Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Q+A: Mike Sanford

In addition to snapping a 10-game losing streak, UNLV's season-ending 42-39 victory over Air Force provided the Rebels with a much-needed boost in confidence heading into the off-season.

But while head coach Mike Sanford may be an eternal optimist when it comes to his program, he is careful not to put too much weight behind the Rebels' lone victory this season over a Division I-A team.

UNLV, 4-19 in two seasons under Sanford, has plenty of issues to address in the off-season, not the least of which is recruiting a big running back from the junior college ranks to bolster a running game that ranked 108th out of 119 Division I-A teams.

Sanford recently looked back on the 2006 season, assessed what went wrong and offered long-suffering Rebels football fans a reason to be hopeful as he prepares for his third season at UNLV.

Q: How important was that final victory over Air Force?

I felt at the end of the year, in general, that we were getting better, we were improving. I think it's huge for our present players, going into next year, and I think it's also huge for recruiting.

You had a lot of returning players who played key roles in that game.

Somebody told me that every player that touched the ball in the (Air Force) game, for us, was coming back, and I think that was big. It was big for us to do as well as we did on offense, it was big for Rocky Hinds to play as well as he did and for us to get a win with all those guys coming back.

Do you think that win might be masking some problems?

I don't think that's the case. It would be different if I didn't think that we were improving; I think we improved at the end of the season. We matched up, physically, better against some teams this year than we did a year ago, and we had chances to win some games.

I don't think that a win masks anything. I think there are things we have to improve on. There are things we've got to change, and there are things that we've got to do better and I think those things are very evident.

You've said your priority is recruiting a bigger running back. What are your other priorities in recruiting?

Corner, safety, defensive ends and a freshman quarterback.

You've won two games each of your first two seasons at UNLV. What would give a fan reason for hope for next year?

No. 1, I would say I feel great about the young guys that are coming back. I think our senior class that's coming back and especially our freshmen and sophomores, I feel really good about those guys that are going to be coming back.

Also, I feel very optimistic and positive about the quarterback situation. (Hinds) needs to continue to improve, but I do believe he improved as the season went on, and I feel very good about that.

I feel good about not only the ability but the attitude and the toughness of our freshmen and sophomores, which I think is very important. We not only played better but we were tougher, which is a positive, and that's one thing I'm trying to build in this program.

Did you expect Rocky Hinds to have that rough of a time shaking off the rust after not having played for so long?

No, I didn't expect it - especially after the first game (a 54-10 victory over Division I-AA Idaho State). But there were a lot of weird circumstances that went on during the course of the year. The fact that he got hurt against Iowa State, that set him back for a while and it took him some time to come back from that, and then he got on a course of improvement.

Throughout the course of the season, your team made stupid mistakes that cost you in some close games. How do you coach against that - or is it simply a matter of experience?

It's a combination of things. First of all, there was improvement in that regard in the last game - even though we did some things that hurt us in that game, we did enough good things to win. Looking at the games that we lost that were close, we didn't do the things we needed to do to win where we did (do them) in the Air Force game.

I think the big thing is guys not executing at critical times. I think one of the things we can do to remedy that is by putting them in those kinds of pressure situations in the spring and next fall, put them in more of those kinds of situations where they have to execute under pressure.

Does the chancellor's memo about the state of the UNLV football program add any sense of urgency as you prepare for next season?

No, I think it's all, in my mind, self-imposed pressure. I have expectations where I want this program to be, and those expectations are higher than (what) other people have.

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