The meeting Friday night between the UConn Huskies and UMass Minutemen has a big-game feel to it.

Under the lights. Longtime New England rivals on the field. Dave Portnoy and his Barstool Sports crew in the house at Pratt and Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Conn.

This is the 79th meeting between the two teams, and the series is tied at 38-38-2. They last met Nov. 30, 2024, with UConn winning 47-42, giving the Huskies three wins in a row in the series.

UConn head coach Jason Candle is not unfamiliar with UMass (4-3, 1-3 Mid-American Conference). Candle’s previous job before joining the Huskies (3-3) last winter was as head coach at Toledo, also a MAC member. He spoke of the Minutemen this week with respec

“There’s growth in all three phases of the game. Quarterback play is … much better now than maybe it has been in years past,” Candle said of UMass. “They're always very stout on defense. This defense this year's hardly giving up any points.”

He added: “They're a team that I think really believes in one another and they're playing complementary football. So, it's a good team. You got to go win. You got to go beat them.”

This is the Huskies’ second meeting with a MAC team on the season. They lost to Miami (Ohio) 24-21 in overtime on Sept. 26. 

Under second-year coach Joe Harasymiak, perennial loser UMass was the talk of college football early in the season after a 4-0 start that included a shocking 37-21 win at Big Ten program Rutgers.

Since becoming an FBS program in 2012, the Minutemen never have won more than four games in a season. Heading into the 2026 season and since 2019, UMass had won a single game in three seasons, two games once, three games one time and no games twice. That includes the 2025 campaign in which UConn was 0-12 in Harasymiak’s first season on the job.

The Minutemen have struggled since that undefeated start, going 0-3 in conference play. They were crushed by Eastern Michigan 38-14, then suffered two close losses – 20-19 to Miami (Ohio) and 25-18 to Buffalo in overtime.

Candle didn’t take the three-game losing streak as a sign the Minutemen won’t put up a fight.

“Try to take the record off of off the table and you try to pay attention to what you see on tape in all three phases and this is they got good players,” Candle said. “I mean they've invested in football and they've really improved.”

Game time: Friday, 7 p.m.

Television: CBS Sports Network. Jack Gordon will be on the play-by-play call with Taylor McHargue as the analyst. Hailey Sutton will be on the sideline.

Radio: FOX Sports 97.9 FM (Hartford) is the flagship station for UConn football. Mike Crispino will handle the play-by-play, with analyst Wayne Norman and sideline reporter Adam Giardino on the call.

Online: The Varsity Network App

The game is available on SiriusXM 261 and on the app at SiriusXM 971.

Live Stats: UConn.Statbroadcast.com

Social Media: X: @UConnFootball Instagram: UConnFootball