EAST HARTFORD — For UConn football, 2025, the moment had arrived. Oh, sure, there were still nearly 14 minutes to play when the Huskies lined up in punt formation, deep in their own territory, nine yards to the first-down stick.
Coach Jim Mora had wisely, and skillfully avoided the single do-or-die play, settling for field goals to keep the game within reach, but now he felt in his seasoned coaching bones that if he punted the ball back to Duke’s Darian Mensah, he’d be punting the game with it.
“We needed a play,” Mora said. “Because to continue to put the ball in that quarterback’s hands would be very dangerous, so we had to make a play. And we had a high degree of confidence in that play, because we’d practiced it all week. We’d seen all game that we had it.”
UConn football survives with late strip sack to seal 37-34 victory over Duke
So like Hank Stram and his “65 toss power trap” in Super Bowl IV, Mora just knew that baby was there, and could pop wide open. Instead of Conor Stutz, the Huskies snapped the ball to tight end Alex Honig, who lumbered free for 26 vibe-changing yards. The Huskies kept the ball and scored five plays later to regain the lead in a developing back-and-forth thriller.
“It flips the game,” quarterback Joe Fagnano said. “We kick it to them, they got a chance to go up two scores. It was a huge momentum swing.”
There were more moments to come: Fagnano’s 4th-down conversion pass to Juice Vereen, and his winning TD pass to Skyler Bell, open yet again in the end zone when everyone in the stadium knew where UConn wanted to go with the ball. “… Because he’s Skyler Bell,” Fagnano said. Bryun Parham’s strip sack with 17 seconds left stopped Duke, which the Huskies had not done the whole second half, and ensured they would hold the lead in the two-minute drill, which they hadn’t done all year.
Then came the ultimate moment, UConn fans flooding onto the field to celebrate the 37-34 victory.
“I didn’t notice until it was too late, and I kind of got stuck a little bit,” Bell said. “It was great to see the students having a good time. I haven’t seen the student section like that since I’ve been here. I had a bunch of interaction with some students, I’m glad they had fun and they enjoyed their time.”
And this, after all, is what college football is really all about: moments and memories. In Connecticut, we’re accustomed to basketball’s championship chases, where the goal is clear and the path to get there grueling, but well-defined. It’s a fact of life that folks in these parts can be slow to embrace football, in which only a handful of teams, in or out of power conferences, have a real chance to play for the national championship, basically the same handful of teams year after year. The vast majority play for rivalry games, for upsets, or for UConn fans in this moment, the mere thought that somewhere on earth Christian Laettner might’ve been momentarily annoyed by all this. Is that sweeter than any bowl game?
UConn’s victory at Notre Dame in 2009, for instance, did not result in a championship, but will it ever be forgotten? Does anyone remember what actually happened in the Fiesta Bowl? No, but Dave Teggart’s field goal to put UConn there will live forever.
UConn’s Skyler Bell stiff arms Duke defender Tre Freeman as he tries to gain yardage during the first half of the Huskies’ game against Duke on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, at Rentschler Field. (Courtesy of UConn)
So Mora’s Huskies are 7-3, with all three losses in overtime, and will play in a bowl game. In time, much of it will be forgotten, but not the Duke game, not the fake punt, the winning pass or the strip sack or the field storm — or the way it all felt.
The season was Saturday. The moments arrived, and UConn mastered them.
“I’m not much of a statement guy,” Mora said. “I believe every week is its own entity. If you say that was a ‘statement game,’ you set yourself up a little bit for disappointment.”
Mora’s team made the statement, and we can all interpret it our own way, so I’ll take a crack. This was neither a Group of Six, nor a downtrodden Power 4 opponent, but a Duke team that is 4-1 in the ACC, and UConn’s win screams it could belong in that conference. Whether the long-range financial aspects, which is all that drives conference realignment, not grudges or hurt feelings, would work is another conversation. But now that UConn has wins over North Carolina at the Fenway Bowl, Boston College on the road, Duke at home and an OT loss at Syracuse within the last calendar year, it cannot be denied that Mora has brought the football program up to that level.
There were 38,106 tickets out for Duke, the largest crowd at Rentschler since 2013, the night the auxiliary bleachers were used and UConn had Michigan on the ropes before losing. And there were a legit 30,000 in the stands at peak Saturday, even if it still seemed from my fifth-level perch that there were three cars in the parking lot for every fanny in a seat.
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Point is, give them a good product, like the 2025 Huskies’ entertaining, pro-style offense, give them an opponent with some cachet, like Duke, and a little luck with the weather and they will come out in big numbers to Rentschler Field. Give them a moments like this and they’ll keep coming back.
In the ACC, it could be like this nearly every week. UConn would reverse the conference’s faded men’s basketball brand, put its women’s basketball back on the national map, and would be competitive, viable in football.
“Huge statement. We’re 2-1 against the ACC right now, one loss coming in overtime,” Bell said. “Seeing where this program was before I got here and seeing where it is now after two years, we’re doing a great job, trending in the right direction.”
So everybody got their 2025 moment and their money’s worth Saturday, whether comped or not, and maybe a lot of them caught a bug and will not require a Dan Hurley pep talk to invest and come back for the last home game vs. Air Force next Saturday at noon. Maybe the moment has arrived in Connecticut to find Fagnano and Bell on back-to-back billboards on I-91.
“I’ve always known people cared,” Fagnano said. “It’s a big win for the program, it’s cool to see people come out. It definitely made this one special.”
