Dom Amore
Hartford Courant
AMHERST, Mass. – A couple of wins to finish the season had a pretty good effect on Jim Mora, even if his UConn team finished 3-9.
He squeezed into a small equipment room at McGuirk Alumni Stadium Saturday to meet reporters after the Huskies’ 31-18 win over UMass and started off by walking back, or at least tempering some of his comments from earlier in the week, striking an upbeat tone for the first time in a while.
“Some of what I said the other day was offensive,” he said. “I’m a very passionate person and sometimes the message gets lost in the delivery when I get going a little bit, and I think that happened the other day.”
Rather than rehash everything the coach said last Tuesday, or on other occasions earlier this season, and square it with his informal season-ending address, we’ll try to encapsulate:
Mora’s message was that not enough money was raised to offer potential recruits, especially in the transfer portal, in the name-image-likeness area. Not enough was done to capitalize on the momentum the program had after reaching a bowl game in 2022, and if this didn’t change UConn would continue to languish. And if people weren’t going to kick in to help UConn offer players more, then they don’t have the right to complain, not actually the word he used, when the team takes drubbings like 59-3 at Tennessee and 44-6 at James Madison. The “don’t have the right to (complain)” part probably struck a few nerves.
None of what Mora has been saying on this topic is wrong, the rules have changed and UConn must be prepared to adapt, but how — and how often — he has been saying these things could create the perception that he is pointing fingers, souring on the job, fallen into the weary pattern of some of his predecessors, the “they-can’t-win-here” thing.
Mora, 62, made clear that this was not the case.
“I’m passionate about this place,” he said. “I love this place, I want to win, I’m going to fight for it.”
Mora can be a loose cannon and, frankly, one reason he was hired was to make people pay attention to UConn football. They were paying attention Saturday, and the NIL war chest was being fed. In the hours after the season ended, there was Marc D’Amelio, influencer and founder of the Huskies NIL Collective, pushing for donations on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, offering to match, and others asking where and how they could contribute, even small sums, with Mora and AD David Benedict interacting. By Saturday night, D’Amelio reported $12,000 raised from 60 contributors, plus his pledge to match.
“Thankfully,” Mora said, “we have a president ( Radenca Maric ), we have Board of Trustees and we have an Athletic Director, a support group working as hard as they can to push for the things we need to push for in order to compete at the level that everyone that’s associated with this program wants to see.”
Ok, so that’s settled for now. Mora said a heartfelt goodbye to seniors who have stuck with the program and helped create a team that, whatever its shortcomings, never white-flagged the season. The number of fights that broke out at UMass showed how much winning this neighborhood rivalry game mattered.
“Coach Mora always has our back,” linebacker Jackson Mitchell said. “Everything he says is from a good place.”
The season just completed was a disappointment, and that can’t be papered over. There were expected blowout losses to high-caliber opponents, but just as many losses to teams UConn could and should have beaten, and these losses halted the program’s momentum and kept the Huskies out of bowl contention.
But the season does not have to be portrayed as a disaster. Folks who follow UConn should know the difference. In 2021, the Huskies lost seven games by 30 or more points, lost to an FCS school, Holy Cross, lost to UMass and hung on by a thread to beat Yale for the only win.
This team was more frustrating than overmatched. And if the disappointment of losing out with regard to the Big 12 expansion crept in and affected the season, well, that should not have been allowed to happen.
UConn’s 3-9 season only exposed that there is more work to be done, no quick fixes, and the need to do what all the other football programs do after such a season: get better players and try again.
As he headed into the offseason, Mora sounded re-centered, ready to get after it.
“The growth that took place on this team, I think it will present itself down the line,” Mora said. “I think those guys (the seniors) have set a foundation for the program that we are beholden to uphold and we will. The minute details to the big things have to be reevaluated, see if we are doing it right, see if we can do it better. The most poisonous words are, ‘I got it,’ or ‘we’ve always done it this way.’”
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