The Daily Campus

Issue date: 1/4/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Ryan Sayers The Huskies pose with their trophy after defeating Buffalo by a convincing score of 38-20.

TORONTO - Tyler Lorenzen is a quarterback, but, through three quarters of Saturday's International Bowl, you wouldn't know it.

With 5:22 remaining in the third quarter, Lorenzen sold a play-fake, dropped back and calmly connected with tight end Steve Brouse for a four-yard touchdown.

By all accounts, it was a routine play. It was a maneuver that the senior quarterback had pulled off a thousand times throughout his life.

But here's the catch (no pun intended): Lorenzen's four-yard strike to Brouse was his first completion of the entire game. It took him 39 minutes to do something that essentially defines the job description of a quarterback. Given that Lorenzen had only attempted one other pass - a ball thrown behind freshman wide receiver Mike Smith in the first quarter - the seemingly shocking statistic wasn't much of a surprise.

Rather than throw the ball and spread the field, the Huskies (8-5) rode junior tailback Donald Brown, the man UConn coach Randy Edsall called the team's "stallion" and "triple crown winner," to a convincing 38-20 victory over Buffalo (8-6) Saturday in Toronto at the International Bowl.

Brown rushed 29 times for 261 yards, scored a 45-yard touchdown and added a 75-yard scamper - one which set up a touchdown run for Lorenzen - in UConn's second-ever bowl victory. He finished 18 yards shy of the International Bowl rushing record, set two years ago by former Rutgers running back Ray Rice. Brown gained an astonishing 209 yards in the first half, a 30-minute period that Edsall simply called "very interesting to say the least."

The Huskies trailed 20-17 at the halfway mark, thanks largely in part to a host of unimaginable mental and physical errors. Sophomore cornerback Jasper Howard dropped a sure-fire pick-six on the first play of the game, and junior Robert McClain let a potential drive-stopping interception bounce off his chest in the first quarter as well. The drive, which started when Buffalo recovered a punt that hit UConn cornerback Jonathan Jean-Louis at the Huskies' 23-yard-line, resulted in a field goal for the Bulls.

Continued...

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