Dom Amore: Yes, it happened here. UConn football mastered the moment, beat Liberty and can celebrate bowl eligibility

The clock ran out and the fans streamed onto the field, the players chased down coach Jim Mora and poured the icy bucket on him. Then Mora found the man who hired him, UConn AD David Benedict, and they walked arm in arm.

“Thankful that Mr. Benedict here took a chance on an old, washed up coach,” Mora said.

These were the scenes that followed UConn’s 36-33 victory over Liberty on Saturday, scenes we see somewhere in college football every week or rather, scenes we see somewhere else. These scenes have played out for UConn before, sure, but long, long ago — and who thought days like these weren’t behind the program for good?

“That’s something you dream about,” linebacker Jackson Mitchell said. “When you say you want to play college football, Division I football, as a little kid, these are the moments you dream of. Beating a ranked team, at home? Moments like that. That’s what I told the guys in the huddle on that last drive, ‘These are the moments you live out when you’re in your backyard by yourself.’ For it to come through and work out in our favor, it feels amazing.”

There’s a lot to consider with this 2022 UConn football team:

♦ An accomplished former NFL and UCLA coach who got the chance to get back into the game after four years.

♦ A 1-11 football team that hadn’t won more than three games in a season, or beaten a ranked team since 2015.

♦ A program without a conference and seemingly nothing to play for.

♦ Finally, a collection of freshman and transfers cast off from other places.

It proved to be a combination that trapped lightning in a bottle.

“Man, this is even better than what I imagined,” said fullback Robert Burns, a grad transfer from Miami who rushed for a career-high 109 yards. “It’s a beautiful feeling, man. Last year, having only one win, I can’t tell you the stuff we went through as a team, the bond it created.”

The Huskies (6-5) are bowl eligible now and, though there are no guarantees without a conference tie-in, they are undoubtedly bowl worthy. They have one more game, at Army next week, one more chance to replace a bad memory from 2021 — they lost at West Point 52-21 — with a good one. Then they lobby and wait for an invitation.

But it will be hard to top the moment that followed the victory over Liberty, ranked 19th after winning at Arkansas last week, and two-touchdown favorites at Rentschler Field, where a modest crowd of 15,107 made its presence felt, especially at the end. The Huskies had every chance to fold and lose this game, when their early 21-10 lead disappeared and the explosive Liberty offense took the lead in the third, and again in the fourth quarter.

Mora and his staff played it safe, played it smart, avoiding a mistake that could have ended UConn’s chances. They played for a chance at the end, when freshman quarterback Zion Turner threw over the top to Kevens Clercius for 30 yards and the winning score with 5:43 left. Twice after that UConn’s defense came up big to stop the Flames on downs.

“This is just a fun, fun, fun team to coach,” Mora said. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in coaching and the best group of people I’ve ever been around.”

A team that knew only losses has learned the art of winning, of finishing. The Huskies learned it, Mora believes, with their last loss.

“I think the turning point for us and when we really started to believe was when we lost at Ball State,” Mora said. “There was a different feeling amongst the team after that game, of higher expectations, of holding ourselves to a higher standard, because they had tasted what it was like to play well and win. That’s when I kind of felt the change, in a loss. They didn’t want to go back. They knew that feeling; they like this feeling a lot better.”

After blowing an 11-point lead and losing at Ball State Oct. 22, and a bye week, UConn came home and took down Boston College, UMass and Liberty. “We knew we let one slip away,” Mitchell said. “Since then, I’ve never seen a team so locked in.”

As Mora, 60, tried to deflect credit to his players and everyone else around the program, players he again lauded for not having the sense of entitlement, for not being beaten down after one-sided losses to Syracuse, Michigan and NC State. But it was hard at this moment not to think about the actual turning point, one year and a day before Saturday, Nov. 11, 2021, the day Benedict returned from Mora’s skiing hideaway in Idaho with the right coach. Mora assured Benedict during five days of talks that he would “never concede a game.” It would not matter if they were playing a Power Five team, a top five team, nothing would be considered out of reach at UConn, not on his watch.

And everything changed, which can happen when the right coach walks through the door, but turning this around to this degree in this short a time wasn’t in anyone else’s imagination. Any committee awarding a coach of the year award has to consider Mora, who is neither old, nor washed up. He said last week he didn’t come to UConn to be .500, and now he’s a game over.

“It would be hard to imagine a bigger one-year turn-around anywhere,” Benedict said. “It’s just massive, the job that he’s done.”

So moments like this are no longer meant for someone or somewhere else, they’re part of the story at UConn, now savoring what Pat Riley used to call “the innocent climb.” The feeling doesn’t last long; do this once, and ever bigger and better things will be expected each year. That’s how it should be, but right now, this moment is UConn’s, and how sweet it is.

“It was unbelievable,” said linebacker Ian Swenson, who had to catch his breath before speaking after the final home game of a UConn career that began in 2017. “There are so many emotions. Being able to win this game and the fans storming the field, it’s something special. You only get to achieve that a few times in your life, well, once for me.”

Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com