UNLV faces a survivor in San Jose State QB Josh Love

When Josh Love quarterbacked California prep power Long Beach Poly, he was at a school used to winning.

Most of Love’s personal football story, however, is one of being overlooked, of winning and losing the starting job, of playing for three offensive coordinators in three years at San Jose State, of battling through injuries.

“I think I’ve always kind of been the underdog and doubted,” he said.

Love remains in an underdog role with the Spartans (0-7, 0-3 Mountain West), but they are rare favorites in Saturday’s 3:30 p.m. home game against UNLV (2-5, 0-3). They opened as 1½-point underdogs and now are 2½-point favorites.

“We’ve been saying, ‘Breaking that door down, get that first winning taste in our mouths,’ ” Love said. “We know we can compete with anybody in our league.”

The 6-foot-2-inch, 205-pound junior has started five games this season, completing 54.1 percent of his passes for 1,245 yards with eight touchdowns and six interceptions.

He threw three touchdown passes in consecutive starts against Hawaii and Colorado State. In that five-overtime Hawaii game on Sept. 29, Love also passed for a career-high 451 yards.

For a UNLV defense hobbled in the secondary — strong safety Evan Austrie (knee) is out and cornerback Jericho Flowers (hamstring) is questionable — facing Love is quite a concern. The Rebels allow 240.9 yards passing per game.

“When I see (Love), I saw an older guy, confident, he trusts his throws, and he’s very accurate,” UNLV coach Tony Sanchez said. “They run some of the RPO (run/pass option) stuff that we do, and he puts the ball on the money, and he’s the reason they’ve played so well in some of these big games.”

That journey for Love began in high school.

He transferred to Poly after playing as a sophomore at Tesoro High in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. Love shared the position as a junior, passing for 17 touchdowns and two interceptions.

Then when he got the starting job to himself as a senior, Love threw for 3,199 yards and 41 touchdowns to lead the Jackrabbits to an 11-2 record. Scholarship offers, though, didn’t come.

“By the time I started getting looks, a lot of schools had commits already,” Love said.

San Jose State already committed scholarships in that recruiting class to two other quarterbacks, so he walked on. But one of the other quarterbacks failed to qualify academically and the second reneged and chose Oregon State.

Love made it on scholarship after redshirting in 2015.

He played mostly as a backup in 2016, but appeared in all 12 games and started at Iowa State. Last season, Love started five times, but never could fully wrest the job from Montel Aaron.

Love won the job this preseason, but missed games against Washington State and Army because of undisclosed injuries. The Spartans lost those games by a combined 83-3.

With Love as the starter, the Spartans have been outscored by an average of 36-29.

“We’ve played our best football with Josh in the game,” San Jose State coach Brent Brennan said. “It’s really awesome to see what he’s come through in terms of his struggle on the field and his development. That quarterback position is such a hard position to play, and he’s put a large amount of work into his preparation.”

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Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.