How a potential bowl bid would change the way Jim Mora and UConn football reflect on season
After closing its regular season 6-6 with a loss at Army, the UConn football team has three long weeks to wait before learning its fate on bowl selection day Dec. 4. As an independent, there are positives in that the players, coaches too, get time to rest and spend Thanksgiving with their families, but the uncertainty of receiving a bowl bid is “a little discombobulating,” Mora said Sunday.
The team will return for a meeting and practice next Monday morning, Nov. 28, in hopes of a 13th game to cap off a season of first-in-a-whiles, checked boxes.
“We made a goal, internally as a team, that we wanted to get these seniors to a bowl game, and it was a distant goal. Obviously there’s a lot of things we had to do to get there, but it was one that I think everyone kind of kept in the back of their mind, it wasn’t something we focused on every week, as a matter of fact we rarely talked about it at all,” Mora said.
For the first time since 2015, UConn is mentioned in most bowl projections, and since almost all bowl-eligible teams have found a home in recent years, a 13th game for the Huskies is likely, though still not guaranteed.
“I think if we were able to get a bowl game, it’ll just kind of complete the journey of this season, and every season’s a new journey but I think it’ll complete the journey,” Mora said. “I think it’ll make everyone feel like they accomplished something special. I think it’ll give everyone a sense of pride that they were able to send our seniors out with a bowl.
“And then, should we get a bowl, we’ve got to go win it. You go win it and you’ve got seven wins against six losses and you can call yourself a winner. And I think that’s really important to these guys.”
[ UConn football bowl projections: Possible landing spots for Huskies ]
From the LendingTree Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, to the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas, and even the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit, as 247Sports projected Sunday – UConn could seemingly end up anywhere.
But first, the Huskies will have to break rhythm.
Mora had trouble sleeping Saturday night, “What do I do?” he thought.
“It’s so strange because we’ve been so locked-in since the end of July, every week, so not to have an opponent this week is strange, and it’s a little discombobulating, a little bit out of whack,” he said. “For me it’s a little bit of a downer, and even if we would’ve won (at Army) it’d still be a little bit of a downer because you get in this rhythm, you have a routine.”
Once the Huskies return to Storrs, there will be a focus on boosting mental toughness – something Mora said the Huskies struggled with in terms of self-inflicted wounds, seven false start penalties the most glaring.
Practices leading up to the potential bowl game will be intense and challenging, intended to make players uncomfortable.
“Challenging them to be better, in terms of locking down on the snap count – we can do drills where we’re moving the defensive line around, making them hang in there,” Mora said. “We can also do things to adjust our cadence, now that’s not a mental toughness thing, but that’s a coaching thing where we can adjust our cadence and give ourselves a little more of a chance to not have those negative plays.”
Mora said each practice is an opportunity for a teaching moment, that things will be nitpicked and repeated over and over again. The Huskies will have a week of practice before knowing who their next opponent will be should they receive a bid.
“This will just be football,” Mora said. “And I think it’s really important for us to have these days and should we get a bowl game, then you’re able to kind of split up your time as you lead up to the bowl between time that you really want to work on just your stuff and gameplan specific things that you want to do. So it can be a big boost to our program.
“We would certainly use the time wisely to not only prepare for the game we’re playing, but also prepare for the future.”
