Rapid Reactions: UConn football dominates in 63-17 win over Merrimack

hello and welcome to our first post game live reaction episode at stor Central this is Aman kid wide joined by Graham Chamberlain here to break down the Husky 6317 win over Marram Graham your thoughts after the game uh it was good it was really good was good you know it's really the first time in since 2010 that Yukon played an FCS team here at wrer and just completely out pass them outgained them out out everything them in every facet of the game um you know there's always questions why you play an FCS team and you know we've had results recently 24-21 Wagner 2420 Holy Cross they lost a Holy Cross um you know even last year Sacred Heart 313 that you know coach MOA wasn't really happy about either so I think it was a much more complete performance and then 63 points that ties the FBS record set in 2002 against Kent State in the final game at uh Memorial on campus so all in all really good you can't ask for much better especially after what happened last weekend yeah I mean I think the way that they absolutely dominated is super encouraging they they forced five three and outs in the first half Fano threw five touchdown passes they were Ultra efficient they were hitting big plays for touchdowns what do we got here uh 50 48 29 46 60 39 those are all you know touchdown plays here uh and a 44 so those are all just yukon's touchdowns which is a level of explosiveness we have not seen in the past from Yukon and I think it's clear again regardless of the opponent Yukon has some pop offensively here yeah and you saw the play I think specifically back to cam Edwards is 50- yard I mean he just outran the marac defense and like that should be the difference you see when you're playing an CS team as an FBS team but again we haven't seen that yeah so it was really good to see that Skyler Bell same deal with his 60 yard Victor Rosa I mean you just saw the speed differential that was that was on the field today and that's exactly what yuk guys needed to upgrade in recent years yeah I mean everyone got involved deral Robinson had the long touchdown run 48 yard touchdown run Rosa had a Rosa had a touchdown Skyler Bell ezar Anderson Shamar Porter all touchdowns two of them on Long plays I mean so many people getting involved I think that's going to be huge for their confidence going forward yeah absolutely I mean this game could have gone you know after last weekend you never know what the team's mindset is you know obviously coach MO is gonna come out he's gonna say oh there a good good week of practice it always is right but you you really never know until you come out here and I mean just a great confidence booster like you said it just really that's that's it yeah I mean like I you know you has not handled an FCS opponent like this ever or in a long time at least in the Jim MOA era they've done a good job with FCS opponents uh to to their credit but this was really different and I think they deserve a lot of credit for doing that like you said could have totally showed up flat today and still won still had a good outing statistically and all that but they really dominated and I think that's why you know we talk about an FCS opponent new to FCS so not even like a stalwart within the league yeah but I think no matter what you have to be super encouraged by seeing Yukon put up 63 over 600 yards of offense all those big plays backup quarterback throwing five touchdowns um I mean let's talk about Joe Fano I mean 331 yards five touchdowns that ties Dan Orlowski single game record um you know Coach Moore said that Nick Evers is the guy if he's healthy and you know obviously we got to take him out his word to a certain extent but I feel like that's really tough to you know to to Discount what Fano did today I mean and that was only on what it was on 19 attempts 19 attempts you know I mean he when he connected he connected for big plays he missed some big missed some big plays too he had some guys wide open on some throws and that's that'll come with time that can get ironed out as the season goes um I mean do you think there's a quarterback controversy you know going into dup next week it's a really good question I mean a lot comes into play here I thought Fano looked uh really stable in the pocket I thought he was making his progressions well in general you mentioned the Miss plays you know those that's just like Miss throws I think it's not bad reads I saw pretty good reads in general in the RPO game and the read options and stuff like that he's actually a decent Runner like a like a sneaky athletic he's an he's an over athl this guy from willamsport Pennsylvania you know he played some little league baseball you know he loves the bball with his friends but um uh Joe Fano again you know good for you anytime you're in the same breath as Dan orlovski when we're talking Yukon QB accomplishments that's incredible and I mean QB controversy I think it's a more of a question than people think um and and I think the initial thing is just like oh you've got a guy like Nick Evers he comes in with such a high pedigree you invested a lot and I L wise to bring him in yeah how can you justify not starting him not playing totally get that but this guy's a red shirt sophomore and you do want to win right now and I think you can make the argument if you are the head coach your responsibil is to win maybe you do think Fano is the guy who can do it I think it's just going to take more time though it's gonna have to be you know do well against Duke a good defense and then do it I think we can say fairly convincingly given what we saw from marac Nick ever might have had a pretty good day out there too yeah it would it would I can't imagine it would have gone very differently I can't imagine Nick Evers could have completed some of those throws into the flag and like he probably would have run a little more um than fan did but I mean yeah I'm certainly not saying that Evers wouldn't have been able to do what F did today um again he's just a he's an experienced guy he's got a lot of snaps not as many at the FBS level but he has a lot of snaps and you know Evers last week was his first real game action since high schools from three years so and that's something that Jim Mo really values so I think it's a I'm not gonna say anything yet today but it's I think it's a possibility yeah as we get closer to Duke it comes down to I guess you know a matter of how much you want to build for the future versus kind of win now and you know how important that is necessarily answer is of course it's really important you know the fans are starved for winning there's been not many wins these uh these last few years let's talk about the defense a little bit I mean you know same thing really exposed last week against Maryland in a lot of different ways a lot of things you're really concerned about but this week again not just handled a weeker opponent really dominated them yeah uh I think what uh zero TDS in the first five drives uh they didn't get on the board until the until it was 28 nothing y um what' you think about the performance from the defense I mean fantastic they were under 100 yards I think up until that 71 yard touchdown pass with some wires got crossed there and the and the don't like that the secondary wasn't great not not what you