Keeler reflects on a UD football season of promise

A week after giving up 20 unanswered points in the NCAA Division 1-AA title game, Coach K.C. Keeler says the University of Delaware’s one point loss “still stings”.

Keeler was back in Newark after receiving Coach of the Year honors saying, “you never get a game like that back. You feel so bad for the kids.”

What still haunts Keeler is a fourth and one play where Eastern Washington University was given a first down on the Hen’s 22 yard line with 3:39 left in the game.  He says his team stopped Eastern Washington, but a clamity of errors including who was on the official “chain” crew.  Keeler believes the Blue Hens did stop their opponents and that should have been the ball game.

“I don’t want to take anything away from Eastern Washington,” Keeler said. “You want to make sure what happened won’t happen again.”

He says after the game he made sure his players knew that he loved them and that they played as hard as they could. “You will forever be etched in Delaware lore as one of the great teams,” he said.

Keeler says he is excited about next season for his program. He says he and his coaches will have to evaluate how he’ll deal with some his returning players and their conditioning.  He says it’ll be a different situation with the current season ending as late as it did.

He also mentioned that he did listen to an offer to coach the University of Connecticut football program. However, he said that he doesn’t look at coaching the University of Delaware program as a stepping stone to something bigger.