All-Decade team Fan votes and my votes
The actual-official UMass football all-decade team will be online and in the paper on Thursday, but I included fan voting as part of the selection and the fans and official voters didn't always see eye-to-eye.
Here is the result of the fan voting as well as my own selections which also differed in spots from the final results.
FAN VOTING
QUARTERBACK: Liam Coen - That was pretty predictable
TAILBACK: Steve Baylark - Just as predictable
FULLBACK: Chris Zardas. I agreed with the emailers and voted for Chris Zardas, but we were both outvoted. Whenhealthy Zardas was the prototypical fullback. He’s a good receiver, an excellent blocker and he always got the short yardage when needed.
WIDE RECEIVER: Brandon London, Rasheed Rancher and J.J. Moore - London is the only one of this trio to make the official team. I can't argue with J.J. Moore's numbers, but Rasheed Rancher surprised me. He was good, but not nearly as good as Adrian Zullo, Jason Peebler or Victor Cruz in my opinion. I voted for London, Zullo and Cruz. I think if Victor Cruz had played a full four years, he’d be a no-doubter for this list. I voted for him (over Peebler) because he might be the best overall receiver I’ve watched at UMass in terms of ability, which is saying something, but I was outvoted.
TIGHT END: Brad Listorti - Best of an unspectacular lot.
OFFENSIVE LINE: Rob Kane, Alex Miller, Vlad Ducasse, Matt Austin, David Thompson - This differed slightly from the official voting, but it's pretty close.
DEFENSIVE LINE: Valdamar Brower, John Hatchell, Kyle Harrington and Keron Williams - Similar to the official, but the fans were bigger fans of Kyle Harrington than the media was.
LINEBACKER: Jeremy Cain. Jason Hatchell, Brad Anderson - Brad Anderson is one of my favorite people to go through the UMass program, but I was surprised how much the fans liked him. I went with Charles Walker, Hatchell and Cain.
SAFETY: Shannon James and James Ihedigbo - Anton McKenzie, Jeromy Miles and Jeremy Robinson all got some votes in the toughest spot to pick on the whole ballot.
CORNERBACK: Courtney Robinson and Sean Smalls - Fans and media agreed.
KICKER: Chris Koepplin - Votes here for Armando Cuko and Doug White too. Cuko was hurt by a tough start to his career, which led people to vote for Koepplin over him.
PUNTER: C.J. Koegel - It's funny, before I looked at the numbers I was voting for David Sanger, who got votes and always seemed a little better to me. But Koegel's career numbers were better.









