Blog Q&A in hindsight with Nevada's Pistol Whipping the WAC

With the Nevada game in the books, my timing may not be the best, but here is an interview with Nevada blog Pistol Whipping the WAC. The interview, which happened prior to Friday's game, is oddly relevant even after Boise State's 44-33 win over the Wolf Pack. Take special note of Pack Fan's last answer. Downright clairvoyant if you ask me.

(Also, here's my interview over on PWtW.)

How do Nevada fans reconcile the team's start to the season? Do they still speak of it? Has everyone moved on? Any worries about a repeat?

Honestly, it's a mixed bag on what fans feel. Some feel it was just new players needing to gel. Some feel it's typical of Ault lead teams. Some feel that Ault doesn't care that much about the OOC (minus UNLV of course) and "saves" plays and sets for the WAC season. Everyone still speaks of it on a regular basis, just not at length as much. After each of our wins you hear a lot of "if we played those guys now" and after each of their losses you hear a lot of "it only makes our loss to them hurt that much worse". Everyone has moved on for now. It will start up again next season though. At PWTW we kind of go with the thought of "this team needed to gel and didn't find its true identity until some time in the third game" and we are not worried about a repeat unless we lose some juniors early.

Where do you stand with Chris Ault? I mean, besides "a good two feet taller." Wasn't he on the outs early in the season?

Two feet? What do you think we are only 5'8"? Seriously though, Ault is an old school guy. Sometimes that's good and sometimes maybe it's not so good. He's the kind of guy who's going to give reps to the senior who's earned his dues over the freshman who's waiting to explode.

We're pretty surprised that he's gone to such a hard core rushing attack, considering his past offenses and the fact that he was a quarterback himself. He was on the outs with a lot of people after the first two games because everyone, including us, felt that the Notre Dame no-show was bad but that the Colorado St game was a straight up embarrassment. We had better athletes on the field that day and yet still managed to look like garbage. It's turned around though and even your guy Coach Petersen was recently quoted on what a tremendous job of coaching it takes to turn a team around from a poor start like that. Ault should retire on his terms. He's Nevada's Joe Pa. You don't fire Joe Pa.

If you had to remove one player from Nevada's offense, which one would you be least willing to choose?

It has to be Kaepernick, because we don't have a quarterback at back-up who is as mobile as he is. Even if Lantrip came in and made ever read accurately, I don't think he would pose the running threat to defensive coordinators and would allow for teams to pinch down a lot more on our rushers. If we lose Vai or Luke, we've already seen that Mark and Ball are capable of 100 yard games. We have a solid O-Line, although we don't want to lose much more depth there. Center would be a tough position to lose. Still have to say we can't lose Kaep though.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Kellen Moore and 1 being Colin Kaepernick against the Broncos last year, rate Kaepernick's passing ability in 2008 and rate his ability in 2009.

His pass ability has always been pretty solid, but this year his throwing motion is much more consistent over the top and his touch on deep balls and shorter routes is noticeably better. He's over 60% through 11 games and as a Nevada fan what is really really frustrating is that the last few games he's had a lot of dropped balls again. The early part of the year it wasn't too bad. The last few games though, Kaepernick has been around 50% but nearly every incompletion has been a dropped ball (and some of them have been really, really bad....like it's a TD if you don't have butter fingers bad) or a throw away out of bounds because guys aren't getting open. That makes us nervous for Friday night.

Who do you think will win the matchup between the Bronco defensive line and the Nevada offensive line? Can the Nevada offensive line lose this battle and the Wolf Pack still run for lots of yards?

Nevada's offensive line will win the battle, even though the Bronco defensive line is reportedly 35 deep. If Nevada's line did lose the los, it's not likely they can run for their average. Luke, Vai, and Colin are pretty good, but the Union is what makes the offense go.

I thought Nevada fixed its pass defense. Must have been a different Nevada. Is it at least a little better than last year?

It was painful to watch through the first 7 games or so. It's gotten better, but it's a little difficult to gauge because of the competition faced lately. Still, they have something like 5 or 6 games in a row with an INT recorded and haven't been giving up as many big plays. Better but still have a lot to prove.

Say some nice things about Dontay Moch and Kevin Basped. I figured you were probably going to anyway.

Dontay is just flat out aggressive speed. The great thing about him this year though over last year is that last year he would get caught out of position at times when defending the run. This year he has been much more disciplined which shows in his tackles for loss numbers. He's the guy who seems to be coming up with the big play at the needed moment in a game.

If Kaepernick is "the freak" on offense, then Kevin Basped is "the super freak" on defense. The guy is one of those rare athletes who is tall, big, fast, strong, and mean. He's had a few little nagging injuries this year that have prevented him from being as dominating as we think he can be. It sounds like he's finally 100% now and will be ready to get after Moore.

Do you think this game can turn on special teams? Which team has the advantage there?

Oh yeah, this is one the Wolf Pack needs to at least hold the Broncos to neutral on. Nevada can't afford to allow the Bronco offense to start at the 35 every possession like it seemed they did last year. And they can't find themselves starting from the 10 either. Turnovers on special teams are nails in the coffin. Fortunately we got a kicker this year who has been pretty good at touch backs (something like over 60%) and we've got return men who are averaging around 27 per. We don't think we can win the special teams battle (Boise is the best in the country on special teams) but we think we can and must keep it to a non factor.