Willis provides defensive spark in UNLV victory

Brandon Willis has the kind of experience that should allow him to dominate in games like Saturday’s against Northern Colorado.

The UNLV senior defensive tackle was a disruptive force in helping the Rebels hold off the pesky Bears, 13-12, in front of an announced crowd of 17 ,289 at Sam Boyd Stadium. He had five tackles, a sack and broke up a pass as UNLV evened its record at 1-1.

“You come from the Pac-12, every Saturday is a big game,” said Willis, who originally signed with North Carolina and lettered two years at UCLA. “We had a good game plan and we played better as a unit this week.”

The Rebels surrendered a whopping 787 yards to Arizona last week. Saturday, the Bears, who are a far cry from the Wildcats, managed to accumulate 327 yards. But Northern Colorado only found the end zone once, that coming in the third quarter.

“They actually had a good scheme and their quarterback (Sean Rubalcaba) had a lot of courage,” Willis said. “He ran that bootleg early in the game and it took us a while to adjust to that. But once we figured out what they were doing, I thought we did a pretty good job of containing them.”

The UNLV defense did play better. Something that wasn’ty lost on head coach Bobby Hauck.

“We tackled much better,” Hauck said. “They gave us some looks we hadn’t seen and they gave us fits. But (Willis) did a good job. he gave us good penetration and made some big plays.”

Willis said the defense saw that the Rebels’ offense was struggling and he knew it was up to his unit to pick up the other guys.

“Oh yeah, we saw what was happening, but that’s what teammates do, they lift each other up and help each other,” Willis said. “We knew we couldn’t allow them to get into the end zone again. So holding them was big.”

So was the missed 23-yard field goal attempt in the fourth quarter which would have put Northern Colorado ahead. Willis was on the field when Seth Czapenski pushed his try wide to the right.

“We got a good push up front on him but to tell you the truth, it was more about him than it was us,” Willis said.

Willis said there’s still work to be done but he’s glad to be 1-1 instead of 0-2 heading into next week’s game against Northern Illinois.

“We made some improvement from last week to this week but there’s definitely some things we need to clean up,” he said.

Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter: @stevecarprj.