Defensive Deficiency? I Disagree.

Alot has been made of the high score posted by Connecticut in Cincinnati's 47-45 win last Saturday. Varied sites are saying things like UConn "picked apart" the UC defense, and that the game "exposed the warts, moles and scar tissue on the Big East's beauty queen". It has led to one writer from Foxsports picking West Virginia as his "Upset pick of the week" at the end of this article.

I disagree.

The belief is that the large, physical UConn offensive line wore down the smaller, quicker UC defense with their grind-it-out style of play. That would probably mean a huge time of possession advantage for UConn (similar to the Fresno State game), right? Um no. Actually UC led time of possession 32:45 to 27:15. A few long, sustained UConn drives that wore down the defense? No again. Connecticut had only one scoring drive greater than 2 minutes in the 2nd half (6:42) and only 2 in the 1st half (4:36 & 4:25).

So what's the problem then? Very simply, UConn made some very big plays in the 2nd half. Jordan Todman had a 46-yd TD run, Robert McClain had an 87-yd TD punt return, and Zach Frazer completed a 52-yd pass to Khalif Moore that setup a 1-yd run by Todman. Those 3 drives took 0:41, 0:00, and 1:30, respectively. They accounted for 22 of UConn's 35 second half points. Without those big plays, UConn still might have scored, but it would have taken more time and prevented them from having the number of possessions needed to get back into the game.

The Cincinnati defense made mistakes, but it is not a hidden flaw that has been exposed. It's a few missed assignments that gave way to the big play and a couple of big plays often result in an upset. "Everything that happened can be fixed. It was just one guy out of position here, two guys out of position there." Bearcats linebacker Marcus Waugh said. The UC defense has generally not been burned by big plays prior to the UConn game. I am sure that the defense and special teams had a good week of practice and are eager to prove that last week's game was a fluke.

While a big, physical offensive attack isn't an ideal matchup for the Bearcats defense, they proved against Fresno State that they can win against it. This week's matchup against West Virginia features an offense that relies more on speed than power, which should be a more favorable matchup for UC.