UMass quarterback Kellen Pagel expected to return from injury Saturday
1
University of Massachusetts football coach Kevin Morris said the Minutemen will have quarterback Kellen Pagel back under center Saturday when they host Central Connecticut State at 6 p.m.
Pagel suffered an apparent head injury during UMass' last drive in the third quarter in Saturday's loss to Old Dominion. Pagel left the game and Brandon Hill took over in the fourth quarter.
"Kellen's going to be all right. He just got his bell rung a little bit," Morris said on Monday's Colonial Athletic Association conference call. "He should be good to go."
While the Minutemen will be glad to have Pagel back, they'll be hoping he plays the way he did in the second half of the second quarter and the third, as opposed to how he played early in the game. UMass' offense sputtered in the first quarter and Pagel was intercepted twice early in the second as the Minutemen fell behind 25-0.
He led UMass to 26-straight points and a 26-25 lead before being injured.
Pagel's two interceptions were among four Minuteman turnovers. The number could have been worse as they had seven fumbles in the game, but recovered five of them to prevent the change of possession. It's been a trend throughout the season. UMass has thrown six interceptions and fumbled 12 times, six of which it lost.
"We take that seriously. We turned the ball over four times and we have the ball on the ground seven times. We only lost two of them, but the ball was on the ground way too often. We're obviously not doing a good enough job taking care of it. We're certainly trying to address it," he said. "That's something that has to be remedied if we're going to compete against a good CCSU team and the rest of the CAA for the rest of the year."
BIG EASTEXPANSION - The presidents of the remaining Big East schools have given the league permission to aggressively pursue expansion, which makes sense after losing Syracuse and Pittsburgh, to refortify its football teams.
But two of the schools most prominently mentioned to be targets for that expansion - Navy and Air Force - seem peculiar.
Navy makes a little sense if this is a football only move. The Midshipmen would give the league another football school without watering down the basketball conference, which would help keep the peace between the league's football and nonfootball schools.
But Air Force? It's hard to picture the Mountain West keeping the Falcons for other sports and letting the football team leave, so it would all but have to be an all-sport move and who would really benefit?
None of the service academies have been so successful that they're guaranteed to raise the Big East's football profile. They're certainly not going to get the same level of recruit athletically that the rest of the league will target.
It doesn't necessarily make great sense for Air Force either. The service academies have had a greater commitment to academics than at say West Virginia. Are they really going to send their soccer and swimming teams across two time zones for half their league games at the expense of their school work? Student athlete is of course a misnomer at a lot of places, but there's still reason to believe that Army, Navy and Air Force could be the exception.
Plus, Air Force would be joining a league with no guarantee of keeping its membership. If either Connecticut, Rutgers or both leave for the Atlantic Coast Conference (which isn't impossible) or some combination of TCU, West Virginia and Louisville join the Big 12 (even more likely), then Air Force will have thumbed its nose at the Mountain West to join a league that could turn out to be a step down.
UNRANKED MINUTEMEN- Saturday's loss knocked UMass out of both top 25s after being ranked No. 20 in both last week. The Minutemen are third among teams receiving votes in both polls.
The CAA has eight teams in the Sports Network top 25 for the first time since 1995, when it was the Yankee Conference. Only UMass, Rhode Island and Villanova are unranked. Old Dominion, which beat the Minutemen, is ranked for the first time.
HEISMAN RACE - Could this be the second straight year the Heisman goes to a transfer? Wisconsin's Russell Wilson, who started his career at N.C. State, improved his standing by going 14-for-25 for 255 yards and two touchdown passes in the Badgers' 48-17 stomping of Nebraska. Stats matter in the Heisman race, but not as much as winning big games. Wilson's play is a big part of the reason Wisconsin is the Big Ten favorite and a national championship contender. If the Badgers avoid upsets, he'll have a legitimate shot to take home the coveted trophy.
SET YOUR DVR FOR: No. 3 Oklahoma vs. No. 11 Texas in Dallas, noon Saturday, ABC - Texas can make last year's down season seem like a fluke with a win, while the Sooners could clear one more hurdle in their quest for a title shot.
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Follow UMass coverage on Twitter at twitter.com/GazetteUMass. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at http://www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.
