Wednesday, September 7, 2011

A Look Ahead at Vanderbilt

It's that time of week when I start looking forward to this week's game, the opponent Vanderbilt. Their record last year was 2-10 with the only wins coming against Ole Miss and Eastern Michigan. UConn defeated the Commodores last year with a final score of 40-21 here in Connecticut, with an amazing performance from Jordan Todman (190 yards and 2 TDs) and a solid game from Cody Endres (too bad he couldn't get his act together).

To start the season Vanderbilt went along the same lines as UConn with Fordham by playing Elon. Unfortunately for the Commodores it was not nearly the dominating performance that they would have liked. Elon actually out-gained Vandy 323-309 and controlled the ball for over 35 minutes, but three turnovers haunted the Phoenix as they failed to turn their offensive control into points. The offense for Vanderbilt had success both in rushing and passing but the defense had trouble and against a team that is not turnover prone they may have some problems keeping other teams outside the end zone.

With that in mind it becomes an interesting match up between a team like UConn whose team defense looked sound and whose offense looked at times inept against an inferior defense against a team like Vanderbilt whose offense clicked but whose defense struggled against an inferior offense. I assume that the quarterback trouble to be a problem (as discussed in a post earlier today) but that this UConn team is still good enough to beat Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is a team which will do better than last year record wise but will still wind up on the outside looking in when it comes to bowl games, and this team should not stop UConn from going 2-0.

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