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How to beat a service academy: UConn football focused on these keys as it readies for Air Force
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- How to beat a service academy: UConn football focused on these keys as it readies for Air Force
STORRS – There is very little margin for error when playing against any of the service academies and their option offenses on the football field.
UConn will have a heightened focus on maximizing its possessions when it visits Air Force , which leads the nation in time of possession, spending more than 36 and a half minutes per game running the ball on offense, and is No. 2 nationally in rushing at 337.4 yards per game. The key for the Huskies will be starting fast, avoiding negative plays and cleaning up the penalties – an area where the team has struggled all season.
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"That's what you're trying to do every week, right? You're trying to be positive on first down, you're trying not to have pre-snap operation things," coach Jason Candle said. "I don't want to create a sense of anxiety for our players on offense to go into the game feeling like they have to be perfect, because that's not the case. But you do have to have your 'A' game when it comes to maximizing those chances. And, make no mistake about it, you'd like to play with a lead in this game. You can't go down 14 or 21 here because you don't have the possessions on the back end to try to catch up. I think that's where it becomes really problematic if you get behind and it limits on the back end maybe more so than an offense that takes more risk and the clock is stopped more times than not. You've got to do a good job trying to get off to a good start and hopefully we can get a lead."
So far this season, ending the first quarter with a lead has been almost a given. Averaging 12 points per game in the first quarter and only giving up 5, the Huskies have led at the start of the second quarter in five of their seven games and been tied twice.
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On the penalty front, they've come less frequently in recent weeks, though the Huskies still rank No. 133 of 138 FBS teams in penalty yardage per game and only 10 teams have been flagged more.
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Still, UConn boasts the No. 29 scoring offense at 35.6 points per game and ranks 24th in total yardage with 447.6 yards per game thanks to a top 25 rushing attack averaging 203. Air Force has the No. 20 defense in terms of total yards allowed per game (296.4), thanks largely to a pass defense that only allows 163.9 yards per game through the air, good for No. 10 nationally.
"We have a group of guys that can score long touchdowns and I think the most staggering thing is the number of explosive plays we've been able to create. You get a good player in a one-on-one situation, he's usually gonna do what he's supposed to do. We've worked really hard at trying to do that," Candle said.
"We've had some consistency in the sense of quarterback, O-line, for the most part those guys have been healthy throughout the course of the season. When that unit is rolling as 11 guys, it's just starting to get better and better as the weeks go by," he continued. "Sometimes we've had really high rushing numbers, sometimes we've really high passing numbers, but I think the consistency thing is we've been able to dictate and control the tempo of the games where we've played really, really well. There's a couple times there and a couple quarters where we haven't, and that's where we've had our struggles, but for the most part we've been able to dictate the tempo and keep pace and get the playmakers involved."
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