Boise State wide receiver Khalil Shakir runs against Oklahoma State on Sept. 18, 2021, in Boise, Idaho. (AP Photo/Steve Conner)
The Nevada Wolf Pack football team will get a chance to exorcise some demons on Saturday.
“They’ve been arguably the class of our conference for a long time,” Wolf Pack coach Jay Norvell said this week of the Boise State Broncos. “They are used to answering the challenge week to week.”
The Wolf Pack, Norvell knows all too well by now, has rarely answered the challenge of trying to beat the Broncos in Boise. The Pack has lost 18-of-20 games at Boise State against the Broncos and will get another chance this Saturday (12:30 p.m.) in a nationally televised (Fox Sports One) Mountain West game.
Nevada, 2-1 and coming off a bye week, will be playing the first of its eight conference games on Saturday while Boise State (2-2, 1-0) opened conference play last week with a 27-3 win at Utah State.
“To me, a game like this is what makes college football great,” Norvell said. “We talked about it with our players. We talked about what this game means to our fan base and our former players. We understand the history and what it means to our school.”
The history of the Nevada-Boise State rivalry isn’t a warm and fuzzy walk down memory lane for the Wolf Pack. The Wolf Pack trails in the 50-year rivalry 30-13 and has lost 16 of its last 17 games against the Broncos. The Pack hasn’t beaten Boise State since the 34-31 overtime Mackay Miracle in Reno in 2010 and hasn’t beaten the Broncos in Boise since both teams were in the Big West Conference in 1997.
Nevada has lost nine consecutive games to the Broncos in Boise, losing on the famed Boise blue turf with starting quarterbacks David Neill (1999), Zac Threadgill (2001), Andy Heiser (2003), Jeff Rowe (2005), Colin Kaepernick (2007, 2009), Tyler Lantrip (2011), Cody Fajardo (2013) and Ty Gangi (2017).
The Pack losing streak in Boise has also involved five Nevada head coaches (Jeff Tisdel, Chris Tormey, Chris Ault, Brian Polian and Norvell) and three conferences (Big West, Western Athletic and Mountain West).
The only two Wolf Pack quarterbacks to ever beat Boise in Boise are Eric Beavers (1986) and John Dutton (1997). Current Wolf Pack quarterback Carson Strong will play his first game against the Broncos (home or away) on Saturday.
“We have to be aggressive offensively, we have to push the envelope and we want to start fast,” Norvell said.
Strong has completed 83-of-122 passes this season for 955 yards and seven touchdowns in three games. He will be matched up with Boise quarterback Hank Bachmeier, who has completed 86-of-136 passes for 1,137 yards and seven scores in four games.
“He (Strong) is one of the top quarterbacks there is,” said rookie Boise State head coach Andy Avalos, who never lost to the Wolf Pack in four games as a Broncos’ linebacker from 2001-04. “He is extremely accurate, he’s on point, he’s on schedule and he’s on time.”
“He can make every throw,” Boise State defensive coordinator Spencer Danielson said. “He’s patient in the pocket and he has NFL arm talent. I can see why he gets the accolades he’s getting.”
Strong and the Wolf Pack, though, have averaged just 19.5 points a game this year in two games against a Division I-A opponent (California and Kansas State). The Wolf Pack also beat Idaho State of the Division I-AA Big Sky Conference 49-10.
“We still have progress to make,” Norvell said.
Boise State has split its four games this year but could easily be undefeated going into Saturday’s game. The Broncos were up 21-0 against Central Florida on Sept. 2 before losing 36-31 in Orlando and led Oklahoma State 20-7 before losing 21-20 in Boise on Sept. 18.
“They are very talented,” Norvell said. “They are very typical to a Boise team that we’ve played in my five years (at Nevada).”
Norvell has faced the Broncos just twice, losing in Boise 41-14 in 2017 and 31-27 in Reno in 2018. Boise State, a 6 ½-point favorite on Saturday, has scored 30 or more points in 16 of its last 17 games against Nevada.
The Broncos, though, have been a bit one-dimensional on offense this year. Bachmeier’s favorite target, without question, has been wide receiver Khalil Shakir, who has 27 catches for 448 yards and three touchdowns.
“They use him a lot of different ways,” Norvell said. “They hand it to him, they pitch it to him and they throw it to him. He’s one of the best skill players in our league and he garners your attention for sure.”
Boise State, however, has struggled all season trying to run the ball, averaging just 2.5 yards a carry. The Broncos’ leading rusher, George Holani, has just 96 yards this season. In an effort to beef up its running game last week against Utah State the Broncos had Bachmeier run the ball seven times for 44 yards.
“We want him to be a runner but not the runner,” said Boise State offensive coordinator Tim Plough, who spent the first 13 years of his coaching career (2008-20) in Division I-AA with UC Davis and Northern Arizona. “We don’t need Hank to run the ball 10 times a game by any means but we need to have defenses respect his ability to run the ball. That keeps (defenses) from chasing down our backs from the edge.”
The Wolf Pack has run the ball just 68 times over its first three games, handing the ball off to running backs Toa Taua just 25 times and Devonte Lee 27 times. Boise State, though, has given up the most rushing yards overall in the Mountain West (840) this year and the most per game (210).
“We have good backs,” Norvell said. “We want them to be involved in our attack.”
The Pack, though, handed the ball off just 16 times combined to Taua and Lee in a 38-17 loss at Kansas State two weeks ago.
“We haven’t abandoned the running game by any means,” Norvell said. “We just haven’t been as effective as we need to be.”
The Wolf Pack has played Boise State just once on the road since 2013 but does have experience playing on the Broncos’ blue field. This weekend’s game, in fact, will be the Pack’s third in Boise in the last 22 months.
The Pack lost to Ohio in Boise’s Famous Idaho Potato Bowl on Jan. 3, 2020 (30-21) and beat Tulane 38-27 in the same bowl game on Dec. 22, 2020. Boise State, by comparison, has played just five games (three in 2020 and two this year) on its own field over the same time frame.
“Every experience is important,” said Norvell, who is 2-2 in Mountain West openers as Pack head coach. “We’ve actually played there quite a bit since I’ve been here so we’re familiar with the atmosphere, familiar with the locker rooms. We’ve gone into that environment and had success and that is very important.”
The difference on Saturday will be that Boise State will be the opponent and the stadium will likely be filled with Broncos fans. The Pack played in front of just 13,611 fans in its loss to Ohio and the stadium’s 36,000-plus seats were empty for the victory over Tulane because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Broncos have attracted crowds of 30,000 or more for each of its last five (2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2017) home games against Nevada. The Boise crowds were just 17,934 (1986) and 22,382 (1997) in the only two victories the Pack has ever had against Boise State on the road.
“It’s very important for us to go up there and represent Nevada the right way,” Norvell said.
