By Jason Beauchamp

Published Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 | 10:29 a.m.

Updated Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 | 10:30 a.m.

Situations like these are always serious. It's people's lives, and their families are affected. At that point, you have to feel empathy towards anyone.

I think for the most part, for the team and the players, it was just unreal, because, yeah, we talk about it and, yeah, we've been hearing about it forever.

But I don't think anyone really thought it was going to happen.

Coach Sanford will lead us into our finale on Nov. 28 against San Diego State for his final game at UNLV, and I don't think it's going to be that tough to get up to play this one.

We always talk about execution, assignments and everything. Ultimately, if you ask me, it's never really been about that alone. It's always been about who really wants to win that day, you know? If we want to win bad enough, it'll be obvious and it'll show in our play.

It's never been the perfect scheme or anything. If the younger players decide that they want to get behind the seniors and go out with a win, then this is a good message to send to the head coach who's coming in.

Oddly enough, my final collegiate game will be against my hometown school.

It means everything, because this game has always been personal to me.

It's personal to a lot of the guys. Personally, I'm really excited about it and I feel like I've been through so much in these last five years that the only thing to do now is just to have fun, because I've been through it and seen so much.

Honestly, I don't think there's too many people in the country who have had the college experience that a bunch of us have experienced in the last five years as far as the ups and downs and adversity.

I think that ultimately, a strong performance on Nov. 28 will make us better as individuals and as men.