Friday, November 6, 2009

No Forgiveness



So how many of you remember this image?  Apparently it's the only one the rest of the college football world remembers when the words Nevada Wolf Pack are mentioned.  Or so it often feels that way.

For whatever reason Nevada stumbled out of the blocks.

A team that was thought to be a BCS buster type was shut out on opening day against a Notre Dame opponent it was supposed to give a run for it's money.  It was then embarrassed two weeks later by a Colorado State team that has proved to be anything but spectacular.  And a week after that on national television once again, it looked like perhaps Nevada was finally going to get a win against an undefeated Big 12 opponent....only to stumble late to a team that has since lost 3 of it's last 4.

Going into this game Sunday night with the struggling San Jose St Spartans, Nevada needs to make a statement on national TV.  The Wolf Pack needs to stop the whole business of going into the half up or down by a score.  We need a good old fashioned "taken them to the woodshed" type of game out of the gates.  It won't be easy.

San Jose has played two of the top Pac 10 teams on the road (USC and Stanford), a ranked Utah team, and three of the top 4 WAC teams with two of those (Fresno St, Boise St) being on the road as well.  And if you didn't watch that game at Boise, then we'll fill you in.  It should have been a 10-7 game at the half in Boise.  A bizarre series of events that began with a poor call (resulting in a WAC official being suspended this weekend) and ended with 14 unanswered points in under a minute made it a much different ball game.

The last time Nevada was at Spartan Stadium it looked like the Pack was going to cruise to a victory up 24-10 at the half.  Two quarters, 17 unanswered points, and a missed 37 yard field goal later and the Pack had to make the long bus ride home as 27-24 losers.

That simply can't be the case this year.

Our message to the team for this weekend is this:  Don't leave your hearts in San Jose.  If you get your foot on their throats early, step down hard.  Keep blitzing.  Keep scoring.  Don't let up.  You are capable of it and you'll need all the momentum you can muster for the short week of practice heading into the final home game against Fresno St.

Good luck and Go Wolf Pack!

1 comment:

15RMGR said...

Good call. You took the words out of my mouth. I was gonna post some crap to the same effect. But I haven't had time. Hardly anyone will look past SJSU's w/l record. But, if SJSU could just put 4 good quarters together they could probably compete with almost anyone. And with our porous pass defense, Nevada might be a little bit of a sitting duck for them. On the upside, though, our run offense will probably cause the Spartans some very serious problems...