It is very tempting to turn your eyes away from this season and look to 2012, but don’t jump ship yet!

There is plenty of intrigue biding its’ time for late 2011 to root for success in the coming games to get into the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve. Not the least of which is the question of Bryant Moniz’s recovery.

Although Receivers Royce Pollard, Miah Ostrowski and Darius Bright will see action in the final fourth of the season, think how healed up they could be in late December.

Then comes the entire defense. A three week break and they could look like they did in the opener against Colorado!

And the best reason for not jumping ship is the Warriors are not giving up on themselves.

Coach Gordy Shaw said “winners are not those who never fail, but those few who never quit.” What he saw on the sidelines in Nevada was a team that worked hard to try to win. “We can still make it a winning season!”

Shaw likened the injury situation to the military in battle. Everyone knows their role and when the ranking person above goes down the next guy steps up. We lost our leader, and we lost the ball going in from the one yard line, but we didn’t fold.

After Moniz went down, Shane Austin came in and did a job. On a scoring series Nevada played a cover zero where there is no free safety in the middle and blitzed. On fourth down and five Austin and Receiver Stutzman the coverage so the receiver broke off his route and cut into the middle where Stutzman caught the first down pass.

On the ensuing play, Nevada showed a blitz, but had three of the seven players in the box drop back into coverage. Still Austin got the ball into the middle, this time to Ostrowski for a 21 yard TD catch and run.

Coach Shaw felt the O line did a good job too. “We run a full field read offense and sometimes it can take 5-6 seconds to see everything.” Nevada’s defense is fast and we worked on a new blocking scheme that worked well. On Running Back Joey Iosefa’s touchdown run, Shaw said we had five linemen blocking seven, you just had to block the right five guys.

The pistol is like the old option so in defending it you have to play the dive, the QB, and the pitch man. Nevada’s best play is a running play with two linemen pulling, but our defense stopped it all night.

However, Wolfpack Coach Chris Ault said they had to pass more, and that they did gaining 304 yards in the air with four passing touchdowns. Nevada also gained 223 yards on the ground.

Shaw said Special Teams also did a good job with the blocked punt by John Hardy Tuliau who also recovered the ball in the endzone for a score. Shaw commented that it took great eye-hand coordination for Hardy-Tuliau to get his hand on the ball and not touch the punter.

Hawaii Punter Alex Dunnachie performed well with a 46.6 yard average while blasting two punts over 50 yards.

Kickoff return placed the Warriors in good field position much of the night with Mike Edwards returning one for 40 yards and Scott Harding returning one for 30 yards. All the PATs and field goals were successful.

The only special teams blemish was the Nevada fake field goal which resulted in the final score of the game.

Shaw reported that at the end of this season we will lose O linemen Clayton Laurel, Austin Hansen, Brett Leonard, Andrew Faaumua, Matagisila Lefiti and Landon Sapolu. 

The good news is returning or waiting in the wings are current underclassmen: Junior Levi Legay, Sophomore Chauncey Makainai, and Freshmen David Lefotu, Sean Shigematsu, and Jordan Loeffler.

Adding to the fun are Freshmen: Kody Afusia (6′-2″, 305 pounds); Ben Drew (6-5, 305); Blake Muir (6-5, 295); Frank Lloyd (6-3, 300) and more coming in!  We  already have one greyshirt on campus, a verbal commitment and are continuing to recruit more O linemen.