Santoro: Pack sticks to the formula to win two straight

Sports Fodder:

The Nevada Wolf Pack football team’s formula for success the last two weeks while beating San Diego State (6-0) and New Mexico (34-24) is nothing new, innovative, fresh or groundbreaking. The Pack has simply played hard, played smart, played with energy and hasn’t made mistakes. It’s a tried-and-true formula for football success that coaches in the 1890s lived by. The key to that tried-and-true formula is, of course, the last part. You cannot make mistakes if you want a strategy of playing hard and smart and with energy to make a difference. The Wolf Pack did not turn the ball over against either San Diego State or New Mexico. It is the first time the Wolf Pack has not turned the ball over for two consecutive games since, surprise, surprise, it won its first two games of the 2022 season against New Mexico State and Texas State. The Pack had a 9-0 turnover advantage against New Mexico State and Texas State combined and had a 4-0 advantage the last two weeks against San Diego State and New Mexico. That’s how you beat bad teams. You let them give you the game. Playing hard and smart and with energy while not making mistakes against bad teams is really the only way this Wolf Pack team can win a game. It’s a formula that should prove successful once again this Saturday when another bad team (Hawaii) comes to Mackay Stadium.

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The Wolf Pack has always played hard and with energy since Ken Wilson became head coach last year. That has not been the issue. Wilson is a nice guy, he’s smart and personable and players always loved him as an assistant coach and played hard for him. The role of head coach, it seems, has not changed him at all. Wilson’s long-term success as Pack head coach, though, will be based on how well his coordinators do their jobs and how well his staff recruits. Recruiting has always been difficult at Nevada and it is even more challenging now that players want to get paid for their services. A free education, after all, is not enough anymore. Wilson is an inexperienced head coach, and he has two very inexperienced coordinators in Mike Bethea (defense) and Derek Sage (offense). The combination of an inexperienced head coach and inexperienced coordinators, coupled with an inexperienced roster, well, there’s a reason why this staff has won just four of 20 games since it got here. The best we can hope for right now is a team that plays hard, smart, with energy and doesn’t make mistakes. The last four weeks of this season, win or lose, will be instrumental in building momentum for 2024 when the Pack might even be able to add innovation, surprise and a bit more talent and experience to its tried-and-true formula of playing hard and not making mistakes.

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Two weeks ago, it appeared the Wolf Pack had nothing to play for in the second half of this season. That has changed dramatically the last two weeks with victories over a pair of struggling teams. Isn’t college football wonderful? There’s always something to play for. The Pack now only needs to win its final four games in order to qualify for a bowl invitation. Those four games are all winnable and come against Hawaii, Utah State, Colorado State and Wyoming. The Pack is about a three-point favorite against Hawaii and should win by double digits if it follows its tried-and-true formula mentioned above. Utah State, Colorado State and Wyoming will likely be favored against the Pack but all three of those teams have serious issues of their own. The key games will be at Utah State and Colorado State. If the Pack emerges from those two road games with a five-game winning streak with just a game against Wyoming at Mackay Stadium remaining on the schedule, you might want to make your bowl game plans.

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Is Brandon Talton the best kicker in Wolf Pack history? The numbers by the end of this season will suggest he is certainly in the conversation. Talton, the Pack’s kicker since 2019, already has the school record (and Mountain West record) for field goals at 78. He is now second in points for a Pack kicker with 370, behind just Marty Zendejas (385). The knock against Talton being considered the best Pack kicker in school history is that he will have had five years to kick while Pack legends like Marty and Tony Zendejas had just three (Tony) and four (Marty) seasons. None of the seven other Pack kickers with 29 or more field goals (Brett Jaekle, Damon Fine, Brent Zuzo, Damon Shea, Kevin McKelvie, Fernando Serrano and Charlie Lee) also didn’t have more than four seasons. Talton’s .788 success rate on field goals (78-of-99) also falls a bit short of Tony Zendejas (70-of-86, .814) and Marty Zendejas (72-of-90, .800). Talton, though, has now made 81 consecutive extra points and is now 136-of-141 for his career, a .965 success rate that fall short of just two Pack kickers who had 84 or more extra points. Marty Zendejas made 169-of-171 for a .988 success rate and Anthony Martinez was good for a .977 success rate (84-of-86).

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The Reno Aces, in case you haven’t noticed, are taking on the Texas Rangers in this year’s World Series. There are no less than 20 former Reno Aces that have appeared in the postseason this season for the Arizona Diamondbacks. There have been 11 Diamondbacks in the postseason this year that played for the Aces as recently as this season, including pitcher Brandon Pfaadt, who won six games for the Aces. Third baseman Emmanuel Rivera hit .330 with 25 RBI for the Aces this year while Pavin Smith had nine homers and 49 RBI and Alek Thomas drove in 31 runs on a .348 average. Second baseman Ketel Marte, who has hit safely in a major league record 19 consecutive postseason games this year, was a star for the Aces in 2017 (.338, 23 doubles, seven triples) while first baseman Christian Walker, who has hit 69 homers and driven in 197 runs over the last two years for the Diamondbacks, hit 50 homers and drove in 185 runs for the Aces over the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Corbin Carroll, who will likely win the National League Rookie of the Year award in November, hit .287 with 11 stolen bases, 11 doubles and seven homers in 33 games for the Aces just last year.

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The Los Angeles Clippers, apparently, are more concerned with collecting more star power than the Los Angeles Lakers than they are worried about winning an NBA title. The Clippers added James Harden this week to a roster that already has ball-hogs Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Russell Westbrook. This would be a sensational must-see roster in say, 2016 or 2017, but now it just looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Leonard and George never seem to stay healthy, Westbrook is as erratic as any player in the league and Harden, well, is he even in shape to play? And when will he quit on the team? But selling tickets, impressing celebrity-hungry Southern California fans and stealing the spotlight in Los Angeles seems to be the Clippers’ goal. The Lakers, who have just an aging LeBron James and an inconsistent Anthony Davis, can’t compete with the Clippers’ star power anymore. They are like a small budget indie film compared to the Clippers’ big studio Hollywood blockbuster cast. Clippers coach Tyron Lue, who coached LeBron in Cleveland and played against the Wolf Pack in the 1997 NIT for Nebraska, has his hands full.

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Major League Baseball owners supposedly will vote sometime in November on whether to allow the Oakland Athletics move to Las Vegas. The only stumbling block to approving the move, it seems, is whether the A’s will get enough public funding from the city of Las Vegas and the state of Nevada. It would be difficult to believe that Las Vegas and Nevada would not step up and bring a major league franchise to town. But anything is possible. The A’s, though, will play out their lease at the Oakland Coliseum in 2024 and then take their talents elsewhere, no matter how the voting goes next month. Salt Lake City and Portland, it seems, also want the A’s. Cities would start to line up to attract the A’s if Las Vegas falls out of the picture. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported recently that the construction of the A’s $1.5 billion proposed stadium in Las Vegas is scheduled to begin in April 2025 with a completion date of January 2028. That means the A’s will still need to find a home for the 2025-27 seasons, whether it’s in Nevada or elsewhere. How about Greater Nevada Field in downtown Reno, where National League and maybe World Series champions are made?