Storrs — Jim Mora had conflicted feelings after UConn’s tough road loss on Saturday night.

The Huskies showed encouraging signs at Duke, a team they lost to 41-7 last season, and rallied from a 17-0 deficit to lead in the fourth quarter before falling 26-21 in Durham, N.C.

But Mora doesn’t want his team to get in the habit of celebrating competitive losses.

“You can’t be satisfied with it,” said Mora, who’s in his third season as UConn football coach. “I think you have to acknowledge it, but it’s not an achievement unless you win the game. Our guys have a great understanding of that.

“That’s why when you’re talking to your team after a game like that, there’s an enormous conflict inside of you as a coach. And I felt this enormous conflict inside of our players as well, because we all recognized that we made progress but we failed in our objective, which was to win the game. So how do you reconcile those two because the last thing you want to do is give yourself an excuse.

“…. Losing small, people go, `That’s a moral victory.’ It’s a loss. So making sure nobody feels okay about losing small is what we have to make sure we do while still recognizing if we take care of the details, we have a chance to win big. But don’t ever accept losing small. … We have to make that breakthrough. It’s like we cracked the glass a little bit but we haven’t run through it.”

The Huskies (1-2) will have some opportunities to shatter the glass in the upcoming weeks. They begin a program record long six-game home stand on Saturday when Florida Atlantic (1-2) visits Rentschler Field in East Hartford for a 7 p.m. game.

Buffalo, Temple, Wake Forest, Rice and Georgia State also will visit before UConn finishes the regular season with three straight road trips. So the Huskies will play some winnable games.

This is a vital stretch for the Huskies, who’ll need to finish their home stand with a positive record to have a decent shot at making a bowl game.

They may benefit from maintaining a comfortable routine at home, playing in front of a supportive crowd and avoiding travel.

That sure sounds good to redshirt junior Skyler Bell, the team’s leading receiver in his first season in Storrs.

“I don’t like flying,” Bell said. “I get nervous on planes. Six in a row is fun. A night game to start at the Rent, hopefully it’s packed and loud.”

Mora is keeping his focus on Saturday’s game and nothing beyond that.

But he admits that there’s a chance for the Huskies to build some valuable momentum during the long home stand, but only if they win.

“If you want me to take off my blinders and think about the six games, if you win and you build momentum and your crowd size increases because they like to watch you play football and you’re winning at home, then there’s more energy in the stadium and that helps you,” Mora said. “And that becomes a true home field advantage.’’

Despite their losing record, the Huskies feel good about the progress they’ve made through three games.

Now it’s a matter of sharpening up the execution and cutting down on mistakes.

“It’s the details,” Bell said. “A lot of those plays (Saturday) that we had when we had the lead, it was just details — maybe a missed block, missed assignment, not running the route at the right depth, things like that.

“Honing into the details this week for preparation for FAU is going to help us big, not only for this week but for the whole season.”

Bell and the Huskies did gain some confidence from Saturday’s tough loss.

It sure was a better performance than their season-opening road trip to Maryland that resulted in a humbling 50-7 defeat on Aug. 31.

“We showed that we’re not a laughing stock anymore,” Bell said. “We showed we can compete with Power Five teams. … But we should beat them. We should have won that game. A lot of people in this building know that and we feel that.

“Obviously, we have to move on and get ready for FAU but use what we learned from Duke and put it into the preparation so we can have a good day on Saturday.”

g.keefe@theday.com