 |
| Photo Credit: KEVIN COLTON |
Not that the hire, at least on the surface, is a horrible one. Pasqualoni had a lot of success at Syracuse during his 14-year tenure—including multiple Big East Championships in the 1990's—but it's just curious given the fact that many were expecting Mark Whipple to get the nod.
So, what gives?
Well, according to at least one publication, the hiring of Pasqualoni had less to do with his mass appeal to the student body than it did with his ability to recruit the heck out of the northeast region—particularly the state of Connecticut.
A little less than a week ago, the football committee for the Connecticut High School Coaches Association sent a letter to the University of Connecticut imploring them to hire the former Syracuse coach as their next head coach.
Steve Filippone, the head coach at Daniel Hand High School in Madison, CT, had this to say at that time, "...we’re not trying to impose any kind of pressure or anything like that. We understand that’s not the way you pick a coach for a major college football team. They have a lot bigger issues to consider. We simply felt that this is an opportunity for us to say, in a pretty clear way, that we feel this man has the type of skill set, the type of reputation, that could clearly work with us … for whatever value that is."
Well, the value must have been pretty high as the Huskies definitely will be looking to lock down the talent in-state as well as reach deeper into the talent pools of both New Jersey and New York.
What better man to do so than Pasqualoni? A known commodity on the recruiting trail.
So, while the hire may not be turning heads, it makes plenty of sense and, in the end, UConn could end up having the last laugh in the Big East—if the gamble pays off.
Oh, and that whole Syracuse/UConn rivalry just got a lot more interesting.
