The gamble had paid off. Tyler Lorenzen had parlayed his year spent at Palomar College -- a move he had admitted was risky, but also necessary to achieve his ambition of playing quarterback at the major college level -- into a scholarship from the University of Connecticut.

So Lorenzen packed his bags last winter and traveled across the country to Storrs, where the quarterback-poor Huskies had all but promised him the starting job. All he had to do, really, was not mess up.

On the first day of spring practice, he messed up -- royally. Surrounded by players he hardly knew, his head a jumble of arcane terminology he had hardly learned, Lorenzen misfired so many times that UConn's coaches must have been tempted to stamp "return to sender" on their special delivery.

"It was bad," Lorenzen recalled this week. "You barely know the offense and you're expected to go out there and perform at a high level against a bunch of Division I players. It's a tough task."

How bad was Lorenzen's public unveiling? At a recent press conference, Huskies coach Randy Edsall asked a gathering of reporters: "That first day of spring practice, how many of you guys were thinking, 'Holy God, this guy is awful?' Go ahead, raise your hands."

Of course, Edsall and his junior QB can laugh about that memory now. Not only did Lorenzen recover from his embarrassing debut to win the QB derby, but he's in the process of leading UConn's young program to unprecedented heights.

With the 21-year-old left-hander under center, the Huskies -- predicted to finish seventh in the Big East -- are in first place in the conference at 4-0 (8-1 overall) and nationally ranked (16th this week) for the first time since moving up to Division I-A (now known as Football Bowl Subdivision) in 2002. Only a one-point loss at Virginia on Oct. 13 stands between them and a perfect record that would almost certainly mean a spot in the top 10.

They'll try to extend their dream season when they visit Cincinnati on Saturday, with a showdown at No. 7 West Virginia looming in two weeks, possibly to determine which team will earn the Big East's berth in the Bowl Championship Series.

To be sure, these are heady times at a school where the fall is traditionally one long countdown to basketball season.

"There weren't a lot of expectations of us from outside of our program," Lorenzen said. "It's nice that we're succeeding and doing some great things and people are enjoying that and filling up the stadium. It's definitely exciting."

Lorenzen's matriculation to UConn was the perfect marriage of player and school. The 6-foot-5, 226-pound Lorenzen needed a place to showcase his talents after one season running Palomar's spread-option offense, in which he passed for 2,960 yards and 26 touchdowns, and ran for another 836 yards and eight TDs. The Huskies desperately needed a QB after the graduation of Dan Orlovsky -- now a backup for the Detroit Lions -- led to a slide from 8-4 in 2004 to 4-8 last season.

Lorenzen hasn't come close to replicating his gaudy junior college numbers, which earned him first-team All-American honors from J.C. Grid-Wire, but he has been a model of cool efficiency. While passing for 1,723 yards, he has thrown for 11 TDs and only four interceptions, eight fewer than the combined total of the two players who shared the position in 2006.

Just as important as his on-field performance, he has impressed the Huskies with the same intangibles that made him the unquestioned leader of the Palomar team during his one year in San Marcos -- hard work, selflessness and other old-fashioned values born of his Iowa upbringing.

"Everything you hear about him is true," Comets head coach Joe Early said. "He's the ultimate as far as a team player. There's no ego. When you're around him, you can tell that he can get people to rally around him. He's got that 'it,' whatever that 'it' is."

Part of that "it" is not forgetting where he came from. Though he has become a minor campus celebrity in Storrs, Lorenzen has found time to check in regularly with the Palomar coaching staff and with Tom Craft, the Mt. San Antonio College assistant coach who served as a volunteer offensive assistant for the Comets last year. In an interview this week, he expressed sympathy both for Hunter Wanket -- who succeeded him as Palomar's quarterback and suffered a season-ending broken collarbone on Saturday -- and for the victims of the October wildfires.

Lorenzen knows that, if not for his bold decision to transfer to Palomar, he'd still be stuck at Iowa State, playing wide receiver while dreaming of barking signals at the line of scrimmage and throwing spirals. Instead, he's doing those things and -- unlike a certain day to forget last spring -- doing them well.

"Palomar changed my life completely," Lorenzen said. "Everything about the program, the people, I cherish. Coach Craft and Coach Early helped mold me into the player I am now and brought back the confidence that I could still do this. I feel real fortunate to be able to say that I went out to Palomar and was coached by those guys."

Contact staff writer Brian Hiro at b_hiro@hotmail.com.