Rebels’ fight falls apart at end of 55-27 home loss to Boise State

By Taylor Bern

Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015 | 8:04 p.m.

The inevitable started with about 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, and the fact that it didn’t feel entirely certain at that stage says more about UNLV’s loss Saturday than the final score does.

“That’s a pretty darn good football game for three and a half quarters, and at the end it just got, you know…” Sanchez said.

It got ugly and lopsided, and if all you care about is the final score, that would be Boise State 55, UNLV 27. A seven-point game turned into a nearly three-touchdown favorite covering with room to spare because the Rebels’ wheels finally came off.

It could have happened a lot sooner, yet once the game got going and UNLV’s defense forced two punts on the first three second-half drives, and senior quarterback Blake Decker orchestrated scoring drives that answered a pair of Boise State scores, it was fair to wonder if the fall was coming at all. Then it came all at once.

Boise State’s third-down pass was originally called incomplete out of bounds. That would have handed the ball back to UNLV down seven. Instead the call was reversed, the Broncos scored a 54-yard touchdown one play later and Boise State would tack on two more touchdowns after the Rebels’ last-ditch effort ended on fourth down in the red zone.

“You always talk about the ‘nail in the coffin’ and try to get the separation,” Boise State coach Bryan Harsin said. “… That’s exactly what we did on that play.”

Decker started for the first time since the UNR game, when he left injured late in the first half and sophomore Kurt Palandech helped lead the team to victory. Since, the Rebels have dropped a pair of close losses, throwing for a combined 328 yards over the two games. Decker came out throwing on the first five plays Saturday and Decker finished 29-of-50 for 357 yards with no touchdowns and two fourth-quarter interceptions.

“(Passing) is something we’ve struggled with the last three or four weeks, actually, even before my injury, and it was something we decided, this whole week we prepared on coming out and chucking the ball,” Decker said.

Sophomore receiver Devonte Boyd finished with 116 yards on 10 catches, including one exceptional second-quarter grab in which he went up among four Broncos defenders, and senior receiver Aaron Criswell registered his first career 100-yard game with six catches for 105 yards. Boise State’s front was as stout as the Rebels expected, with UNLV averaging less than 3 yards per carry for much of the game before finishing at exactly 4, and despite a few bright spots the Rebels’ defense wasn’t able to do the same.

First they were beat by trickery, then Broncos quarterback Brett Rypien set about doing most of the damage in his Mountain West freshman record 469 passing yards and then Boise State piled up 127 rushing yards in the fourth quarter alone. Yardage doesn’t tell you everything, but 705 yards, the fourth-most in Boise State history, says enough.

“You can’t give up 700 yards and expect to win games,” said senior safety Peni Vea. “That’s just not doable.”

Sanchez talked earlier in the week about being aggressive as a big underdog, yet in three first-half situations he leaned conservative. In the first quarter, UNLV punted from Boise State’s 47-yard line and kicked a field goal from the 3, and then right before halftime he had his team kneel when UNLV took over at its own 32-yard line with three timeouts. The deficit was seven to 10 points in each situation.

Asked if he would like to have any of those decisions back, Sanchez scoffed. He said he doesn’t look back at where UNLV would be if Decker had been able to play the previous two games — “You move on and you think about the games in front of you,” he said — and he felt all of those plays put the Rebels into the best position to win.

“We did everything we needed to do to stay in that game,” Sanchez said. “… If you start to get out of striking distance, then you need to think about making some of those situations.”

UNLV’s pass rush was, again, almost nonexistent, and the defensive line highlights the struggle this first-year coaching staff has been fighting to overcome. They simply don’t have the personnel to get pressure with a four-man rush, so anytime they bring extra pressure it’s a calculated risk that makes them more vulnerable elsewhere on the field.

“When I took the job, we knew we weren’t taking over a Rolls-Royce,” Sanchez said after first trying to avoid personnel questions.

Yes, the Rebels need to upgrade their talent. But this year there’s nothing they can do about that.

In three straight games as a small underdog, a favorite and a big underdog, end-game execution reared its ugly head. Three and a half quarters works for moral victories, just not the real kind.

“No excuses, but this is a program that hasn’t even competed in games like this,” Sanchez said. “And we are. We’re right there, it’s the fourth quarter, it’s seven damn points, our kids are playing their guts out, they’re in striking distance, they have a shot and we just don’t have enough gas in the tank to finish.”

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