2008 Woodie Awards
Offense continues shaky play against UMass
Anthony DeAngelis
Issue date: 11/7/06 Section: Sports
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In the last three weeks, not counting the Hofstra game, the Wildcats have either found themselves behind or tied with their opponents heading into halftime.
End result -- the Wildcats have lost two of their last three games.
This past Saturday was no different, as the Wildcats found themselves down 21-3 to UMass at halftime.
The Wildcats managed to outscore the Minutemen 17-7 in the second half, but in the end it wasn't enough as the Wildcats lost the game 28-20.
"We showed signs of greatness out there, but we put ourselves in too big of a hole," said senior wide receiver David Ball.
Continuing their stagnant trends from the past few weeks, the Wildcats scored just three points and gained 172 yards of total offense in the first half, leaving them on the losing end once again.
"For whatever reason, the last couple of weeks we've started off slow on offense and, as we're showing, it doesn't turn out to us winning," said junior quarterback Ricky Santos.
Just about anything and everything went wrong for the Wildcats in the first half between the four offensive penalties, the numerous dropped passes, and the non-existent running game that the offense could never seem to get into a consistent rhythm.
"I thought we shot ourselves in the foot a bunch of times with a penalty here, a dropped pass here, a dropped pass there," said Head Coach Sean McDonnell.
"Against a team like UMass, you can't be doing those types of things," said Ball. "We had to be perfect in all aspects of the game and today we weren't."
However, things changed for the Wildcats in the second half as they played almost mistake-free football when the offense finally showed up, scoring 17 points and gaining 269 yards of total offense.
But what happened in the first half, and why has the offense been so inconsistent?
This was the offense that was supposed to dominate the Atlantic 10 Conference. Prior to the season, so much was made about how dynamic this offense was and how Ricky Santos and David Ball were going to be such an unstoppable tandem.
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