Endurance has a lasting effect in ground game

Nick Christensen

Monday, Oct. 6, 2003 | 10 a.m.

RENO -- Standing in a silent, somber hallway outside the Wolf Pack locker room, UNR defensive end Jorge Cordova was spent.

"Our defense played very well until the last quarter and they just finished better than us tonight," said Cordova, the preseason WAC defensive player of the year. "I guess they had pretty good adjustments coming into the third or fourth quarter."

The UNLV ground attack steadily kept coming at the Wolf Pack offensive line, led by Cordova and defensive tackle Derek Kennard. By the end of the third quarter, Rebels running backs Larry Croom and Dominique Dorsey had combined for only 49 yards on 25 attempts.

But it was in the fourth that Dorsey and Croom seemingly wore out the Pack defense. UNLV dominated the time of possession battle, having an 11 1/2-minute advantage at the end of the third, seemingly leaving UNR spent.

The result? Croom and Dorsey posted 43 rushing yards in the fourth quarter, on 11 running plays. Cordova and Kennard, meanwhile, had only four of their 15 tackles in the final period, which saw UNLV take a four point lead they wouldn't relinquish.

"The offense finally got itself on track," said UNLV coach John Robinson after the game. "They were a good defensive team -- they stuffed us. We had some points in the first half where I thought we lost our poise. But the longer the game went, the better our offense played."

"We started to wear on them," said Rebel offensive coordinator Rob Boras, "and some of those 3-yard gains became 6-yard gains."

Ironically, the biggest rushing play of the game wasn't planned to be a big gainer. UNLV's Dyante Perkins trailed fullback Andrew Faga's block on a fourth-and-one early in the fourth quarter to get the yardage to move the chains -- then kept on running, all the way into the end zone to give UNLV a lead it wouldn't relinquish.

"The second half, it seemed like they were winding down," said UNLV offensive lineman Matt Williams, who saw the most action from Cordova and Kennard Saturday. "It's hard to keep up that kind of effort the whole game."

Cordova, though, said he didn't think the defensive line was left exposed by fatigue.

"I think we have too much pride on the defensive line, we don't let each other quit," he said. "We weren't looking towards quitting in any way. If one of us lost leverage, they made the plays when they had to. But we weren't backing down in any way."

Boras said the game plan didn't dictate wearing down the Wolf Pack, but circumstances made it happen.

"It was just kind of how the game unfolded," Boras said. "We had the ball almost 39 minutes and ran almost 88 plays. I think early on, they got after us pretty well, but when you run that many plays at a team, we did end up wearing them down in crucial situations and wound up getting yards when we needed to."

Williams credited Boras with the Rebels' coming out on top of the endurance battle.

"Coach Rob has had it in our game plan since spring ball," he said. "Take one play at a time, focus on one play, and whenever we did that we were successful. That's what we did, played hard every play." The key matchup of each UNLV football game will be previews in the Las Vegas Sun this season and followed up with after the game by an examination of how it turned out.