Connecticut has had plenty of close losses on the field, and one tragedy off it

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The sports world is obsessed with winning. But, face it, you learn more from a loss.

Connecticut lost five football games by a total of 15 points this season, a stunning stat when you think about what kind of season the 7-5 Huskies were close to having.

Sure, they learned tons from those losses. After all, a three-game winning streak to close the season led UConn here to the Papajohns.com Bowl.

But what about a loss of much more meaning and depth? What about something that makes a two-point defeat at Cincinnati or a four-point defeat at West Virginia seem silly by comparison?

As you all have read and heard by now, Jasper Howard was shockingly stabbed Oct. 17 on the Connecticut campus.

Coach Randy Edsall heard a helicopter buzz over his house late that night. Howard was inside, clinging to his life.

Hours later, Edsall was asked to identify Howard's body.

A police officer told Edsall it would be the longest walk of his life. He was right.

"As a coach, you have control over certain things," said Edsall, who's been at UConn since 1999. "In this situation, you had no control. This is something that will just stick with me for the rest of my life."

How could it be? Howard wasn't just alive hours earlier. With 11 tackles and a forced fumble, he was one of the team's MVPs in a 38-25 home win against Louisville.

Snap of the fingers. Blink of the eye. Plunge of the knife. He was gone.

"People come from all over the country to this team," sophomore running back Jordan Todman said. "But when you're with somebody six days out of seven every week, it's crazy. You are a family. You are brothers. We lost a brother. It hurt."

Todman had seen Howard at the on-campus party that turned tragically deadly. He had even seen him after he was stabbed, as he was being wheeled to the ambulance.

Todman retreated to his dorm room, convinced that his teammate would be fine in the hospital's care.

The team's captains rapped on his door in the middle of the night. They told him Howard was dead.

"You didn't want to believe it," Todman said. "It was crushing. All you could say was, 'No. No.' "

It wasn't Edsall's first brush with loss this year. His 73-year-old father died in February.

In that time, Edsall was expected to help hold the family together. He delivered the eulogy at the funeral.

He says he handled Howard's death the same way. Because he had to.

A team of 105 players was looking to him for guidance in an inexplicable situation. Edsall had to set the tone.

At 6-3 and more than 200 pounds, the 51-year-old Edsall cuts an imposing figure. He played quarterback at Syracuse. He strikes you as a man's man.

But, contrary to appearance, Edsall doesn't mind showing a soft side. Especially now.

"I'm making sure I express things I feel on a daily basis to the people I'm surrounded by," he said. "I think that's the thing I've learned from it. Don't hold anything in. Tell people. Don't be ashamed of telling people that you love them and that you care for them.

"Because life, as we've all found, can be taken at any given time."

Still, a team in a storm of adversity had to play a game less than a week after Howard's death.

"We were all kind of wondering how that would turn out," said Scott Lutrus, a junior linebacker that's one of the team's four captains.

UConn hung in at then-ranked West Virginia, but a long Mountaineers touchdown run in the final couple of minutes spoiled the feel-good story that the entire country (outside Morgantown) was rooting for.

The Huskies lost by the same 28-24 score the next week at home against Rutgers.

A 47-45 loss at undefeated Cincinnati followed the next week.

"We came so close, but yet we didn't win," Edsall said. "It was starting to wear on us, as a team."

Going to Howard's funeral helped the team heal. So did a moving visit from Howard's mom and stepdad.

But stepping away is what saved the season for the Huskies.

Edsall let his team breathe during the ensuing bye week, giving them a couple of days off before a trip to play embattled Notre Dame.

Connecticut responded with a 33-30 victory in double overtime beneath the Golden Dome.

The team had to wait a month for its victory in Howard's honor. But it finally had it.

"That's done more for our program than what anybody could've imagined," Edsall said.

For one thing, it allowed release. The Huskies followed up with a 56-31 victory the next week against Syracuse.

Suddenly, the mourning was over. The season became an expression of celebration for the brother the Huskies had nicknamed Jazz.

Good had come from senseless tragedy.

"I've never been closer to all my teammates," Lutrus said. "A hundred and five of us, we came together. We'd always been brothers, but we were suddenly immediate family."

On Dec. 5, UConn found itself in a back-and-forth game with South Florida.

The Bulls scored a touchdown to go up 27-26 with 40 seconds to play.

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What followed was the drive to define Connecticut's season. No, not in terms of wins and losses. But in terms of what it had learned in a time of tumult.

Quarterback Zach Frazer guided the Huskies to the South Florida 35-yard line. On a snow-covered field, kicker Dave Teggart nailed a 42-yard kick.

No problem. Todman talked about "the Man Upstairs" -- and the fact that Jazz was right beside him -- orchestrating that victory.

"I never thought this team was going to panic," Edsall said. "These men, these young men, have grown in years you can't comprehend with what they've had to go through this year."

So now the Huskies are here, playing in their third bowl in four years.

"It's been a hell of a year," Lutrus said.

Alabama or Texas will win a national championship in a week or so. Countless other teams will finish with more victories than the seven or eight that UConn will compile.

But what team in America could possibly grasp the concepts of victories and losses better than Connecticut?

"The game of football is what it is. It's a game," Edsall said. "But the game of life is really what it's all about. What these young men went through this year, with this experience, they're winners in the game of life."

Reach Travis Haney at thaney@postandcourier.com and check out the South Carolina blog at www.postandcourier.com/blogs/gamecocks.