Nevada still hurting itself
There’s been one predominant theme in the Wolf Pack’s season up to this point — Nevada (0-2) has been a bigger opponent to itself than any of the teams it has lined up against.
After its 35-20 loss Saturday to Colorado State, which included five turnovers by the Wolf Pack offense, bringing Nevada’s total to eight, while the defense hasn’t forced any.
“The biggest concern I have right now is us,” said Chris Ault, Nevada football head coach. “You have five turnovers in any ballgame, you don’t have a chance. Defensively, we put two-and-a-half quarters where we played well, then just fell apart. Again, I don’t think the offense gave us anything to hang our hat on. It’s disappointing because you look at that and also the Notre Dame game and we see that the enemy is us. It’s tough enough playing good teams, but when you shoot yourself in the foot with the consistency we’ve been doing, it’s tough to win.”
The two-and-a-half quarters of good defense against the Rams Ault alluded to were when the Wolf Pack held Colorado State to just 14 points.
After that, it was Rams.
Colorado State scored three more touchdowns in the game to pull away at the end.
Four of the Rams’ five total touchdowns came off of Nevada turnovers and three of those turnovers were by Wolf Pack quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The Rams converted all three of Kaepernick’s mistakes into touchdowns.
Kaepernick said losing a game where you do most of the damage to yourself is better than playing well and still losing.
“I’d say it’s a better problem than playing your best and getting beat outright,” he said at Monday’s practice. “We want to play as good as we can, but we haven’t the last two weeks. This is something that we can correct.”
Another contributing factor to the Wolf Pack’s woes has been penalties. Nevada has committed 15 of them this year, 11 of which were against the Rams.
“There are no excuses for those things,” Ault said. “We had seven illegal procedure (false start) penalties on the offense. That’s poor coaching. That starts right here. There are no excuses. I’d love to give one, but there are none. That has to stop. That’s a matter of focus.”
At Monday’s practice, many players walked on the practice field unusually quiet with their heads down. But Ault remained positive about his team’s future and said that these past few weeks would serve as good measures of character.
“Overcoming adversity is the key to being successful,” he said. “When things are going well, anybody can play, but you’ve got to find a way to meet the adversity and come up and play well.”
The Wolf Pack will get a shot to get back on track on Friday in its first home game of the year against No. 21 Missouri at 6 p.m.
Juan López can be reached at jlopez@nevadasagebrush.com.
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