University of Connecticut Athletics
Huskies Soar Over the Mountain Hawks, 35-17
10/4/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
EAST HARTFORD, CT (October 4, 2003) – Junior quarterback Dan Orlovsky (Shelton, CT) threw three touchdown passes and freshman running back Matt Lawrence (Bloomfield, CT) rushed for a career-best 88 yards and another score in his first career start as Connecticut defeated Lehigh, 35-14, Saturday before a crowd of 35,322 at Rentschler Field.
The win, UConn’s eighth in its last 10 games, improves the Huskies’ record to 4-2 on the campaign. The Mountain Hawks drop to 3-2 on the season.
Lehigh took an early lead on a 32-yard field goal by Matt Douglas, which was set up when UConn went for it on fourth and one from its own 42 and Lawrence was stopped for no gain. The Huskies were forced to punt on their next two possessions, but junior cornerback Justin Perkins (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) had the first of his two interceptions giving UConn the ball at the Lehigh 30. Orlovsky wasted no time, connecting with senior wide out O’Neil Wilson (Scarborough, ON) on a 29-yard completion. Lawrence bullied over from the one on the next play, and the Huskies were never headed the rest of the contest.
The Huskies were able to move the ball easily throughout the first half, as they amassed 251 yards of total offense in the first 20-minutes. Orlovsky entered intermission with 210 yards passing, completing 15 of 28 pass attempts. However, the game remained 7-3 through most of the second quarter due to two missed field goals by freshman kicker Graig Vicidomino (Seymour, CT). Two plays after the second missed field goal, senior defensive tackle Ryan Bushey (Manchester, CT) forced Lehigh running back Jermaine Pugh to fumble, and junior linebacker Maurice Lloyd (Daytona Beach, FL) recovered and the Huskies were back in business. Again, Orlovsky struck quickly, hitting sophomore wide receiver Brandon Young (Morganza, MD) with a 25-yard scoring strike to give the Huskies a 14-3 lead heading into halftime. Young finished the contest with career-high totals of seven receptions and 100 receiving yards.
Midway through the third quarter, UConn put some distance between themselves and the Mountain Hawks. Wilson caught an 18-yard scoring toss from Orlovsky after Perkins registered his second pickoff of the contest.
Orlovsky hit junior wide out Keron Henry (Brooklyn, NY) with a four-yard scoring strike and junior backup running back Chris Bellamy (New Britain, CT) scampered in from eight yards out in the fourth quarter to cap UConn’s scoring. It was Bellamy’s first career touchdown.
The Mountain Hawks mounted two fourth-quarter scoring marches against mostly reserve defenders to make the final, 35-17.
Orlovsky finished the game 22 of 40 for 282 yards, and the three touchdowns. He was intercepted once, and has now thrown a touchdown pass in 18 consecutive contests, which is the second longest streak in school history, trailing only Shane Stafford’s 21-game run from 1996-1998.
The Huskies return to the gridiron next Saturday, October 11, when they travel to Raleigh, NC to play North Carolina State. Kickoff at Carter-Finlay Stadium is set for 1:00 p.m. The game will not be televised locally.
Head Coach Randy Edsall
We’re 4-2 half way through the season and that’s really the bottom line, but the REAL bottom line is that we have some work to do. Our offensive line . . . I didn’t think that they were physical enough.
Our offense better understand that number 44 is not going to be there the rest of the year.
I shouldn’t feel this way after going out and winning a football game, but if I felt any other way, then I wouldn’t be doing my job as a head football coach here.
I give our defense a lot of credit for keeping us in the game and getting us field position.
Regarding going for it on fourth and one in the first quarter on UCONN’s side of the field: If you can’t make it (on fourth and one), someone has to do some soul searching.
The running game starts up front and I’m coming down hard on them and laying it where it belongs.
Wide Receiver Brandon Young
Brandon is a guy we though was going to be a starter for us all year. He got healthy from the hamstring and went out there and did the things he was supposed to do and it doesn’t surprise me that Brandon had the kind of day that he had. He’s a hard worker and he has ability.
When you don’t play with that pride and passion, I got a problem with that and I have a big problem right now and I won’t say anything else or I’m going to get my self in trouble.
Kicker Graig Vicidomino
That first extra point – I had played a little last game so I saw a little playing time – just the fans and the excitement of playing at home was a great experience. That first extra point, there’s no better feeling than that.
On those two field goals, I wouldn’t really say I was nervous. I lost my concentration on my approach to the ball.
I picked my head up and that usually causes me to hook it and that’s what happened on both of those.
Defensive Tackle Sean Mulcahy
I’ll take a win any way I can get it. I was here when we
were 3-8 and 2-9. It was a win and that’s all that counts. There are some things we need to work on but we’ll get it done. It’s not the end of the world.
Tailback Chris Bellamy
I knew once Terry went down I was going back (to RB). They changed me to wide receiver but running back has always been my first love. Instead of being tentative at wide receiver, I knew what I had to do.
Lehigh Head Coach Pete Lembo
I would like to start off by thanking the UConn people for their tremendous hospitality. I really think this is a first class operation from top to bottom….Their attention to detail throughout the game, just managing the game, I thought was just a tremendous experience for our kids.
I am very proud of the effort that our kids put forth today, on both sides of the ball and on special teams. I thought we played hard for sixty minutes. There were a lot of highs and lows out there, but we never put our heads down. We really, really did some good things schematically. I think our kids executed and they adjusted, and we walked away without any major injuries. And I think that’s a direct result of the effort that our kids gave throughout the practice week and the effort that they gave for sixty minutes here today.
I’m disappointed with the turnovers. Obviously they were critical turnovers at critical times. They gave UConn a short field. And other than one substantial drive they had with a big run, their scores came off of short drives after turnovers.
Going into a game like this you talk to your team candidly and honestly about what it’s going to take to win. It’s going to take a great effort, which we had. It’s also going to take guys playing perfect football, mistake-free football, focused football. And when you turn the ball over like we did today, obviously, that’s not the case. If we play perfect football, it’s probably a close game in the 4th quarter.
We came out fired up and we made some plays early in the game. Crazy as it sounds I think the biggest turnaround in this football game was the offensive pass interference against press man coverage – and I’m not criticizing the officials so please don’t take it that way. But if we make that completion, now we’re down in the red zone with an opportunity to go up by two scores. As much as I think we had them in disarray when we went up by a field goal, I think it would have been chaos over on the other sideline had we gone up by two scores. So I think that was perhaps the biggest play in the game in terms of change of momentum. Obviously the turnovers did it later.
The neat thing is our kids kept battling. They really did.
Defensive Back Trevor Micklos
We had our ups and downs. We came out strong….Overall, I think we did average – not great, not poor.
A moral victory is not good enough in our book.
Tight End Adam Bergen
Going in to it, we knew this would probably be the most physical team we would be playing, the most athletic team. They were stronger than most teams we’ve played….I just tried to work to get open.
