Hauck: Rebels ‘know they can win’

He didn’t watch much tape of the returning players. Wanted everyone to have a clean slate. Hoped he would see the sort of positive things during that first fall practice back in August of 2010 that he didn’t believe existed.

He didn’t see any of those things.

They didn’t exist.

“It was real eye-opening,” Bobby Hauck said. “We walked through those gates the first day and were fired up and ready to go and ... total debacle. Halfway through that practice, I was like, ‘This isn’t good.’

“I don’t want to disparage those early teams. We had a lot of really good guys in that locker room. But the team we have now looks the part. It has the ability to compete with anyone we play. That’s exciting.”

Hauck and his UNLV football team will again walk through those gates at Rebel Park today to begin preparing for another season, and yet the expectations on their shoulders compared to four years ago will be as different as the culture that now defines a revived program.

If the greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart, the Rebels of today have a roster full of players whose fortitude was tested for years. UNLV won just six games over Hauck’s first three seasons. It lost 32. Its collective hearts were constantly challenged, week after week of hoping not to need a defibrillator for any doubting souls.

But then came last season, when the Rebels finally managed to maneuver over those hurdles that had been keeping them down for so long, when all the things that had gone wrong for them suddenly began going right.

UNLV went 7-6, won as many road games as the previous six years combined and advanced to the school’s first bowl game in 13 seasons.

I’m not sure how much better the team that beat the likes of UNR and San Diego State was than the side that lost to those teams the previous three years, but am certain the heights to which success can lift a program’s fortunes overnight.

“Losing teaches you persistence and perseverance,” Hauck said. “Now, there are a lot less painful ways to learn those things, but our guys survived it and came out of it a really tough-minded group. They know they can win now, and that’s probably the most difficult thing to achieve. That belief. You learn a lot through adversity.”

You also build a lot through continuity.

Mark Wallington has worked at UNLV for 22 years and as the sports information director for football, has been deserving over that time of some type of distinguished service award. You try and come up with something positive to promote about many of those past UNLV teams. It must have been like writing a weekly notes package on the home team during the Battle of France.

But to put in perspective how stable things are now, this season will mark the first in Wallington’s time at UNLV where the football coaching staff returns intact from a previous year.

For the first time in over two decades, there were no offseason changes to those who instruct the game.

It is a fact not lost on UNLV players, especially those who were on the practice field in August of 2010. Most every team works hard in the offseason. Most every team has a majority of its players remain at school over the summer to build the type of harmony successful programs own.

Not every team reaps the benefit of such commitment.

“I’m not saying we have arrived, but we were pretty far away that first practice under (Hauck) and he told us so,” senior defensive back Sidney Hodge said.

“It’s not like we didn’t want to win. But winning last year changed the atmosphere of the program. We became a very focused, motivated group. We just got fed up with losing. Now, we know what it means to be good. We’re striving to be great.”

They will walk through those gates at Rebel Park this morning a much better team from the one in 2010, a program now that at least on paper shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the thought of opposing anyone on its schedule.

There also remains enough unanswered questions to where 13 games this year might produce four wins or seven or anywhere in between. The Rebels could as easily contend for a Mountain West championship as they could finish far behind the leaders.

In this way, they are still very much a believe-it-when-we-see it entity.

In other ways, they are much better.

“There came a point where we said, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” senior lineman Brett Boyko said. “Winning is hard to do, but once it happens and you experience that feeling and celebration in the locker room, you never want it to stop. We’ve always worked hard here. But it’s different now. Hopefully, we continue going in the right direction from this point on.”

Today shouldn’t be a debacle.

Four years later, fired up and ready to go owns an entirely different meaning.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.