By Andrew Merritt

Collegian Staff

Forget 51-7 over Central Connecticut State.

Forget 7-3 over Kansas State in the first quarter, as well as the final lopsided result in favor of the Wildcats.

For the Massachusetts football team, the season starts now. The Minutemen (1-1) travel to Orono, Maine this weekend to open up the Atlantic 10 season against the Maine Black Bears (2-1, 1-0 Atlantic 10).

UMass coach Mark Whipple repeated the mantra that he was using as early as mid-August, back when the new logo was news, and the guy running the athletic department didn’t have “interim” before his title.

“The season starts now,” Whipple said. “[CCSU and K-State] was preseason, and now really this week is when it starts.”

It doesn’t exactly start off with a cupcake, though. The Black Bears earned a share of last year’s A-10 title, splitting the honors with Northeastern. Although quarterback Jake Eaton graduated after a solid senior year – .572 passing percentage (154-for-269), 1849 yards and 16 touchdowns – his replacement, redshirt freshman Ron Whitcomb, is 41-for-77 this year with 492 yards and seven TDs.

Maine’s offense doesn’t end there, either. Second-team preseason all-conference tailback Marcus Williams, a graduate of Amherst Regional High School, is rushing at a six yards-per-carry pace this season, and averaging 142 yards per game.

“It’s their offensive line,” Whipple said, “and Williams is a good back, he’s improved since last year. First play, he ripped something off, and he had two good runs against us last year, and he’s doing it against everybody.”

Williams took off for 28 yards on the first play from scrimmage against the Minutemen on Oct. 12, 2002. He went on to gain 92 yards on just 13 carries. Whipple would like Williams to see even less of the ball Saturday.

“You want to make them go left-handed, and that means taking away their run game on defense,” he said. “If they can run the ball, we’re going to have a long day, if they can sustain drives.

“They have a game plan, and they’re going to stick to it, and we have to take them out of it. When they play-action pass, we just can’t give up a free play, that’s just killed everyone this year. Certainly we’d like to have Whitcomb be the one who tries to beat us, like I think last year we did with Jake Eaton, and he wasn’t able to do it.”

Eaton was silenced last year, to the tune of 12-for-35 attempts and just 103 yards in the air.

The Minutemen are coming off a loss to Kansas State that, despite the 38-7 losing result, featured one of the best performances UMass has ever put up against a I-A opponent, and certainly the best since the last time the Maroon and White beat a member of college football’s major leagues, a 26-10 win over Ball State on Sept. 1, 1984.

In what has become a new fall tradition at UMass, Whipple was happier with his squad after the loss than he was after the 51-7 dismantling of Central Connecticut on Sept. 6.

“I feel better than I did after Central Connecticut, but we didn’t win the game, so you have to make some plays to win the game. But I felt that they didn’t flinch, and I felt that they came out and competed. At some point you have to make plays to win the game, and that’s what we have to do.”

Part of the reason the coach was pleased with his squad’s performance in Manhattan, Kan. was the tidiness with which the Minutemen handled the ball.

“I was happy about that, because if you turn the ball over against them, forget it, you’re done,” Whipple said. “We got a couple of picks, momentum swings, but we couldn’t do anything on offense. I hope it’s more of a credit to Kansas State’s defense.”

The highlight of the day – quarterback Jeff Krohn’s 65-yard TD strike to Jason Peebler – even earned a spot on ESPN anchor Chris Berman’s Top Ten, the result of a promise Berman made to Whipple, a fellow Brown alumnus.

Still, Whipple would rather focus on Saturday’s contest.

“I’m more excited about this game than I was last week,” he said. “I try to keep it under wraps, I knew the kids would be excited [last week], but we’ve got to make sure that they know that this is what it’s all about, it’s the biggest game of the year so far.”

The next chapter of this season’s happiest surprise – sophomore tailback Steve Baylark – also comes this weekend. Baylark, who was originally listed third on the depth chart but has been thrown into action after classmates R.J. Cobbs (academic discipline) and Raunny Rosario (week one knee injury) were both eliminated from playing status, at least in the short term, has responded without missing a beat, averaging 4.7 yards per carry with two touchdowns.