BY DARRELL MOODY
Appeal Sports Writer
Will the real Nevada football team please stand up?
It the team that looked so awful against Missouri in a 69-17 loss, or is it the team that dismantled in-state rival UNLV 49-27 Saturday night in Las Vegas?
I would say it would be somewhere in between. The Pack isn't as bad as it played against Missouri, but I have to wonder if it can continue to play as well as it did against UNLV.
Certainly I think the Pack benefited from a bye week, and I think UNLV showed the strain of playing five straight weeks, including a pair of overtime games against Arizona State and Iowa State.
Nevada players and fans shouldn't get too caught up with this win. Flush it and move on as Colorado coach Dan Hawkins is famous for staying. Albeit it was a rivalry win, it was still just a nonconference game.
Nevada, 2-2, still needs four wins to become bowl eligible, and there are some huge games coming down the road against Boise State and Fresno State. Those two games will give you an idea how really good or bad Nevada is.
Wolf Pack quarterback Colin Kaepernick said earlier in the week he hoped a win here would jump-start Nevada to a nine-game winning streak. Certainly the Pack will be favored against Idaho, Utah State and New Mexico State (its next three opponents), but if the players relax or overlook any of those three it could be disastrous.
The most impressive thing about Nevada's win was its running game. With the help of Kaepernick (who ran for a Nevada quarterback record 240 yards) the Wolf Pack, despite being down to its third, fourth and fifth running backs in Vai Taua, Courtney Randall, and freshman Lampford Mark, ran well at will with 444 yards rushing against a UNLV front that was supposed to be the strength of the defense.
Taua went over the 100-yard mark for the second time this season, gaining 123 on 19 carries. Most of the night he looked like a faster version of Luke Lippincott. Randall got the tough yardage, running mostly between tackles for 49 yards on 11 carries, while Mark averaged nearly four yards a carry.
"Vai ran hard " and well," Nevada coach Chris Ault said. "I thought all our backs ran hard. Again you have to go with the offensive line. You have to talk about that. I think that was the real key."
Of course, Kaepernick's ability to get outside made it much easier for Nevada's running backs because UNLV's defense had to respect the Pack's long-legged quarterback.
UNLV never adjusted to Kaepernick, and the Nevada star was only too happy to take what the Rebels were giving him.
The Rebels claimed they practiced for Kaepernick, but it sure didn't show.
"I've got to give Colin Kaepernick credit, obviously a tremendous game," UNLV coach Mike Sanford said. "They had a lot of yards rushing and obviously we did not do a good job of defending the option.
"It's a very specific type of offense that they run and we worked on it all week and we did not defend it well. We worked hard to make adjustments. Obviously the adjustments we made were not enough. We made a lot of different adjustments."
Of course you still have to tackle, and Nevada ran through a lot of UNLV tackle attempts.
Another positive in the victory was Nevada's ability to stop the Rebels' running game, namely Frank Summers, who was held to 20 yards on nine carries. Summers had rushed for 299 yards the last three weeks.
Ault thought that was the reason UNLV came out in so many five-receiver sets.
"Our run defense was very good tonight with a couple of exceptions when their quarterback took off on us, but our run defense was good," Ault said.
- Contact Darrell Moody at dmoody@nevadaappeal.com or (775) 881-1281