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This week’s theme for UNLV football is growth.
At his weekly press conference, head coach Marcus Arroyo preached about improving in all areas after scarlet and gray fell east of Washington in double overtime to open the season.
“Week 2 is a great week for growth in a lot of ways,” Arroyo said. “I think there are going to be big gains from week 1 to week 2.”
The players dutifully echoed this message.
“Coaches always tell us the biggest growth is between Week 1 and Week 2,” said senior linebacker Austin Ajiake. “We’re just starting to show what we’re capable of. It’s shaping up to be a big year for defense and I’m delighted to be a part of it.
It’s all well and good. The problem is that the growth – even if it is coming in leaps and bounds – may not be evident on the dashboard on Saturday.
Nine days after losing to an FCS-level team, UNLV will travel to Tempe to face Arizona State, which is 1-0 and ranked No. 23 in the AP poll. Sportsbook doesn’t expect much from a contest, placing UNLV as a 33-point underdog.
To see it through a realistic lens, there’s a good chance UNLV can play a lot better on Saturday than it did in Week 1 and still be blown away by the Sun Devils.
UNLV got plenty of breaks against East Washington. The defense forced two turnovers and the special teams unit recorded a takeout on a missed kickoff (which led directly to an UNLV touchdown on the next play), and Eastern Washington missed. three field goals (including a 32-yarder who would have ended the game in regulation).
The state of Arizona is unlikely to make the kinds of mistakes that allowed the UNLV to hang out against East Washington. This means the Scarlet and Gray will have to play exponentially better to compete.
One particular area in which Arroyo wants to see growth is consistency in his wide receivers. He mapped seven drops of UNLV receptors in week 1, with some of them arriving in critical situations.
Sophomore Doug Brumfield, who took over from Justin Rogers in the third quarter and will start at ASU, throws the ball faster than Rogers, but Arroyo said that was no excuse for the receiving body to swap his gloves against frying pans.
“We have to catch the ball,” Arroyo said. “There were too many. Seven Drops was one of the driving killers that came forward for us, especially in the critical moments of the game. We talked about it and we recognized it and what we need to do is one of the examples of things we can improve ourselves in.
Dropped passes and a few other sharp criticisms aside, Arroyo tried to give his team confidence before Saturday.
“It’s almost impossible not to recognize the growth and the good things we’ve seen [in Week 1]”Arroyo said.” We’re really at home on this, because these good things are worth celebrating for our band. “
The players have taken up this attitude. They may be heading to Arizona as the underdogs of nearly five touchdowns, but as Utah State and Montana and, yes, Eastern Washington proved last week, it didn’t. there is nothing safe about college football.
“The good thing about college football is that every game is winnable,” Ajiake said. “You saw this last weekend with a bunch of upheaval, so we go into every game thinking we have a chance and believing we have a chance.”
Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.
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