Resurgent UNLV visits Lobos still aiming to reach bowl game
Gonzales confident team can get 1 of 3 needed wins
After his Lobos lost at home to New Mexico State on Sept. 16, University of New Mexico football coach Danny Gonzales said his team would win at least six games and make it to a bowl game.
Time is rapidly running out. So are the opportunities.
At 3-5 overall and 1-3 in Mountain West Conference play, the Lobos must win at least three or their final four games to reach the minimum six-win plateau to reach a postseason game for the first time in more than half a decade.
“We’ve got one game on Saturday,” Gonzales said this week. “As a coach when you start the season — I don’t ever go through the schedule and say, ‘Yep, we’re going to win here, probably lose here, win here.’ I mean, you’re shortchanging your team if you do that. Our expectation is to win every game we play.”
UNM’s losses to New Mexico State, San Jose State and Nevada are likely games some people would have circled as possible wins. Saturday’s visit from surprisingly resurgent UNLV (6-2, 3-1) may have looked like another before the season started. Instead, the Rebels have become one of the great stories in the Mountain West by winning six of their first seven games.
Their only losses have come at Michigan and conference rival Fresno State, the latter a game they had a chance to send into overtime in the waning moments of a 31-24 loss last week in California.
The Lobos aren’t technically eliminated from bowl contention — or the Mountain West race, for that matter. Their remaining games include road trips to Bose State and Fresno State, then the finale at home against Utah State.
A loss to UNLV on Saturday would mathematically eliminate them from the MWC regular season title. Entering the weekend, the only team with more than three wins in conference play is 17th-ranked Air Force (8-0, 5-0). Twothirds of the conference has at least two losses in MWC play.
Gonzales said he was disappointed with the loss to Nevada, a team that owned the nation’s longest losing streak just two weeks ago.
“Our team expected to win; I think our fan base expected to win,” he said.
“Our margin of error, we’re not good enough to overcome three turnovers and dig that big of a hole.”
Anything short of playing a flawless game has proven problematic for the Lobos all season. It got so bad in the loss at Nevada that starting quarterback Dylan Hopkins got benched for a moment in the second half.
That’s the same Hopkins who was named the MWC offensive player of the week coming into the game.
He did engineer a second-half rally, but it was far too little, too late.
“Dylan doesn’t change,” Gonzales said. “For one, he’s a big-time player. He played really well in the second half and gave us a chance.”