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UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA LAS VEGAS FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 12, 2019

Tony Sanchez

Nashville, Tennessee

UNLV - 34, Vanderbilt - 10

TONY SANCHEZ: Obviously really excited for that locker room. Those kids worked extremely hard, from spring ball through camp through the duration of the season, and things have not started the way we wanted them to this year. These guys show up every day, they've got a great attitude, there's never moping around. And you saw it with their effort last week, you saw it with their effort and execution this week, so I'm really proud of those guys.

You know, defensively we continue to improve. We're starting to really play well. I thought we played as good in the secondary as we had in a long time today, so that was fantastic. They challenged us, and in the past we've kind of given up big chunks. We didn't do that today and actually created some turnovers.

And really offensively we got back to our roots. We kind of got away from who we are and how we built this program, and that's getting downhill, running our gap schemes and running the football at people, and you haven't seen a lot of that early in the year.

You saw the commitment to it, kind of being who we are, committing to getting downhill, and it showed up today. I mean, when your quarterback is sitting there and he's got manageable 3rd downs and he's not in 3rd and long all the time and things like that, that's the best friend for a young quarterback who grew exponentially in the last couple weeks. Just happy for everybody in the organization, the whole university, from the administration down to the players to our fans to everybody. It was a big deal for them.

Q. What does this win do for you guys in terms of just rejuvenating your locker room and keeping hopes alive?
TONY SANCHEZ: Yeah, well, the thing about it, though, like it's hard to even explain to people, if you come and hang out with our team, those hopes never die. They were never really stale. You see that by the way the guys played. I talked window gets smaller and smaller, and you don't start getting a couple victories, you may get some of that happening, right. So again, the attitude our kids have was reflected in the way they played today.

Really, though, we've got to make it a smaller picture. We need to enjoy this plane ride home, have a great ride home, and then we've got to wake up tomorrow and kind of get our sights ready for Fresno. We've got a good team. We're going on the road, it's a quick turnaround. We've played one home game in six weeks, so we've kind of been the road warriors; that schedule is kind of interesting.

But I'm excited. I mean, I'm excited about this win. Hopefully it'll spark that.

Q. Oblad, it's got to be a great boost for him, second start, he controlled most of the game.
TONY SANCHEZ: It was, and again, kind of got thrown into the fire against Wyoming, had the week against Boise. Boise is a really good team, and he made some good plays, made some errors, things like that, but God, you just saw the amount of time he invested in the film room. He looked calmer, more composed. He did some really good things, and his accuracy was really on, especially when we decided to go ahead and throw that hitch at the end of the game on that 4th down. He put that ball in a couch where we were going to catch it and nobody else could, and Randal made a great play, just ball placement like that. And there's still some things to grow on, but really proud of him.

Q. The touchdown pass to Grimes was --
TONY SANCHEZ: It was beautiful. We hadn't seen that all year, so that was fantastic.

Q. When you talk about getting back to the routes running the ball, 50 plus attempts, how much of that is game plan specific for this game and how much of that is what you want to do going forward?
TONY SANCHEZ: Well, I mean, again, it doesn't always mean -- again, you'd like to find some balance, but to me balance isn't 50/50; it could be 60/40. It's really depending on what the defense is doing. But in our nature we want to be able to get downhill and run the football. It's kind of like last week, we threw the ball 55 times; that's way too many. We don't need to be a team that runs the ball 60 times, either, but again, we need to be able to run in critical situations. We have to convert 3rd and shorts. We've got to be able to run on 1st down and give ourselves 2nd and 5s, things like that. They're all manageable downs and it allows you to play your whole menu. That's what you saw today.

Q. What has Magyar given you guys?
TONY SANCHEZ: Man, having him back is huge. Chad is a tremendous player. When you look at the carries, I mean, we came in and one of the things we talked about at halftime was Chuck had 16 carries, I believe, and Chad had seven. We said, his pitch count is too high, right, so we've got to go ahead and use Chad. So then you see how fresh both those guys are at the end of the game. I think one had 24, one had 22. That's a good balance between those two guys.

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