Can UConn, the poor man’s Iowa, force Marshall to play the Huskies’ game in the St. Pete Bowl?

Marshall head coach Doc Holliday is still a good recruiter, and his Thundering Herd are still a potent collection of athleticism. After taking three years to build a foundation, Holliday has both taken the Herd to a new level and, to some degree, kept them there. After going 23-5 in 2013-14, Marshall lost a major load of playmakers and team leaders, and with a bowl win, the Herd can still finish with 10 wins.

There’s definitely been a drop-off, though, not necessarily in team ceiling but in team floor. Seven of Marshall’s nine wins came by at least 16 points, and the Herd were occasionally dominant -- 31-10 over Southern Miss, 52-0 over FIU. But a younger team usually has trouble maintaining, and Marshall was a pretty young team. After beating Purdue by 10, the Herd lost to Ohio by 11. After handling Charlotte, they lost to MTSU. After crushing FIU, they lost to WKU by three touchdowns. An experienced defense has remained steady (Marshall ranks 36th in Def. S&P+), but the offense hasn’t been reliable.

This was predictable. Quarterback Chase Litton is a freshman, senior running back Devon Johnson has missed half the season with a back injury, the leading non-Johnson rusher is a converted receiver and the offensive line features three freshman or sophomore starters.

The up-and-down nature of the Herd’s performance makes this a tricky game to project. At their best, they have an efficient offense (if one lacking in big-play potential) and a defense that specializes in defending the pass and shutting drives down in the red zone. That team could be a nightmare matchup for a UConn team that is dreadful in the red zone and doesn’t have the offensive efficiency necessary to score without big plays.

The other version of Marshall could give the Huskies hope. UConn is good at preventing big plays and pouncing on quarterback mistakes, and while the Huskies stink at turning scoring opportunities into points, they make sure you do, too.

UConn needs mistakes. Does Marshall accommodate, or does this become a statement of intent for 2016?

When you don’t have the athleticism to line up and beat opponents, you can help yourself by defining the terms of the game. UConn did that well in 2015, and the Huskies’ reward is a bowl trip in only Bob Diaco’s second year.

Diaco is an Iowa product, and his Huskies took on a lot of the same characteristics of this year’s Iowa team. The Huskies slowed the game down (121st in adjusted pace, 108th in possessions per game), kept the clock running by running the ball (top 40 in run rates on both standard and passing downs), and aimed at big-play prevention (30th in IsoPPP allowed) and precise red zone execution (17th in points allowed per scoring opportunity). In the absence of play-making ability, they attempted to shrink the game and wait for you to make a mistake. And with minimal possessions available, any mistake you made was worth quite a bit.

This is not the most aesthetically (or statistically) pleasing style of play, but it can create opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise exist. After scraping by Villanova and Army, UConn stayed close in losses to Missouri and Navy and lost a tossup to a USF that was beginning to find its footing. And in December, with the defense growing in confidence, the Huskies ripped off three consecutive wins to move from 3-5 to bowl eligible.

Knocking off ECU by 18 was impressive, but the high point was the sixth win, a 20-17 upset of previously undefeated Houston. It followed the UConn script perfectly: 35 minutes of possession (on only 67 snaps), four takeaways on only 12 Houston possessions, a field position advantage and just enough offense. The script was disrupted when Houston returned a kickoff for a touchdown to turn a 20-10 UConn advantage into a tight lead, but Jamar Summers’ interception of an injured Greg Ward Jr. with 55 seconds left sealed the upset.

Against a young team like Marshall, UConn might have an opportunity to follow this script to victory. The Herd have the athleticism advantage, but if UConn can shrink the game and force a few costly mistakes, this could turn into one of those “Why aren’t we beating this team??” situations, where the young team forces the issue and can’t figure out where this team got away from it.

Check out the monstrous stat preview here.

A heck of a “key stat,” huh? Feels like that awesome “the key to this game is scoring more points” tidbit we see in pregame shows. But when you’ve got two of the best red zone defenses in the country, not to mention two offenses that are between mediocre and awful in the same area of the field, it certainly creates a situation where actual touchdowns are doubly valuable.

UConn wants this game to have the fewest possible possessions, and if the Huskies succeed, Marshall might only be able to count on four or five scoring opportunities. If the Herd are settling for field goals, it means the Huskies are only a couple of big plays away from negating Marshall’s statistical advantages. But if Marshall is getting the ball in the end zone and UConn is settling, the score becomes insurmountable quickly.