Nevada football coach Jeff Choate and senior defensive tackle Thomas Witte had the same thought walking off the field at halftime of the Wolf Pack’s game against San Jose State on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“Now’s not the time to back off \u2014 31-0 doesn’t mean nothing,” Choate said. “Let’s go. We’ve gotta go play a second half.”<\/p>\n
Nevada did just that, taking nothing for granted and pasting San Jose State, 55-10, to secure its second win of the season in 10 tries. Now, the Wolf Pack is in unfamiliar territory trying to win back-to-back games. Coming off one of its most dominant outings in recent history, Choate’s message to his players starting this week has been about handling that taste of success with humility.<\/p>\n
“Handling success like a pro, which means doing the things that lead to success and not patting yourself on the back,” Choate said. “Getting up on Monday morning and getting in the training room and taking care of your body. Getting a little extra film study in this afternoon and making sure your preparation and your intensity level is appropriate. I think that’s what being a pro is, is showing up every day and being really consistent in how you go about your business.”<\/p>\n
Nevada’s challenge this week is a Wyoming team coming off back-to-back lackluster losses, including a 24-7 defeat to San Diego State and 24-3 loss to Fresno State. The Cowboys are 4-6 overall and 2-4 in the Mountain West and need a win this week and the following at Hawaii to become bowl eligible. Saturday’s afternoon game in Laramie is a sellout with the program retiring Josh Allen’s number.<\/p>\n
“We talked a lot with our guys about being the most excited team to play,” Choate said of the pregame San Jose State motivation. “And I think that’s something that we’re gonna have to pay attention to this week. We’re gonna go into a Wyoming atmosphere with a sold-out house. They’ll be celebrating Josh Allen and his career at Wyoming. I think he’s getting his jersey retired at halftime. So, everybody in the state of Wyoming will be there, and it’ll be a day that I’m sure they’re gonna be ready to play and we’re gonna have to match that level of intensity, especially early in the contest.”<\/p>\n
Choate hasn’t taken much time to enjoy the win over San Jose State, calling the victory a moment to “exhale” more than savor. <\/p>\n
“You don’t enjoy the wins enough, and you agonize over the losses maybe too much,” Choate said.<\/p>\n
Choate said that’s how coaches are programmed as they look forward to the next challenge, with Nevada (2-8, 1-5) having just two games remaining, at Wyoming and home against rival UNLV for the Fremont Cannon. While he’s excited about the showing against San Jose State, he said there’s only so much carryover that will have this Saturday.<\/p>\n
“Every game is a different game,” Choate said. “I don’t know that there’s a trigger moment necessarily. I think it was a good day, and I’m really proud of the way that our staff and the way our kids came out and performed. We’ve got two more opportunities. One of them is gonna be in a packed house in Laramie and then the other one’s pretty impactful for the people in the state of Nevada. From that standpoint, it’ll be a good couple weeks of preparation starting with this Wyoming game.”<\/p>\n
You can watch Jeff Choate’s full Monday press conference below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nevada football coach Jeff Choate and senior defensive tackle Thomas Witte had the same thought walking off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[30809,14882,13389,33350,88,90,89,996,20695,18038,541],"class_list":["post-57686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-jeff-choate","tag-josh-allen","tag-mountain-west","tag-nevada-football","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-state","tag-unlv","tag-wolf-pack","tag-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}