebounds and locks it down, and the Eagles even their record heading into a very important game down in Blacksburg next weekend.