One of Tony Sanchez’s biggest takeaways from his first season as UNLV football coach is that the gap between the best and worst teams in the Mountain West is much smaller than he expected.
“One thing I realized real fast is that the margin between the top and the bottom is so, so small,” he said. “Boise State’s the cream of the crop and we were right there with them in a seven-point game in the fourth quarter.
“There are a lot of opportunities out there late in games to get wins.”
The Rebels (3-9) won only three games in Year 1 of the Sanchez era — which was still an improvement considering they’d won only two games in eight of the previous 11 years — but they hung around in most of their other ones.