UNLV faces Mountain West’s top back in Rashaad Penny

Rashaad Penny had just finished Monday’s football practice at San Diego State, but his mind was five hours away.

“We’re thinking about you guys, and we send our prayers out to you guys,” he said, his message to Las Vegas residents and victims still in shock just hours after Sunday night’s mass shooting on the Strip.

For a short time, anyway, the tragedy has brought together rivals, but as emotional as this week has been, UNLV still will have a job that was always going to be hard, no matter the circumstances. How to defend one of the nation’s top running backs?

Penny has received Heisman Trophy attention, and he leads the Mountain West with 164.6 yards rushing per game. He averages 7.1 yards per carry and has rushed for seven touchdowns to lead the No. 19 Aztecs into Saturday’s 7:45 p.m. game against UNLV at Sam Boyd Stadium.

The Rebels, though, came close to not having to face him at all.

Penny could’ve left for the NFL after last season, but opted to return for his senior year. He wanted to play with his Aztecs teammates one more season, and is nearing his interdisciplinary studies degree and already thinking ahead to a career in sports broadcasting.

“Because you don’t know what can happen after football, and football can only take you so long,” Penny said. “Reading a lot of things about running backs and their lifeline in the NFL, sometimes it’s not that long.”

He was overshadowed last season at San Diego State when Donnel Pumphrey, a Canyon Springs High School graduate, rushed for 2,133 yards and 17 touchdowns. Pumphrey also became the NCAA career rushing leader with 6,405 yards, breaking the record in the Las Vegas Bowl.

But Penny’s numbers would have made him the dominant back at most any other program. He rushed for 1,018 yards and 11 touchdowns, averaging 7.5 yards per carry.

“That’s something here at San Diego State we do,” Penny said. “We use two backs. Like this year, it’s not just me running the ball, it’s Juwan (Washington). Last year, it wasn’t just D.J., it was me and Juwan.”

Washington rushed for 441 yards and eight touchdowns last season, and this year he has 239 yards and one TD.

Even though Pumphrey was the feature back a year ago, Penny was considered the better pro prospect.

Much of that is because of the size differential. Pumphrey (5 feet 8 inches, 175 pounds) went in the fourth round to the Philadelphia Eagles, where he is on injured reserve with a torn hamstring. Penny (5-11, 220) is the more physical back.

The Rebels are all too familiar with Penny. He rushed for 110 yards and a touchdown and caught a 41-yard scoring pass in the Aztecs’ 26-7 victory last season in San Diego.

“I feel like D.J. had a little more shiftiness to him,” UNLV defensive tackle Mike Hughes Jr. said. “Penny is definitely a lot bigger, so he’ll be a bigger load to bring down for sure.”

If Penny and the Aztecs beat UNLV, that would be another step toward a third consecutive Mountain West championship and a possible New Year’s Six bowl.

“As a whole, we feel like we haven’t played our best game yet,” Penny said. “So we’re still working on that as a team. We’re practicing every day hard. We’re trying to get to that point.

“Thinking about all the New Years Six bowls, that’s something that’s exciting, but our first goal is to win a championship, and then we’ll see after that. But it would be very cool to be in a New Year’s Six bowl because that’s big, and this program will be on the uprise then.”

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Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.