Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Rebels football:

Take 5: Sanchez reflects on Year One and what UNLV needs moving forward

Hint: The answer is more toughness, better talent/depth and a new building to house it all in

UNLV Loses to San Jose State

L.E. Baskow

UNLV head coach Tony Sanchez and his players wait in the tunnel to meet San Jose State on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2015, at Sam Boyd Stadium.

The Rebel Room

Rebels Ready for Road?

The Rebels (7-1) have two top-15 victories in the bag, and now they're heading to their first true road game at Wichita State. Las Vegas Sun sports editor Ray Brewer and reporters Case Keefer and Taylor Bern preview that game while looking at what has gotten UNLV to the fringe of the top 25 rankings.

Tony Sanchez returned home with the rest of his team from the season-ending loss at Wyoming, but unlike the majority of the traveling party his work was just getting started.

By most accounts the former high school coach made a successful collegiate debut. The Rebels won the Fremont Cannon, went over their season win total of 2.5 and they were a few plays away from something closer to .500.

But while that’s OK for a start it’s not where anyone wants to remain, so the day after returning home from a bad loss to a bad Wyoming team, Sanchez hopped on a 7:45 a.m. flight to go traverse the parts of Kansas even Kansans would prefer to skip. It’s all in the name of finding the talent necessary to realize his vision of what football can be in Las Vegas.

“We’re not going to get outworked,” he said.

In the middle of recruiting visits both home and away, Sanchez sat down in his office with local reporters to go through what happened and what’s to come for UNLV football. Some notes from that meeting:

1. Dealing with Losing

In one season, Sanchez lost nearly twice as many games as he lost over six years at Bishop Gorman High. Yes, losing sucks, he said, but he also knew what he was stepping into about a year ago, when not even the office furniture was up to snuff.

“If I had an out of whack expectation about what this job was, then it probably would have been a lot tougher,” Sanchez said. “When you’re rolling in and you sit down in this chair … well, it wasn’t this chair, I threw that chair away.”

He continued: “You’re looking around and you’re going like, ‘Wow, OK, we’re at a program that’s won two games eight of 11 years, that hasn’t even been competitive in a lot of these years, who struggles beating non-Division I teams, that lives in these facilities,’ you know all the things.”

It’s that viewpoint that has him encouraged by things like the majority of games still being close in the fourth quarter, or getting to the three-win mark for only the fourth time in 12 years. No one wants to wait to win, but while Sanchez was compiling an 85-5 record at Gorman, UNLV went 20-56.

Which is to say, Sanchez knew better than to come in expecting to fix everything right away.

“I never put a number on it. How could you?” Sanchez said. “I had no idea what to expect until we actually got in the fight. What I learned is, you know that the details make a difference.”

There’s one big detail the Rebels are still working on that they think could make a huge difference:

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UNLV's Devonte Boyd (83) celebrates in the air with head coach Tony Sanchez after a long reception and touchdown versus Hawaii at Sam Boyd Stadium on Saturday, November 7, 2015.

2. Facility

The renderings have been ready, and Sanchez can’t help but look down the road at what the Mendenhall Center means for UNLV basketball and wonder when he can get his own on-campus facility.

“They have everything that screams, we care,” Sanchez said. “… It’s always going to be a basketball place and it always should be, but we want to be right there.”

Sanchez has been the main driver behind UNLV Athletics’ marketing push to sell Las Vegas as a good collegiate destination, and that’s already paying dividends. He’s done what he can to upgrade what UNLV already has, but that has a ceiling, and to some recruits that ceiling matters.

“If we really want to move this program forward, we’re beating a dead horse if we’re not going to put anything into it,” Sanchez said.

An on-campus facility has been a hot topic for more than a full year, ever since it was clear Sanchez would take over for Bobby Hauck. Meaningful updates have been few and far between, but the insistence is that UNLV is working tirelessly behind the scenes to make it happen.

Sanchez said something he learned this season was that some of the little things “made a huge difference.” New uniforms, a new Vegas-centric field at Sam Boyd Stadium, using virtual reality headsets in recruiting, promoting the program and the city on social media, all of it added up to more national awareness and a net positive for the Rebels.

