Football - October 29th vs. West Virginia

What: Football vs. West Virginia

When: October 29th, 2010, 8:00 PM

Result: Win 16-13, OT

Summary: First home football game in almost a month. Going in, we hadn't scored since a Dave Teggart field goal as time ran out in the first half against Rutgers, 3 weeks prior. And we didn't wind up scoring here until Teggart booted one through with 1 second left in the first half. So almost 8 quarters without a score. Yet remarkably, despite giving up several long drives, we only went into halftime down 10-3. Todman than got a touchdown to cap a long drive in the third quarter, and we traded field goals to ultimately force OT. West Virginia drove down to the 1 on the first posession, but fumbled and we recovered, so we just needed a field goal to win. Teggart booted a chip shot from 31, and that was that. Storm the field time. No, I did not participate, because I am not particularly fond of crazy mobs, but it looked fun, that is if you like crazy mobs. And it was the first win over WVU in program history. On a side note, a lot of interesting costumed characters including 2 gorillas and a banana. (Banana guy stole my costume idea - I was planning to wear the exact same costume to the Whitney Dance Thursday until it was cancelled.)

Ratings:

Atmosphere:

Fan Friendliness: Not always the most clean, but usually nothing bad. The people next to me making out for the entire first half (literally) before leaving because the concession stands stopped serving alcohol wasn't nice, but aside from that not too many issues, except for a few profanities. Rating: 7/10

Fan Enthusiasm: Loud,  rocking, and amazing. Fans (except for the ones who just came to get drunk and left after Last Call) stayed for the whole game and went crazy when we won. Rating: 15/15

Event Atmosphere: Some of us may remember watching the "Pandemonium in Piscataway" game in which Rutgers got the biggest win in school history (although some could argue winning the first game ever in the history of college football was bigger) at which point the RU radio uttered that famous line. Well we need something like that for this game. I'll be taking suggestions. Post them in the comments or email me at gregory.koch@uconn.edu. I'll post some of the better ones. And keep in mind, Piscataway is where the football stadium was, and RU is actually in New Brunswick, so preferably it should involve "East Hartford" (or "Rentschler or something like that") over "Storrs" though I will accept anything on those lines (even "Connecticut"). Rating: 15/15

Overall Atmosphere: 37/40

On-field:

Quality of Play: Best game at Rentschler all season. Both teams really played well, and in the end UConn emerged victorious. Rating: 19/20

Excitement: What a thriller. Overtime and a game-winning field goal. Amazing. Rating: 10/10

Quality of UConn Play: Also amazing. Played very well. Struggled a bit in the first half, so this won't get a perfect score, but we did very well. Rating: 9/10

Result: Win 10/10

On-field total: 48/50

Other:
Clarity of Fan Communication: A couple times when you couldn't hear the refs over the crowd, but other than that very good. Rating: 4.5/5

Magnitude of Event: Could be the biggest win in program history. We were struggling, and if we lost we'd have been 3-5 and lost 3 straight heading into the Pitt game. In all likelihood, we wouldn't even make a bowl. Now we're back to .500, and beat a team we were 0-8 against, and given the terrible state of the Big East, we have an outside chance of winning the conference if we win out (and since we'd have wins against WVU and Pitt, that would help us with the tiebreakers.) So a huge win for us. Rating: 13/15

Size of Crowd: Sellout, stayed for whole game. Rating: 15/15

Other total: 32.5/35

Overall total: 117.5/125