UNLV vs. Utah State: Week 11 Matchup Preview
The story so far: We are quickly burning down the second half of the season in the Mountain West, and Saturday night in Vegas could shuffle the deck for both teams. UNLV sits at 7-2 (3-2 MWC) after steamrolling Colorado State 42-10 last week. Anthony Colandrea looked like a man on a mission, throwing 251 yards for two touchdowns and running for two more touchdowns. Jai’Den Thomas only needed seven carries to field 131 yards and a touchdown. Jet has been averaging a mind blowing 7.6 yards a carry.
A win here keeps Dan Mullen’s Rebels in the mix for a top 3 finish and a shot at the conference title game. Utah State comes into town in at 5-4 (3-2 MWC) fresh off a 51-14 demolition of UNR. The Aggies need this road win to stay above .500 in league play and avoid a brutal November slide with the toughest stretch of their season on deck with Fresno and Boise coming up after UNLV. Selfishly, I would like UNLV to go out with a win on what will be the last game we play with Utah State as fellow conference members.
By the Numbers: UNLV’s offense has been efficient averaging 37.4 points per game. Colandrea is north of 2251 yards and 17 touchdowns already, and the ground game is 1871 yards this season across 328 carries. The defense meanwhile had one of their better games this season. They held CSU to 292 yards while keeping them to just 1-13 on third down.
Utah State has played a fairly clean game so far this season. Barnes has been solid with keeping the ball out of danger with just 3 interceptions this season vs 17 passing touch downs. Furthermore he has been dangerous with his legs with 407 yards and 7 touch downs. Miles Davis has 609 yards and 6 touchdowns on the ground. The problem is, the Aggie defense is a turnstile with 421.6 total yards allowed per game, while surrendering 29 points in four of their last seven games.
The problem is as rough as those Utah State Defense stats are, UNLV’s total season defense is worse is almost every category; with the except for third down conversions allowed.
Key Matchups
Quarterbacks in the Crosshairs: Colandrea 2251 yards, 178 completions on 258 attempts (69%) vs Barnes 2096 yards 86 completions on 129 attempts (66.7%)
Run Game Chess: Thomas and the UNLV backs averaging 207.9 rushing yards a game against USU’s defense giving up 178.4 a game.
What to expect: I am expecting this game to be a rock fight. In my opinion we do not have enough of a sample size to consider UNLV’s defense to be “fixed”. While they did good things vs Colorado State, that was also a team with two wins. I expect UNLV’s offense to be hot at home after losing its last home game.
UNLV 38, Utah State 31.
Saturday, Nov. 15 | 5:00 p.m. MT (7:00 p.m. ET) | CBS Sports Network | Tickets: UNLVRebels.com
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