Aug. 25, 2008

AMHERST, Mass. - The Colonial Athletic Association held its first weekly teleconference of the season on Monday. The teleconference gives all the head coaches of the conference the opportunity to review their last game and give their thoughts on the upcoming opponent. Here is what UMass Coach Don Brown had to say about the upcoming season and week one foe Albany.

On how preseason camp went:
The guys competed hard over the two-a-day period. We are reasonably healthy, just a couple nicks, nothing major. I know one thing, our guys are looking forward to game week and looking forward to bringing Albany in here n Saturday night.

His thoughts on Albany:
They have three starting offensive lineman back and two tight ends, both with experience, Marcus Miles and Dan Archer. At wide receiver they lost a couple of key guys, but Tim Bush played a bunch for them a year ago, as did Jason Smith and Daniel Bocanegra. Their quarterback, Vinny Esposito, is back and whenever you have your starting quarterback back you feel pretty good. But the guy that drives that engine is David McCarty, their outstanding tailback, who is one of the best tailbacks in FCS football.

On defense, their entire secondary is back. Up front, they are led by Tom Pandolf, who was an All-League performer for them a year ago. Their outstanding punter, Chris Lynch, is back as well. They have a lot of pieces in place. They had a tremendous season last year, playing in the postseason mid-major bowl, so obviously we are excited about the challenge"

On being picked atop the CAA coaches' poll:
It certainly puts a target on our backs, but at the same time it shows the respect we have received throughout our conference. Beginning on August 30 at six o'clock, it will have no bearing on the football game as you have to go out and prove it on a week-to-week basis. We are relatively young on offense. We have four starters back there, but we are also fortunate enough to have Liam Coen back, our outstanding quarterback, to provide stability and leadership. We have some guys back who have played, but we are going to have to develop some household names if we are going to be successful.

We have eight starters back on defense, really nine when you look at the playing time some of those guys have had. We had to replace our starting field goal kicker, Chris Koepplin, and Armando Cuko stepped right in.

There are a lot of question marks, but at the same time it is an exciting team to coach. I'm anxious to see how they will respond to the first challenge and I know we'll get a great effort from our guys.

On what Liam Coen means to the team:
Without question, we feel anytime Liam is under center we have a legitimate shot to win the football game, but there is more to it. This year is in tremendous shape. I think the best shape of his career. He really spent the time necessary, not only to get himself mentally ready this summer, but did a great job getting himself in tremendous shape. He's a leader in every sense of the word. He has a great understanding of what we are trying to do from a concept standpoint, but he also has a great concept of what our opponents are trying to do.

We just look for him to provide stability, leadership and the game is really in his hands at this point. He handles all of our check packages. He makes all the protection calls. We just have a lot of confidence in the young man's ability to run our football team.

On the defensive backfield:
When you have three out of the four back, and the other, Brian Ellis, is a very smart guy, you know you are going to get your guys lined up. That is an important piece. If there is something there that is new that they have to adjust to, there's really not much that they haven't seen.

Three out of four of our starters are back up front on the defensive line, with Kyle Harrington, Brandon Collier, and Michael Hanson. Two of the three linebackers in Josh Jennings and George Byrd have played a considerable amount, although they shared time last year at the "Will" backer position, but also played a lot in our four-linebacker schemes.

We just feel like our guys will be able to get themselves lined up well and play fast accordingly because they have a good handle of what we are doing scheme-wise. Whenever you have your backfield back intact, you feel pretty confident because it allows you to be really flexible with what you are doing up front.