For the next two weeks we will be hosting The Terry Baltimore Cup, a 12-play tournament to pick the best play in UConn football history. Today, we have our first opening round matchup. The winner of this will contest will take on Greg Robinson Jr.'s game-changing sack of Matt Grothe in next week's quarterfinals. You have until 6 a.m. on Wednesday to vote for your favorite.
The Date: November 11, 2006
The Game: Pittsburgh vs. UConn
The Play: It wasn't necessarily a joy to be a UConn fan in 2006. The Huskies, now two years removed from the Motor City Bowl, and with DJ Hernandez under center and an untested freshman named Donald Brown carrying most of the workload in the backfield they struggled, losing five of their last six games to finish four and eight. But note that I said they lost five of their last six, not all six. That's because of the play you see above.
UConn had struggled to score all year so with the Huskies down 31-17 in the fourth quarter and needing two long drives to tie it up a loss seemed like a foregone conclusion. Somehow, someway Hernandez led UConn on drives of 98 and 77 yards to force overtime with three seconds remaining in regulation.
The teams traded touchdowns in the first overtime and Pittsburgh scored in their half of the second. UConn scored thanks to Donald Brown, but instead of taking the chip-shot extra point and forcing triple overtime Randy Edsall did the one thing he never did -- roll the dice. He sent Hernandez back out to go for two. He rolled out on a bootleg, saw an opening and scampered into the endzone, giving UConn a 46-45 win and celebrating by throwing the ball clear out of Rentschler Field.
The Date: August 30, 2003
The Game: Indiana vs. UConn
The Play: I have no problem saying that Donald Brown is the best Husky of all time, but if it wasn't for a horrible knee injury I could easily be saying that about Terry Caulley. And Caulley was never better than he was in Rentschler Field's opening game, a blowout win over Indiana (back when a blowout win over Indiana seemed like a massive accomplishment -- note the Big 10 talk in the video above). This wasn't his only impressive run of the day (check out another here), but it gives you a great idea of how fun he was to watch and how hard he was to bring down.