Monday, Sept. 29, 2003 | 9:51 a.m.
If the first month of the season is any indication, UNLV's special teams are indeed special this year.
Make that very special.
Already Rebels punter Gary Cook and placekicker Dillon Pieffer have earned Mountain West Conference special teams player of the week honors. And tight end Greg Estandia also picked up that honor the opening week of the season when he blocked a key field goal try against Toledo.
Toss in the fact that redshirt freshman Tremayne Kirkland ranks 15th in the nation in punt returns with a 14.7 average and its easy to see why much improved special teams play is being credited as a big key for UNLV's 3-1 start.
No one has arguably had a greater impact than Cook, a former walk-on from Truckee, Calif., who ranks 35th in the nation in punting with a 42.4-yard average.
Distance, however, is only part of being a good punter. In UNLV's 33-22 victory against Hawaii on Sept. 19, Cook constantly kept Timmy Chang and the high-powered Warriors offense bottled up deep in their territory. Of his 11 punts that night, seven were downed inside the 20, another was downed at the 20 and still another came to rest at the Hawaii 21.
Going into Saturday night's game at Nevada-Reno, Cook has remarkably placed 20 of his past 46 punts inside the opponents' 20-yard line.
"It's something that I take pride in because I know if I can get them pinned in down there, not too many teams can go a full 90 yards or so on a drive and score," Cook said. "And especially against our defense, which has been awesome all year."
"Gary Cook is really kicking well," UNLV coach John Robinson said. "As he gets more mature, he's getting the ball higher. His future depends on hang time and getting the ball high. He's really a good punter and he just has to keep working on getting the ball up in the air."
Cook said he will have about 30 friends and family at Saturday night's game. Truckee is only about a 30-minute drive up Interstate 80 from Reno.
"It's going to be a big game for me," he said.
Despite growing up so close to the Nevada-Reno campus, Cook never attended a game at Mackay Stadium until he played with the Rebels there in 2001 as a freshman.
"I never went to a Wolf Pack game," he said. "I went to one of their baseball games. One of the reasons is that I didn't really start playing football until my junior and senior years of high school. And then I was more focused on what I was doing than what Reno was doing."
Remarkably, Cook didn't even begin kicking until his senior year for the Wolverines.
"We didn't have a kicker," he said. "I was out screwing around and I won the job. Then I went to a few camps and got noticed by a kicking service in Reno called Pelfrey's Kicking Service."
Cook set a school record with an 82-yard punt that season and was named a AAA all-state punter. He decided to walk on at UNLV the following fall for two reasons.
"One was that they had a major in construction management which I wanted," he said. "I want to build houses one day. The other reason was because of the chance to play for Coach Robinson."
Pieffer was named the MWC's special teams player of the week following UNLV's win against Hawaii when he tied the school record for most field goals in a game (four) and just missed breaking the mark when his fifth try hit an upright and bounced back.
"Dillon has been a very good kicker for us for some time," Robinson said. "He's a senior now which also makes a difference."
Pieffer, in fact, tied Jim Cook's school record for consecutive PATs as a junior with a streak of 33 in a row. But the biggest improvement has come on kickoffs where seven of his 22 kicks have been touchbacks this year.
"Without a doubt he's doing much better in that area than last year," special teams kickoff coach and defensive coordinator Mike Bradeson said. "Last year he was not even close to that percentage of touchbacks."
Pieffer credits a strong summer program with improving his leg strength.
"I worked a lot this summer," he said. "My leg is a lot stronger this year because of that."
While Cook hopes to celebrate his homecoming this weekend at Reno, Pieffer is looking forward to the following week at Air Force. A 5-foot-11, 180-pound senior, Pieffer attended Coronado High School in Colorado Springs.
"That's when I'll have all my friends and family there," he said.
Marshall, rated by some scouting services as the top junior-college running back in the nation a year ago at Compton College, was expected to challenge for the starting tailback job before being slowed by the injuries.
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