looked at the kicker's stats
He is only 50% on XPs this year, and missed 3 XPs last year
He is perfect on FGs this year, but hasn't attempted anything over 40 (it would have been 42 on Saturday). Last year he was 4/6 on FGs over 40 yards.
I can see why Diaco might have hesitated; this kicker is erratic (although perhaps the XP misses are due to a terrible snap or hold)
They have had one blocked XP in each of their 3 games this year. The team has two kickers, a long range kicker and a short range kicker. The long range kicker had already missed one kick, and they had had one XP blocked already.
On their last drive UCONN was playing 4 and 5 wide and moving the ball better than they had all game aside from their TD drive. They were at 4th and 5 after an incomplete pass, a drop, and a QB scramble for 5 (where the QB slid, making you think he was expecting another down).
The offense stayed on the field for quite some time after the play, a timeout was called, and then the short range kicker came out to kick a 40+ yard field goal aka NOT his specialty. In other words, the chance to even make the field goal from that far out was low due to his team's bad protection AND his kickers being highly inconsistent from that range. And hell, Mizzou is the more talented team and better at driving 25 yards than UCONN so playing for overtime was a bad move anyways.
There was still over a minute to play so the correct move was to go for it. The incorrect move was trying to fake a field goal on a team that knew they A) had to put little effort into even blocking the damn thing B) knew you probably couldn't make the kick to begin with and C) knew your best shot of winning the game was in regulation.
So the dumb move was trying to fake a field goal. Going for it was the best move, but stay in the 5 wide because minus a drop, you were moving the ball well on Mizzou and had a QB that could scramble for the 5 if need be.
