UConn 41 – Rutgers 35
His dream had minutes before become his destiny. An afternoon he anticipated for a decade had arrived yesterday at Rutgers Stadium.
And there was Jeff Hathaway at the door of the University of Connecticut’s locker room. Inside, the players celebrated locking up the first bowl bid in school history. Outside, Hathaway, UConn’s athletic director, struggled to say what this most important moment meant.
“You get to the point where you’re so excited, you can’t even show it,” Hathaway said, pausing after every thought. “I’m just busting inside. I mean, ‘Wow.’ “
The water near Hathaway’s eyes, which had been raindrops as he watched the Huskies hold off Rutgers 41-35 yesterday morning and early afternoon, became tears that could no longer be choked back.
As he spoke, Hathaway removed his glasses to rub his eyes. Ten feet away, head coach Randy Edsall, the man Hathaway recommended to lead the program exactly to where he has led it, swallowed hard and summed up his sentiments.
“We came down here and took care of business,” he said. “Now, we know we’re going to be going somewhere. And, you know, [on] Dec. 21, 1998, I could never have envisioned this.”
Connecticut hired Edsall that day six years ago, and soon their relationship will add another memorable December date.
The Huskies (7-4, 3-3 Big East) were in line for a Dec. 30 meeting with North Carolina in the Continental Tire Bowl at Charlotte’s Ericsson Stadium, according to executives with two bowl games. However, Pittsburgh’s 16-13 upset win over West Virginia last night may have changed plans that were in the works.
Representatives of the UConn alumni association had contacted ex-Huskie Emeka Okafor, now a starting center with the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats, about appearing at a pregame reception. And preliminary travel packages to bring Huskies fans nationwide to join the 4,200 alums in the Carolinas and Georgia had pleased the bowl committee, searching for a sellout crowd in Charlotte.
Now, a trip to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando or the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., could cap UConn football’s push to prominence. It started at a 1993 Board of Trustees meeting, when Hathaway, then an associate AD, and AD Lew Perkins first proposed the jump from Division I-AA to I-A.
The program watched an on-campus stadium proposal die before the state legislature rallied to fund its current home field in East Hartford. A Big East invite followed, and this year the school became the first to complete the move from I-AA to a BCS conference, where it split its six league games.
Yesterday’s struggles, then, were nothing new. The Huskies won despite allowing Rutgers (4-7, 1-5) an 87-yard touchdown reception by Tres Moses (who also had a 16-yard TD and finished with seven catches for 168 yards) and an 80-yard kickoff return for a TD by Willie Foster that cut UConn’s lead to 41-35 with 2:14 to play.
Two interceptions by quarterback Dan Orlovsky, on throws so errant Knights defensive backs could have called for fair catches, hurt as well.
But UConn prevailed, thanks to three first-half touchdowns from tailback Cornell Brockington and two second-half TD catches by tight end Dan Murray. The win earned the Huskies one more game and a permanent place in school history.
“This was a big part of why I came here,” said Orlovsky, who was 19-of-30 for 264 yards and three TDs. “And [the feeling] is 5,000 times better than I ever expected.”