Bob Diaco’s postgame press conferences have become about as predictable as a UConn women’s basketball game.
Diaco comes in, congratulates the other team, thanks the fans for coming out, gives us an update on how dinner will taste (depending on if it’s a win or a loss), then talks about how the team is improving.
In fact, all Diaco interviews had become pretty generic.
It’s tough to fault him for that — the guy is just doing his job and wants to portray a struggling program in the best light. But it was still refreshing on Monday when his part in the AAC weekly conference call took a turn for the brutally honest.
He was asked how he would characterize his team right now.
“We get better every day,” he said. “We’re a bad football team. We’re just way less bad than we were when I got here in December, so, it was a giant mess, colossal. And now it’s still a mess, but it’s less of a mess, a lot smaller mess.”
That about sums it up.
Diaco came to Storrs 11 months to the day and inherited a team that lost its first nine games of 2013, including one to FCS Towson, and was playing under interim head coach TJ Weist, after Paul Pasqualoni was finally fired.
He quickly changed the culture around the football program while making it clear that turning UConn into a contender would take time. Diaco traveled the state to meet fans, made sure the Burton Family Football Complex was always clean, and, unfortunately, had to dismiss the team’s leading rusher Lyle McCombs after one too many off-the-field incidents.
Those minor moves earned him some respect and bought him time to turn this thing around. It hasn’t resulted in many wins just yet, but we’ve seen glimmers of hope over the last few weeks.
That’s why his comments on Monday showed a real shift in Diaco’s outlook on the program.
The Huskies aren’t ready for big-boy football, and Diaco knows it. But it’s time to take the Pampers off. The team has played nine games and has shown improvement. Last week’s game against Army was a chance to turn that improvement into back-to-back wins, and three straight games of well-played football.
That didn’t happen. UConn started the game horribly and was unable to keep Army’s offense off the field. The Huskies almost pulled off a remarkable comeback, but fell short thanks to a pick-six in the closing seconds.
It was a winnable game that the Huskies should not have let slip through their fingers. If this was still September, Diaco may have stayed much more positive. He could have focused on the resolve that his team showed to salvage a win from what had been a 14-point deficit with four minutes left.
But this is November. We are nine games in. The Huskies have the opportunity to show that they can turn those great moments and great quarters that we’ve seen lately into great all-around games. It won’t be enough to send UConn to a bowl game this year, but it can be enough for the Huskies to make some noise in the American and head into next year with high expectations.
It’s a lot to ask from a team that even the coach says is a mess, but he also says they’re getting better every day. Time to prove it.
