UMass offense hurt by 11 plays of negative yards in loss to Indiana.
FOXBOROUGH - No one is going to say the University of Massachusetts offense is good, but it did improve since gaining just 59 yards in the 37-0 loss to Connecticut last week.
UMass moved the ball for 264 yards in Saturday's 45-6 loss to Indiana. Mike Wegzyn was better under center, going 18 for 26 for 151 yards and he had seven carries for 32 yards and a touchdown. Also, the offense did not turn the ball over.
That's the good news. The bad news is the offense continues to stop itself on drives with too many negative plays and penalties.
The Minutemen had eight possessions in the first half and in all but two of them they had a play for negative yards. The only two series without a negative play was the scoring drive which came on their second possession and in the first possession when it had two plays for no gain.
In all, the UMass offense had 11 plays for negative yardage and five for no gain. Add in three offensive penalties and that's 19 plays in which the ball either was replaced at the previous line of scrimmage or behind it.
"Most of them come down to one guy breaking down,'' UMass coach Charlie Molnar said. "That's the great thing about football, you need 11 guys in synch, but that's also the bad thing about football because if you have one guy who can't quite get the job done for whatever the reason the results are a lot of negative plays.''
Most of those negative plays came in the run game, UMass losing 41 yards on the ground.
PUNTER CHANGE: Jeff Strait, who had nine punts for an average of 42 yards and had a punt blocked against UConn, did not kick against Indiana. Colter Johnson, who kicked once for 40 yards at the end of the UConn game, punted on Saturday.
"He really kicked the ball well in practice, in fact, him and Jeff were very very close at the end of summer camp,'' Molnar said. "Jeff by virtue of possession being nine-tenths of the law and being a veteran got the first crack at it but we did feel like Colter was very competitive with Jeff. He was our best player at that position this week.''
Johnson punted 10 times for an average of 44.1 yards with a long of 55. He placed one inside the 20 yard line and another one would have been downed at the six yard line.
WIDE LEFT: Last week may have been a better one for Blake Lucas despite not getting on the field at UConn.
The freshman kicker had two chances to prove himself and missed the mark each time. The first was on an extra point following the first touchdown in the UMass Football Bowl Subdivision history.
The right-footed kicker pulled the extra point wide to keep UMass at six. In the third quarter Lucas had a chance at redemption on a 36-yard field goal try, but once again he missed wide left.
If there was another field goal or extra point try, Molnar said he was going to call on Brendon Levengood.
"He had two chances and at that point mentally he needed to sit down,'' Molnar said.
DOYLE'S FIRST: Like last week, A.J. Doyle saw time at quarterback in the fourth quarter, but unlike the UConn game he completed a pass.
Doyle's screen pass to Tajae Sharpe went for 18 yards and a first down. He finished 3 of 8 for 35 yards.
THIS AND THAT: The 56-yard fleaflicker from quarterback Mike Wegzyn to Marken Michel gained as much yards as the Minutemen managed all of last week against UConn. ...The first three touchdowns of the game - all runs of 16 yards or more by quarterbacks - came in a span of less than two minutes. Tre Roberson scored his 50-yard touchdown at 12:13 of the first, Wegzyn followed at 11:26 with a 16-yard draw play and Roberson added a 39-yard run at 10:24 ... There were a total of 48 offensive plays in the first quarter. Compare that to 24 that were snapped in the first quarter of last week's game at UConn.
.