Staff File Photo by Meghan BrownThe Mocs take the field at Finley Stadium.
Almost anyone who’s ever coached an organized athletic team has probably been where University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football coach Russ Huesman found himself Saturday evening. Whether it’s T-ball, a high school sorority championship basketball game (trust me on this) or the Super Bowl, you become certain you’re on the edge of experiencing something that seems too good to be true.
Who, me? Win this? Nah. No way.
For Huesman that moment came with 50 seconds left at Appalachian State, his Mocs up 35-28 on the scoreboard, the ball in their possession and the Mountaineers out of timeouts.
Only one player on the planet has ever fumbled away a game like that, and former New York Giant Joe Pisarcik wasn’t quarterbacking the Mocs — Huesman’s sure-handed son Jacob was.
Still, no matter how much his assistant coaches and players tried to reassure him that this one was in the bag, that the Mocs were not only about to win their fifth straight Southern Conference game, but also conquer ASU in Boone, N.C., for the first time in 30 years, Huesman wasn’t believing a word of it.