Rebels ‘hard to love right now’

"But it took her two days to send it," Hauck said.

Love has been hard to find since his Rebels blew a 14-0 halftime lead and lost to lower-level Northern Arizona 17-14 on Saturday night.

But, for now at least, Hauck is on the job as UNLV (0-2) prepares for Friday’s 6 p.m. game against Washington State (1-1) at Sam Boyd Stadium. The Cougars are 11-point favorites.

Hauck said he woke up at 5:30 a.m. Sunday "and felt sick" and didn’t want to go to his office, but walked into Lied Athletic Complex a half-hour later.

"It was pretty quiet around here yesterday, but our guys came to work," Hauck said. "Yesterday afternoon, we had a good practice, and we’re going to get going. We know we’re hard to love right now."

The heat is on Hauck, and not only because of the loss to Northern Arizona. The third-year coach is 4-23, and Saturday’s outcome was the latest in a series of embarrassing defeats that include Southern Utah and New Mexico last year.

But as Hauck acknowledged, the defeat to the Lumberjacks was even worse than losing to Southern Utah.

"When you lose a game, especially like the one we lost last weekend, we as a group – starting with me – feel like we let everybody in our department down," Hauck said. "Anybody that’s associated with our university, we feel like we let those people down."

The immediate future doesn’t appear much brighter.

UNLV probably won’t be favored until the 10th week when New Mexico visits. That could be the only game the Rebels will be the favorites.

"We don’t want to let people down," Hauck said. "We want people to be excited about Rebel football, and it’s tough to do right now. But we’ve got 11 games left. That’s a whole season. I mean it wasn’t too many years ago when that’s all we played.

"We’ve got to go to work. We don’t have the luxury of sitting around and talking about it, win or lose, during the week. We better have our focus forward. We can’t do anything about what happened in the past, even if it’s yesterday."

If the losses continue to mount, however, so could pressure on UNLV athletic director Jim Livengood and president Neal Smatresk to make a change.

Hauck understands that reality, and he said he regularly meets with Livengood to discuss where the program stands.

Livengood and Smatresk are keeping quiet about their thoughts on Hauck’s job status. The coach, who makes $350,000 per year, has two seasons remaining on his contract beyond this one.

"We’ll either get it done or we won’t," Hauck said. "I think we will. I think we’ve got the right stuff in our locker room. I think we’ve got the right stuff in our coaching staff. I’ve been around coaching 25 years. I haven’t been around too many losing seasons other than the last two."

Then, he added of his UNLV future, "I don’t make that decision anyway."

Contact reporter Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65.