Nevada-UNLV Retrospective

Just for fun, let's take a look at what our hapless counterparts had to say about our victory. Ed Graney from the LVRJ wrote:

It's all relative, especially when you are in the infant stages of rebuilding a college football program that has been as sound lately as that Disney stock in your deteriorating portfolio.

The gap is still wide. The cannon is still blue.

UNLV still exists miles and miles behind its rival.

But this wasn't last year. This wasn't that kind of loss to UNR, despite what you might imagine a 44-26 final score suggests.

[...]

UNR is very good. I don't know if it's great. It looked at times as if merely going through the motions, as if it knew the outcome was never in doubt and it needed to score just enough to make the pollsters believe for another week.

One good thing came of this for UNLV: It will never again have to prepare to defend Colin Kaepernick. The senior quarterback rushed for 97 yards and one touchdown and threw for 124 and another, not the kind of video game numbers he put up against the Rebels in the past, but solid just the same.

Meanwhile, Ron Kantowski from the LVRJ had this to say:

Chris Ault, UNR's Hall of Fame football coach, brings to mind the Russian guy who has everything in that DirecTV commercial, only without the Cold War accent and the grammatical errors.

Opulence? He has it.

This year's Wolf Pack are an embarrassment of riches. Fantastic quarterback. Excellent running back. Novel offense that nobody seems to know how to defend. Much-improved defense. Undefeated record. National ranking.

[...]

The Wolf Pack fumbled away a punt in the shadow of their own goal line and made other niggling mistakes. Unforced errors are never a good idea, regardless of how much your defense has improved, or how much you like savings the money.

UNLV's Will Chandler made another big play, intercepting a long pass by UNR's Colin Kaepernick when there really was no reason to throw one, not when the Wolf Pack offensive line was carving giant holes in the UNLV front seven that Louie Anderson could run through.

This would also fall into the category of a niggling UNR mistake. As would another turnover, inside UNLV's 5-yard line.

[...]

UNR (5-0) looked a little bored to me. UNLV (1-4) still looked a little outmatched, but not nearly as much as at Idaho a couple of weeks ago.

I think that's about right. This game reminded me a lot of the Eastern Washington game at the beginning of the year - we knew we were infinitely more talented than the other team and, in a manner of speaking, played like it. The silly, boneheaded mistakes (fumbles, the interception, poor special teams play, and so on) all reminded me of what happens when I play checkers against my seven-year-old. When you're not taking your opponent seriously, you get sloppy.

Trouble is, once in a while, my seven-year-old wins.

Realistically, I don't think San Jose State is going to be our "trap" game. They're at least as bad and at least as banged up as UNLV was, only without a decent wide receiver on their side to expose our defense from time to time. I'm not entirely sure we'll cover the 38 point spread - we are developing the nasty habit of playing down to our level of competition, after all - but I think we have the talent to do that.

One game that makes me more than a little nervous, however, is Hawaii. It's in their field, they throw the ball, and - let's be honest here - we're just not that strong against the pass. The good news is that the only FBS team that Hawaii's kept under 4 yards per rushing attempt was Army; USC rang up 7.0 yards per carry, Colorado secured 4.8, and even lowly Louisiana Tech picked up 4.5. That's fantastic news for us since it means we can safely secure first downs on the ground, chewing up valuable clock time and keeping up against Hawaii's inevitable passing scores.