Jason Candle meets old foe as UConn football travels to Miami, Ohio, first time: How to watch
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Saturday will be the first time the UConn football program ever visits Oxford, Ohio, and the Miami RedHawks.
It won’t be the same case for first-year head coach Jason Candle and nearly one-third of the Huskies’ roster that came with him from Toledo. He and coach Chuck Martin have a bit of a history as both took over their respective Mid-American Conference programs two years apart, though Toledo and Miami only played four times – all in the last three years.
Candle is 3-1 all-time against Martin’s RedHawks and won twice in Oxford, including a 24-3 road victory for his Rockets last fall. Miami’s only win in the series came in the 2023 MAC Championship, 24-13, and it went on to finish with an 11-3 record.
“Coach Martin’s done an outstanding job for a long time,” Candle said. “Played against them the last few years, my years at Toledo, and they’re a tough team, they’re a tough out. You’ve got to go beat them and to do it on their home field will be a great challenge for us. Very detailed, very skilled team. They don’t give up a lot of plays, they won’t make a lot of mistakes and they’re solid in all three phases.”
Miami comes into the game 1-2 after falling at Pittsburgh (59-14) and Cincinnati (35-31), with a 45-7 win over Holy Cross sandwiched between.
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Quarterback David McComb, a sophomore transfer from Kansas seeing his first action in college, leads the nation in average yards per completion at 17.6 (UConn’s Kalieb Osborne is No. 20 at 14.1). He has completed 62.2% of his passing attempts for 809 yards yards and five touchdowns to one interception, and rarely escapes the pocket, only running for 12 yards on 15 attempts.
UConn’s defense will be prepared to face a heavy dose of the passing game as the RedHawks’ rushing offense ranks No. 129 of 138 FBS teams, averaging only 101.3 yards on the ground per game. The numbers still a bit skewed by the passing gauntlet the Huskies faced against Maryland, UConn’s pass defense is ranked 124th nationally, giving up 264.7 yards per game through the air.
“They’ve got a lot of threats, they got a lot of depth in the receiving room,” said UConn safety Jayden Price. Miami has three receivers over 140 yards in Maleek Huggins (205), Damarion Witten (184) and Lynel Billups-Williams (149). “We recognize that they’ve got some good players and we know it’s going to be a physical game. We can’t have self-inflicting stuff, like we can’t have a lot of penalties and stuff like that. We’ve just got to limit (those things) and we’ll be fine.”
Though they only had one sack in Saturday’s 48-20 win at Southern Miss, the Huskies were able to create pressure at the line of scrimmage and hurry the QB into mistakes, resulting in their first two interceptions of the season.
“There’s a clock for every quarterback, right? If you can affect that clock, it doesn’t really matter what level of football you’re mentioning it, it could be at the high school level or Monday Night Football, if the quarterback gets disrupted and he’s not into a rhythm and he gets off to a rocky start, very few can come back and rebound from that,” Candle said. “I think we try to make the other team one-dimensional if we can, try to limit their opportunity to run the football, and then we have a chance to pin our ears back and try to get after the quarterback.”
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The Huskies hope their offense will travel again after finding a rhythm in their first road game last weekend.
Osborne ranks 48th nationally in total offense, producing 262.3 yards per game. He is No. 70 in passing yards with 635 and No. 21 in QB rushing yards with 152 (50.7 per game). Miami’s defense, given that it has faced two power conference offenses, ranks No. 135 against the pass (allowing 310 yards per game) and No. 55 against the run (114.3 yards per game).
“They are what they are,” Candle said of the RedHawks. “They’re very good in the kicking game, they’re very good on defense, very sound, and they go a good job of putting their playmakers in place to be successful on offense. (Martin’s) got a good staff, he’s created a great culture there and they’re going to be in the thick of it again in that league. You know what you’re gonna get and you’ve got to go win the game. You can’t self-inflict, we can’t have the penalties and the things that are hurting us and taking yards. We’ve got to eliminate that, take that off the tape, go play and win the game.”
What to know
Site: Fred C. Yager Stadium in Oxford, Ohio.
Time: 3:30 p.m.
TV: ESPN+ – Shawn Kenney, Marcus Ray
Friday morning line: Miami (OH) by 3.5
Radio: UConn Sports Network, Fox Sports 97.9 – Adam Giardino, Wayne Norman, Michael Johnson
Record (2025): UConn: 2-1 (9-4), Miami (OH): 1-2 (7-7)
Series: First-ever meeting.
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