want to see but again I'm not gonna argue about the final result um I really like Jaden MC McDonald today I know he's playing with the shoulder issue he's he's just tough in and out G and you know that's hard to do better man than I um same with T P Brown he's got a finger broken finger I think and he's I wouldn't be typing stories if I had a broken you know exactly exactly you know he's just gonna Club it up and go out there and and just tough it out and that's I think I'm sure DC Brock and MOA love that about these guys um again they're out there they took care of business less than a 100 yards for a long time which I'm happy to see after Billy Edwards Jr last week really just did whatever he wanted to do in the passing game last week so again it's maram it always comes back to well it's just maram but it's like we said like like we said in the opening it's not always this way so of course it's a low tier FCS team and okay so somewhere so we now know that you kind of somewhere in between not anywhere near the middle of the Big 10 but way above the low tier of FCS so we really don't know that's all we know I mean look again uh things that are indicative of a Sharp performance as opposed to a sloppy performance when you were match no turnovers right that's good strong overall average clip offensively uh really efficient uh you know uh effort in the passing game Fano completed 13 passes to get those five touchdowns I mean that's you know lots of big plays I mean the only downside of the big plays is you had some you had some n9c drives 45 second touchdown drives maybe your got a little tired maybe that's what led to some of the scoring um you know you're able to get the backups in that's also huge for Yukon at this time uh really for both sides of the ball think about quarterback one more guy goes down at QB you have a different guy starting that's something to be concerned with and then on defense probably still a lot of competition for playing time to even figure out so I think really good that they were able to get their second stringers third stringers out there through the third and fourth quarter yeah absolutely I mean we saw bunch of guys out there we don't see a ton we saw Matt Hoffman on the dline know Jaden Simon got out there a little bit in the secondary we saw jabarus Sims um ronte Jones got out there after missing the first half from targeting so you know the expectation is that Malik Dixon Williams comes back next week so be interesting to see what what the safety position looks like between the two of them and you know at quarterback you know not on wood but but if a quarterback does go down you know you don't want that throwing them in to be their first game experience like especially someone like Cole Welliver who's has seen at least McDonald had a couple snaps last year at UMass you know um you don't want it to be too you don't want to be the moment to be too big for them and I think getting out there and being able to actually throw some passes and not just hand it off is huge for them that's big um we saw a lot of different receivers today um as I was doing my recap I mean the Le in recessions was actually H with three so the ball got spread around quite a bit bunch of other guys with two yeah that's great it's it's awesome to have Skyler Bell and his big play capability but you also don't want just one guy I we've seen that with n Thomas Jr and Jeremy Davis even though they were awesome like but they were the only ones and so it's nice to have at least some other dudes that can step up so you know we we've talked about over and over solid performance encouraging despite the lower tier of opponent despite what happened in week one have to be encouraged by what you saw of the Huskies uh Mora actually said he saw some signs from the offense last week uh just some notes from the press conference He also mentioned price8 might be close he hopes to have him back next week so we shall see how are you thinking about this Duke matchup coming up on Saturday the huskys Lost big right here on this field a about a year ago uh much different Duke team yukon's one and one what do you think they need to do on H Saturday next week I mean Duke is similar to Yukon and that you know they played an FCS team and it could have been a lot bigger for Duke against Elon in week one but it wasn't they won 26 to3 um you know ended up getting a win last night in double overtime at Northwest there and it wasn't pretty it was 13313 going into overtime and you know again conditions aren't great the winds are swirling off Lake Michigan there and it's really not the greatest environment but they they came out I mean they have a really good quarterback in Malik Murphy they have a great receiver and I I'm gonna always forget his first name but Moore he's a J Moore either Jack is or Jordan I can't remember which one it is um I think he had like 15 targets last night 11 catches like but then like that was pretty much it so they have the one dude and they have a really good chemistry he looks like Murphy and more um so we bck to him down the Duke's defense is really good it was good last year it's going to be good again and I think that's where my biggest hangup is like I think that yukon's defense can hang in there with this team but can they put up points they don't have to put up 63 but can you get 28 and you get 24 like that may be enough and you know I think it's probably a defense that's on par at least with Maryland so that's what's concerning most yeah I think I mean in terms of expect it's like you got to be better than the Duke game last year even though that was at home you got to be better than the Maryland game this year as as you're saying and um I mean defensively I think Duke's still G to be really tough they might even be better than Maryland defensively I think it's probably not likely that they're better offensively than Maryland but they might still be able to put up that crooked number and I think that's you know what your Yukon even though you had a good day today you still can't you can't have it happen again because then we're talking about negative Vibes you know going into the next week a night game at home you have a big opportunity FAU start of a six-game home stand to really get something going so um you know even though it's a road game against a P4 it's a something that big Stakes for Yukon I think going forward yeah and we'll talk about more more about Duke this week we'll be joined by Ben bird the Bull City coordinators um we talked to him earlier in the summer to kind of get a preseason view of Duke we going to get a more in-depth analysis of Duke after two games so watch out for that this week in store Central um but yeah excited for the Duke game it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting it's you know I I hadn't thought I hadn't thought much of it going into the year but I think at this point the way the first two games have gone it's a really important game like I think the seeson can kind of tilt one way or another even if it's a close loss I think you could feel good going into that homeand but you can't do what you did against Maryland exactly yeah no 50 to7 50 to7 loss we cannot have that no more that is the goal for this week that's going to do it for us here thank you all for listening and watching from the rent