LAS VEGAS — Sometimes, sloppy can be as entertaining as it is frustrating.
Case in point, Saturday at Allegiant Stadium, where both UNLV and Utah State had their fan bases taking a wild roller coaster ride since the coaster at New York-New York was shut down due to the inclement weather that had hit town.
One minute, brilliance. The next, head-scratching wonderment, be it over the play-calling or the execution (or lack thereof). But eventually, the UNLV offense found its rhythm, put points on the board and thanks to Kayden McGee’s 25-yard end sweep in the second overtime, tucked away a 29-26 win to go to 8-2 on the season, 4-2 in Mountain West play with two games remaining.
“What a great win for the guys,” Mullen said of the double-OT victory that denied Utah State (5-5) bowl eligibility. “They’re fun to coach. They find ways to win. They find ways to stick together.”
Case in point, the Rebels’ much-maligned defense. UNLV surrendered 434 yards Saturday, 124 of them on the ground to Bryson Barnes, the Aggies’ 24-year-old quarterback. But when it had to get a stop late in the fourth quarter and in each of the overtime periods, it managed to do so.
“Just find a way,” said linebacker Marsel McDuffie, who spent a good portion of his day trying to keep Barnes in check and finished with 10 tackles.
The defense did allow the big play on occasion, like when Barnes went 58 yards on a quarterback draw for a touchdown in the fourth quarter to give Utah State a 23-20 lead. But it also came up big when it had to and it’s a reason why UNLV somehow prevailed.
That the Rebels were without their star running back Jet Thomas, who was unable to go due to a wonky hamstring and forced Anthony Colandrea to find different weapons to move the team down the field was a tribute to the depth Mullen has cultivated in his initial season at the helm. Keyvone Lee tried to pick up much of the slack with 43 yards and Colandrea had 29 yards, including a 10-yard touchdown run in the second quarter.
But it was McGee, a freshman from Muskogee, Okla., who was the hero. He hadn’t caught a pass this season and his contributions to the offense going into Saturday was one carry for four yards. That changed as he wound up with three carries for a team-leading 54 rushing yards, including the game-winner and showed he was more than a guy who can help out on special teams (He was the Mountain West’s Special Teams Player of the Week on Oct. 6 after blocking a punt and returning a second blocked punt for a TD vs. Wyoming).
“You never know when your number is going to be called,” McGee said. “But I was ready. I know I’m fast, so once I got it and I saw the open space, I just went.”
Go he did and he helped put the cap on one of the crazier games UNLV has been involved in.
This one had a little bit of everything, a buffet of bloopers if you will. There were dropped passes and missed calls. There were blown assignments and missed field goals, three of them by Utah State’s Tanner Rinker who came into Saturday’s game a perfect 10-for-10. There were weird calls from both coaches as Bronco Mendenhall called for a fake field goal try which ended in disaster while Mullen had a 4th-and-1 call blow up on him as Colandrea inexplicably went into shotgun formation instead of over center for a half-yard needed and was sacked instead.
It was weird all right. Then again, it was raining all day in Las Vegas. So what did you expect? A 24-year-old, one-time pig farmer from Milford, Utah, population 1,431, to come to Sin City and steal the show?
“Yeah, there was a lot of craziness out there,” Mullen said of the affair which took nearly four hours to play and was witnessed by an announced crowd of 31,682. “There were a couple of things that were funky. But (the officials) gave me the explanation and we went on. In the end, we made the stops we needed to make.”
Ultimately, a lot of guys contributed — nine players caught passes from Colandrea, who threw for 276 yards on 24-of-43 passing. The defense sacked Barnes seven times. And when coaches say it was a team victory, they can look at the tape of this one and truly mean it.