Marginal gains only feel like progress for so long, though. Between Vegas’ weather, attractions and growing size/economy, Sanchez and his staff don’t see any reason that college football can’t thrive here.

A history full of losses and disinterested locals stand opposed to that idea. That’s where Sanchez said UNLV needs to show its commitment in a physical way, to prove that things really are different now.

“I’m hellbent on getting this thing done,” Sanchez said. “… Can you imagine if you took Colorado State’s new stadium and plopped it here, or if you took Boise State’s football complex? I don’t know that we’re losing recruits to those guys.”

3. Quarterback

The Rebels got a recruiting commitment Sunday from a player at the most important position on the field, the one that might have cost them a couple of victories this year.

Junior college quarterback Johnny Stanton announced he was picking UNLV, giving Sanchez another option for a competition that should feature no less than four options. Stanton spent his first two years at Nebraska with current UNLV offensive assistants Barney Cotton and John Garrison before spending last season at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif.

The 2015 Rebels had plenty of issues all over the field, but it’s also fair to look back and say that something a little better — or even just more consistent — at quarterback could have made a big difference. While neither quarterback had a strong season, senior Blake Decker averaged nearly 200 passing yards per game and at least presented the threat of a deep ball, whereas sophomore Kurt Palandech completed less than half of his passes and averaged a full three yards less per pass attempt.

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UNLV head coach Tony Sanchez has kind words for senior QB Blake Decker (5)and others on "senior night" as they face San Diego State in their game at Sam Boyd Stadium on Friday, November 21, 2015.

“It’s not a knock on any one individual,” Sanchez said. “… When we didn’t have Blake in there it made a difference, and I think we all saw it.”

The Rebels went 0-3 in Palandech’s starts and 1-5 in games in which he played at least half the game. For a team that went 1-4 in games decided by one possession or less, it wouldn’t have taken much to get to four or five victories.

4. Size and Depth

The weight of UNLV’s offensive line, or the lack thereof, was something that frustrated Sanchez all year. He joked that UNLV had to be the only team in the country starting at least three guys at 270 pounds or less, and while that’s a stretch it’s probably not far off.

No place is a size upgrade more needed than up front on offense, which this year featured a group much like the defense that broke down more and more as the season went on.

“The offensive line, I’ll tell you what, I love those guys, I think they held on about as long as they could,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez played two true freshmen on the line, something he said no program in the country wants to do, and that includes two starts at right tackle for Nathan Jacobson. That should be a positive going forward, but situations like that and not feeling comfortable going to backup linebackers — Sanchez said they went four weeks in a row with the starters playing 90-plus snaps — show up as guys wear down at the end of the year.

“You really saw the attrition, the early schedule (taking a toll), I think you saw the depth kick in and when guys went down, there was a huge gap between 1s and 2s,” Sanchez said.

A full year of recruiting, as opposed to the 21 days he had last offseason after jumping from Bishop Gorman High, helps in that department as the Rebels already have 12 kids committed in the upcoming class. Sanchez is pursuing a lot of junior college transfers, too, to try to get as many players as possible who are ready to play and compete for spots immediately.

“There’s nothing that should continue to be comfortable about this,” Sanchez said. “This should be fun. The competitiveness is what you should want to be around.”

5. Toughness

Accountability, intelligence and toughness. Those are the three attributes Sanchez said he values most, but even within that trio that’s a clear hierarchy.

“The most important thing that trumps everything is toughness,” Sanchez said. “I don’t give a crap if you’re the most intelligent, accountable group of guys, if you’re not tough it makes no difference. Toughness is above everything else. We’ve got to develop some damn toughness in this program.”

Sanchez didn’t mean that UNLV wasn’t at all tough last season, but a coach is never satisfied, particularly when it’s a guy like Sanchez who has been so accustomed to winning. He said they’ve already talked to some special military units and are planning some different on-campus or off-site workouts.

“We’re going to get in their face and challenge them,” Sanchez said. “We’re going to take them to different mental places than they’ve been. … Now that we know guys, we need to attack their weaknesses, not their strengths.”

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.

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