Finding winning attitude is major challenge for Rebels

The mindset part.

The part where UNLV football players must make a transition from accepting mediocrity to despising it, to where simply making some plays and moving the ball against superior opponents but losing on the scoreboard is considered utter failure.

The head coach, be assured, already preaches the concept.

"There’s winning," Bobby Hauck said. "There’s losing. We lost. Sorry, guys. I mean, (bleep), we just lost. It’s no good."

That was Hauck on Saturday shortly after UNLV walked off the field at Rice-Eccles Stadium a 38-10 loser to Utah, igniting an upset, frustrated, short-sentence-answers type of guy in charge whose irritation led to a bizarre call on the game’s final play.

More on that later.

Hauck would return to expound on things, but the point was made. Success isn’t created from weakness, and the Rebels right now are coated in the latter. He won’t accept it, and that’s a good thing.

"We gave ourselves a chance to be in the game and then we let it slip away, and that’s bitterly disappointing," he said. "It’s not OK to do that. I apologize for being abrupt, but I’m just not happy."

Good. A coach with an edge. Throw a chair or two. Close the locker-room doors and rip into players. Find the ones who will buy in and move on from ones who won’t.

Utah is much better than UNLV and yet nowhere near as good in most areas as the Wisconsin team that beat the Rebels by 20. The Utes won’t win the Mountain West Conference playing the way they did Saturday. They won’t even come close.

UNLV wasn’t going to win here, but it could have hung around longer had its special teams not bordered on atrocious and its offense not treated the end zone as a plague for the second straight week.

Eight quarters into Hauck’s tenure, the Rebels have only two offensive touchdowns.

You’re going to hear this theme often this season: UNLV is not talented enough to play any phase evenly and expect to beat anyone. The Rebels can’t be competent at one thing and awful at another (see special teams on Saturday) and hope to be in games late.

It’s too bad. UNLV played about as well through the first 29:23 as it could have hoped. It managed the game offensively, sustaining drives and limiting Utah to 10 points. It had the Utah faithful booing and agitated.

Then the Rebels fumbled during a punt return. Utah scored on the next play with 37 seconds left in the half and it was 17-3, and it was over.

Hauck said afterward that a 14-point deficit at intermission wasn’t insurmountable. Maybe. But a 21-point deficit three plays into the second half sure was.

"We haven’t arrived anywhere because we were able to move the ball some on Utah," Rebels quarterback Omar Clayton said. "Utah won the game. I’ve played enough to know that I stopped believing in what-ifs. I don’t care about what-ifs. What if we won the game? We didn’t."

Hauck would approve of such a stance. It’s one he is trying to infuse daily, from seniors to freshmen. But losing can cause a coach to react in frustration, or at least emotionally.

UNLV had fourth-and-goal from the Utah 1-yard line with two seconds left when Hauck called timeout. His team trailed by 28, and yet out jogged freshman place-kicker Nolan Kohorst, which told everyone from here to Provo and beyond that the Rebels were running a fake.

They did, and the poor Kohorst kid sort of stumbled toward the goal line before getting drilled at the 2.

"Why not (run a fake)?" Hauck said. "Why not try something? Nothing else was working."

Well, because there is no reason to show a fake that you might need later in the season when a game can be won. And wouldn’t it have been better to give a struggling offense some confidence by trying to score a touchdown? And what if your place-kicker ended up wrecking a knee while running around out there like an eighth-grader trying to avoid the school bully?

Why not?

Because it made no sense on any level and had me thinking for a second that the call was sent in from Louisville.

It was a call by a frustrated, emotional coach who refuses to accept losing and is going to demand his players also not accept it.

It’s a tough mindset to instill.

It might be Bobby Hauck’s biggest challenge.

But if he can do it, UNLV football will eventually realize much brighter days under him.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618.