The 2011 Connecticut Huskies football team represented the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from H ...

in the 2011 NCAA Division I FBS football season as a member of the

Big East Conference The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that competes in NCAA Division I in ten men's sports and twelve women's sports. Headquartered in New York City, the eleven full-member schools are primarily located in Northeast and ...

. The team was coached by

Paul Pasqualoni Paul Lucian Pasqualoni (; born August 16, 1949) is an American football coach. He most recently was the defensive line coach for the Carolina Panthers. Pasqualoni has served as the defensive coordinator of the NFL's Miami Dolphins and Detroit L ...

and played its home games at

Rentschler Field Rentschler Field was an airport in East Hartford, Connecticut in use from 1933 to 1999. Originally a military facility, later a private corporate airport, it was decommissioned in 1999, after which the football stadium of the same name was bui ...

East Hartford, Connecticut East Hartford is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 51,045 at the 2020 census. The town is located on the east bank of the Connecticut River, directly across from Hartford, Connecticut. It is home to aerosp ...

. It was Pasqualoni's first year with the team.

Previous season

The Huskies finished 8–5, 5–2 in Big East play to share the conference title with

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

and

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...

. Due to victories over both schools, the Huskies earned the Big East's automatic bid to a BCS game, the first in school history, and were invited to the

Fiesta Bowl The Fiesta Bowl is an American college football bowl game played annually in the Phoenix metropolitan area. From its beginning in 1971 until 2006, the game was hosted at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Since 2007, the game has been pla ...

where they were defeated by

Big 12 The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its f ...

champion

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

20–48.

Before the season

Coaching changes

The day after the Fiesta Bowl Head Coach

Randy Edsall Randy Douglas Edsall (born August 27, 1958) is a retired American football coach, formerly the head football coach at the University of Connecticut from 1999 to 2010 and again from 2017 until his abrupt retirement in 2021. He also served as the h ...

left the University to accept the same position at

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

was hired to replace Edsall.

George DeLeone George DeLeone (May 9, 1948 – March 1, 2022) was an American football offensive line coach for Baylor University. Prior to rejoining Temple's staff, where he was once the offensive coordinator from 2006 through 2007, DeLeone was an offensive l ...

was brought in as the new offensive coordinator, with former offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach

Joe Moorhead Joe Moorhead (born November 2, 1973) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the head coach at the University of Akron. He was the offensive coordinator at the University of Oregon from 2020 to 2021, and the head coach at ...

being demoted to quarterbacks coach. Don Brown was brought in to replace Todd Orlando at defensive coordinator. Orlando left to take the same position at Florida International.

Roster changes

The Huskies lost six starters from the 2010 team to graduation. In addition to the graduation losses All-American RB

Jordan Todman Jordan Todman (born February 24, 1990) is a former American football running back. He was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in the sixth round of the 2011 NFL Draft. He played college football at Connecticut. Todman has also played for the Minne ...

entered the

NFL Draft The National Football League Draft, also called the NFL Draft or (officially) the Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. Each team is given a position in the drafting o ...

a year early.

Recruiting

On February 2, 2011,

announced that 16 student-athletes had signed a

National Letter of Intent National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

to attend Connecticut. Four; Kenton Adeyemi, Dalton Gifford, Michael Nebrich and Sean McQuillan; entered school in January to participate in spring practice.

Awards watchlists

Schedule

Game summaries

Fordham

Recap: This game was originally scheduled to be played on September 1 at 7:30 pm. However, due to Rentschler Field being used for relief efforts for

Hurricane Irene Hurricane Irene was a large and destructive tropical cyclone which affected much of the Caribbean and East Coast of the United States during late August 2011. The ninth named storm, first hurricane, and first major hurricane of the 2011 ...

, the game was moved to Saturday. The team discussed playing the game at the

Yale Bowl The Yale Bowl Stadium is a college football stadium in the northeast United States, located in New Haven, Connecticut, on the border of West Haven, about 1½ miles (2½ km) west of the main campus of Yale University. The home of the American foo ...

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

if the field did not become available in time, but on Wednesday, August 31, the team announced the game would be played in East Hartford on Saturday at noon.

Vanderbilt

Recap:

Iowa State

Recap:

Buffalo

Recap:

Western Michigan

Recap:

West Virginia

Recap:

South Florida

Recap:

Pittsburgh

Recap:

Syracuse

Recap:

Louisville

Recap:

Rutgers

Recap:

Cincinnati

Recap:

References

{{UConn Huskies football navbox

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

UConn Huskies football seasons

Connecticut Huskies football The UConn Huskies football team is a college football team that represents the University of Connecticut in the sport of American football. The team competes in NCAA Division I FBS as an Independent. Connecticut first fielded a team in 1896, an ...