Rebels put loss behind them, eye tough Utah

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Oct. 13, 2003 | 10:04 a.m.

So much for that glossy 4-1 non-conference record.

After dropping their Mountain West Conference opener at Air Force on Saturday, 24-7, the only numbers that matters for the UNLV Rebels these days are 0-1. And six, as in six more conference games to be played starting with Saturday's Homecoming contest against red-hot Utah (5-1, 2-0).

After going through a brief practice on Sunday night at Rebel Park, UNLV players preferred to look forward and not behind.

"Our spirits are definitely back up today," quarterback Kurt Nantkes said. "We have that atttitude this year that what happens, happens. Now lets move forward to next week and trying to beat Utah. Obviously we didn't want to start off 0-1 (in conference) but we do realize that we have seven (counting a possible bowl) more games ahead of us. We're just going to take them one at a time."

"You can't dwell on it," junior linebacker Adam Seward, who had a game-high 15 tackles, said. "This was Round 6 and we got knocked down. Do we get up? Do we stay down and let the 10 count go? We have to get back up.

"We're 4-2. We're still a really good football team regardless of what we showed (Saturday). Air Force handled us pretty well and we're upset about it. But it's over. We just gave to get fired up for Utah because they're a really good football team, too. If we don't prepare well for them we're going to be 0-2 in the conference."

"No one has thrown in the towel yet," senior center Dominic Furio added. "We still have a long season left. We'll just go out and practice and get ready for the next one."

Senior tailback Larry Croom, who rushed for 91 yards on 21 carries and scored the Rebels only touchdown on a one-yard plunge in the third quarter, said it's important for the team to learn from the mistakes it made in the contest much like it did from an earlier 46-25 loss at Kansas.

"You want to say it's only one (loss) but then again you don't want to take this for granted," Croom said. "You want to learn from a game like this. Just like Kansas when we had a loss and learned from that. We're going to watch the film and learn from this. This won't happen again."

"It's a good wake-up call," Seward added. "That's what we needed. We're not an excellent football team. We're a pretty good football team right now. But we're not at the level that we can be at or think we should be at yet. We just have to keep working hard."

NO PASS ZONE: Nantkes completed just 8 of 20 passes for 84 yards, no touchdowns and one interception at Air Force as UNLV's passing attack, which was supposed to be much improved with the graduation of Jason Thomas, continues to struggle to make big plays.

You have to go all the way back to the third quarter of UNLV's 23-5 upset of Wisconsin on Sept. 13th in Madison for the last time the Rebels had a touchdown pass. Nantkes hooked up with Earvin Johnson with an eight-yard touchdown pass with 12:14 to go in the third quarter.

That means the Rebels have gone almost 14 quarters -- 207 minutes and 14 seconds to be exact -- since their last touchdown pass. UNLV currently ranks 88th out of 117 Division I-A teams in passing offense and 95th in passing efficiency.

"It's a little frustrating," Johnson admitted. "It didn't bother me before since we were winning. It's tough when you can't put the ball in the end zone. The offense has to produce. You can't rely on the defense all the time."

"There were a lot of things that went wrong (at Air Force)," Nantkes said. "From a personal standpoint there were some different reads that I could have made than what I ended up doing."

Air Force cornerback Jeff Overstreet, who helped to hold Johnson to just one catch over the final three quarters, hinted that UNLV's pass offense may be too predictable.

"Studying film we saw the tendencies they had in their passing game and we just adjusted to those tendencies," Overstreet said. "We knew that Earvin especially has one big route that he likes to run and that's the post. So we tried to keep on that."

Overstreet said another big key was putting pressure on Nantkes, who was sacked four times and hurried about a half-dozen more times.

"We just wanted to keep their quarterback on his heels," Overstreet said. "We knew if we blitzed this quarterback that he was going to struggle throwing the ball."

After watching the films on Sunday, UNLV coach John Robinson seemed to side with Overstreet's assessment.

"Our pass protection hurt us as much as anything," Robinson said. "And we probably should have run the ball more."

Johnson believes the Rebels aren't that far from turning things around.

"I think were just one play away," he said. "Its just been little things, like not being able to get the ball off or things like that. I think we're just one play away from getting the big first down or the touchdown we need."