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Beating UNLV top season goal for No. 25 Nevada

Oct 1, 2010 - 1:12 PM By OSKAR GARCIA Associated Press Writer

Nevada (4-0) at UNLV (1-3), 10:00 p.m. EDT

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- When No. 25 Nevada finally evaluates what's shaping up as a breakout season, its top measurement will be whether it beats intrastate rival UNLV on Saturday.

Not posting a winning record. Or besting No. 3 Boise State for a Western Athletic Conference title. Nevada coach Chris Ault said those goals are secondary to beating the Rebels, a 1-3 team that has lost three blowouts and beaten only winless, lowly New Mexico.

"It is a championship game," Ault said of the UNLV matchup. "It is a chance to win a championship and be state champs. That is what you are playing for."

And of making The Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since 1948, Ault said: "I look at it as nothing more than a motivating factor for our football team."

The Wolf Pack (4-0) played its way into this week's rankings by emerging as one of the nation's best offenses, posting four double-digit victories that include wins over California and BYU. Nevada averages 7 yards per play behind a spread-option Pistol offense that's generated nearly 45 points and 529 yards per game.

But UNLV coach Bobby Hauck said Nevada's success is less about a formation that's been adopted by at least seven other schools, and more about who guides it on the field.

"It's a good scheme, but the guys running it are great players," Hauck said.

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick has rushed for 451 yards and eight touchdowns, thrown for 924 yards and seven touchdown, and has just one interception. Nationally, he ranks third with 1,375 yards in total offense.

Despite indications that Nevada is on its way to a sixth-straight Silver State title - many sports books in the state have the Wolf Pack favored by 20 1/2 points - Rebels quarterback Omar Clayton said players have to throw out rankings and expectations when it comes to the Nevada-UNLV game.

"We play college football - there's upsets every Saturday. Virginia Tech lost to James Madison earlier this year. Nobody in the country would have bet on that game or said Virginia Tech was going to lose to that team," Clayton said.

"Especially a rivalry game where there's so much intensity," he said. "I hate to call it bad blood, but that's what it is, really."

Nevada leads the intrastate rivalry 20-15 all-time. The winner of the Battle for the Fremont Cannon gets a 545-pound model of the howitzer that explorer John C. Fremont brought when he came west to Nevada in 1843. The trophy cost $10,000 to build 40 years ago.

Hauck closed practices to the media for the first time this year during the week leading up to the showdown. Ault, meanwhile, told boosters repeatedly in Reno that the game against Las Vegas is a "big game."

"I know people in this community don't understand that sometimes," Ault said. "If you go down there, it's bigger."

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Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Reno contributed to this report.