DURHAM – He’s earned more accolades than any other player on the team. He was a consensus All-American last year and again this preseason. He’s one of 25 players in the country on the watch list for the Walter Payton Award, the Heisman of the Football Championship Subdivision.
But you never would have guessed any of that about Neil O’Connor on Friday at Media Day for the University of New Hampshire football team. The star receiver was tucked away in a corner at Wildcat Stadium, just one of the guys waiting to get his picture taken for the program.
The kid from Leominster, Mass., acted almost surprised when he was asked for an interview, even though he had to know it was coming. When a player leads the conference in receptions (97), receiving yards (1,396) and touchdown catches (10) like O’Connor did last year as a junior, the media is going to come calling. His answers were, as usual, soft-spoken and humble.
“I think all of us are always trying to improve something,” O’Connor said when asked what he worked on this summer. “I was really working on my footwork, just getting better at running certain routes, but mostly just trying to improve my whole game.”
That’s nothing new for O’Connor. Being well-rounded is what makes him so good.
“He can catch it, he can catch it in a crowd, if he gets free he can run. He’s not the fastest, he’s not the quickest, but he caught 90-something passes and that’s pretty good,” UNH coach Sean McDonnell said. “Just be around the kid day in and day out. Understanding space, understanding leverage, understanding feel, body position, all that. He’s an intelligent kid but he’s not just a smart kid, he’s a competitive kid and he’s an athletic kid. So he’s got a bunch of things that make him good.”
O’Connor is one of the key returners from last year’s 9-5 New Hampshire team that reached the FCS quarterfinals, but he’s far from the only one. The Wildcats return nine starters on offense and nine more on defense, which is a big part of why they were picked second in the Colonial Athletic Association preseason poll and picked as high as No. 3 in some preseason national polls.
McDonnell, of course, doesn’t care about any preseason polls or accolades. He understands this team hasn’t won anything yet and will have to earn everything it gets in the always competitive CAA. His humble star receiver understands the same.
“We do have some guys back, but we’re not thinking about this year. We’re just trying to focus on camp, focusing on one day at a time,” O’Connor said. “We want to be good, we want to be great, so we’ve just been doing all the little things. That’s what it comes down to. You might have great players, but you’ve got to do the little things.”
Still, there’s an undeniable advantage to bringing back so much experience.
“Pretty much everyone who is starting this year had a substantial amount of minutes last year, and that’s the first time that’s happened since we’ve been here,” senior quarterback Trevor Knight said. “So we’re not thinking too much, we’re just going. We’re playing loose. It feels good.”
The Wildcats like to do everything fast on the football field, and all the returning starters and varsity letter winners (54 in all) have allowed them go fast right from the start of camp, which began on Wednesday.
“We’re getting to things a little faster and kind of hitting the ground running right now,” Knight said. “We had some big install days with a lot of plays, and I think we’re all prepared for it. I kind of feel bad for the freshmen, though. I’m glad I’m not a freshman.”
Knight was named the CAA Preseason Offensive Player of the Year last month. But the Amherst native and Nashua South grad, like his coach and leading receiver, isn’t concerned about preseason prognostications or individual awards.
“It’s nice to get some respect like that, but I think it’s more of a team award because it could have gone to Neil O’Connor, it could have gone to someone else,” Knight said. “They make my job easy. They make me look good.”
A former UNH player has been in headlines this week at the FBS level. Ryan Day, the Manchester native who was a quarterback at New Hampshire from 1998-2001, was named the acting head coach at Ohio State after Urban Meyer was put on paid administrative leave while the school investigates allegations of domestic abuse by one of Meyer’s top assistants.
McDonnell, who took over as UNH’s head coach in 1999 and was the offensive coordinator from 1994-1998, coached Day during his days as a Wildcat and has stayed in touch with him.
“We talk, not frequently, but we talk enough,” McDonnell said. “I texted with him right after all this stuff happened and just told him what a great opportunity this is for you and I reminded him of a situation that happened when I was coaching the quarterbacks here and how his confidence took over and I said, ‘If you do that, you’ll be fine.’ ”
This June the NCAA revised its redshirt rule when it comes to Division I football. Players will now be able to participate in as many as four games in a season an still be able to count it as a redshirt season, which means it won’t count against their four years of eligibility.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us to be able to evaluate kids that we have got in the recruiting process,” McDonnell said. “The biggest thing for everybody in the program is to know and understand what’s going on. They’ve all got to be able to execute what we’re asking them to do. I think it gives us an opportunity to put someone in the hot water early in their career here and find out what it feels like to be playing … I think it’s a great rule, especially for the FCS level, because with only 63 scholarships now you can utilize somewhere around eight to 10 other scholarships in that redshirt year that will help us an awful lot.”
The Wildcats will end camp on Aug. 21 with their annual Blue-White scrimmage and will open the season on Aug. 30 with a 7 p.m. game at Maine.
The only player to miss the start of camp with health issues is Plymouth’s Kyle Reisert. The senior defensive end suffered a major knee injury last season, but McDonnell said Reisert could be playing by the end of September.
There are three local players on the UNH roster – Jackson Housman (a sophomore linebacker from Weare who went to Bishop Guertin), Patrick Kaplan (a sophomore defensive tackle from Franklin High) and Ivan Niyomugabo (a junior from Merrimack Valley who is making the switch from quarterback to wide receiver this season).
“He’s looking great,” O’Connor said of Niyomugabo. “It’s not always easy changing positions halfway through your career, but he’s done a really good job. He’s super athletic, he has really good hands and the more reps he gets the better he’s going to get.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341, tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20.)