Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Rebels Football:

UNLV’s seniors optimistic new energy can lead to quick turnaround

UNLV Football First Regular Practice 2015

L.E. Baskow

UNLV’s Sonny Sanitoa, center, jogs onto the field with teammates during an option play in their first regular season football team practice on Friday, August 7, 2015.

2015 UNLV Football First Regular Practice

UNLV quarterback Blake Decker eyes a receiver during a pass play in their first regular season football team practice on Friday, August 7, 2015. Launch slideshow »

Expectations for Tony Sanchez’s first season as a Division I head coach are understandably low.

“You just have to ask the oddsmakers, right?” the UNLV coach joked at Mountain West media days last month.

Facing a schedule that includes the likes of Michigan, UCLA and Boise State with a roster largely built of guys with more two-win seasons than not, the Rebels’ win total was set by oddsmakers at 2.5. That’s tied for the second lowest total in the country, and so far the money is on the under.

So, with such an obvious rebuilding project ahead of him, most people would understand focusing on what could happen down the road. But Sanchez has always acknowledged that a five-year plan doesn’t mean much to this year’s seniors, and as camp for the 2015 season opened Friday at Rebel Park the veterans were selling optimism as reality: Change can start this season because it’s already happened all around them.

“(Sanchez) really has changed everything here,” said senior defensive tackle Sonny Sanitoa. “This is a new culture and a new era, as they say.”

The NCAA’s limitations on supervised offseason workouts mean the players have spent most of their time over the summer around strength coach Keith Belton, who has injected a significant amount of life into UNLV’s workouts. That’s transferred beyond campus, where senior tight end Jake Phillips said players have gathered for barbecues and made each other priorities in ways that he hadn’t previously seen in four years at UNLV.

“This team has bonded so much more than it has in the past,” Phillips said. “… We preached three years ago that we were a brotherhood, but that team had nothing to do with brotherhood compared to this team. The contrast is unreal.”

The belief among players is that all of the energy and fun that they’re having now is going to result in better practices, which will result in better game-day performances and maybe a few more wins. Personnel changes, both in and out, have also affected the outlook.

The Rebel Room

Is UNLV football on the rise?

Las Vegas Sun sports reporters Taylor Bern and Case Keefer ask Ray Brewer to explain why he's all in on the Tony Sanchez era for UNLV football, and what that will look like both in year one and down the road.

The Rebels have several players at fall camp who weren’t here in the spring, adding depth at spots like defensive line and wide receiver. Sanchez highlighted linemen Nick Dehdashtian, a former UNR commit, and Jason Fau as guys who could compete to play right away and overall Sanchez loved seeing more depth on the field.

“Immediately we looked a lot better,” Sanchez said.

Young players have the chance to get on the field early but a season that would surprise oddsmakers, and most everyone else for that matter, would have to rely heavily on veterans. Those are the ones who have to lead the charge, something Phillips thinks this group will do better than seasons past.

“It’s mostly the older guys saying we’ve had enough,” Phillips said. “In the past years we’ve had guys that were going out and partying after bad losses, and that’s not on this team anymore. We cut out the cancers.”

It’s early August and hope springs eternal at practice fields across the country. The regular season has a nasty habit of stomping that out, but until results tell them otherwise UNLV’s seniors are going to believe that change starts now, not years down the road.

They’ve seen a new way to do things, both on and off the field, and Phillips can’t imagine looking back.

“We’ve had enough of the BS,” Phillips said.

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

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