This week, the UCLA Bruins face their last non-conference opponent of the regular season when the Nevada Wolf Pack visit the Rose Bowl. Normally, UCLA doesn’t play a non-conference game this late in the season, but they will this season.
This game may very well be UCLA’s best option for a guaranteed home win this season because Nevada doesn’t appear to be a very good football team. The Wolf Pack are 3-4 with wins over Western Kentucky, UTEP and San Jose State while their losses came against Montana State, Middle Tennessee, Air Force, and North Dakota State.
Nevada’s head coach is Jeff Choate. Choate is in his third season leading the Wolf Pack, and this is his second head coaching job. Previously, he led the program at Montana State for four seasons. While his overall record with the Bobcats was just 28-22, he did improve the team’s performance each season and he led Montana State to the FCS playoffs in his final two seasons.
After COVID cancelled the 2020 season, Choate decided to leave for a job as the co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for Steve Sarkisian at Texas. Choate had previously worked with Sarkisian at Washington.
After three seasons at Texas, Choate opted to take the head coaching job with the Wolf Pack. In each of Choate’s first two seasons at Nevada, the Wolf Pack won just three games each year. If there’s an upside for Nevada, the fact that the team has already won three games makes it seem like they will likely improve their win total this year.
Choate is on his third offensive coordinator in three seasons. Matt Lubick was Nevada’s OC during Choate’s first season, but he left to go back to Kansas. He was replaced by David Gilbertson who was Nevada’s quarterbacks coach in 2024, but Gilbertson was fired at the end of last season by Choate, citing a lack of offensive production. For this season, Choate brought in Brett Bartolone.
After Bartolone spent 2020 and 2021 as an offensive analyst at Nevada, he was hired by Deion Sanders to be the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Jackson State. When Sanders went to Colorado, Bartolone went with him, albeit as the Buffs’ receivers coach rather than as the offensive coordinator. So far, Bartolone has improved Nevada’s scoring by 8.69 points per game from 17.6 last year to 26.29 this year.
While Choate has had to replace his offensive coordinator twice, Kane Ioane has been his defensive coordinator for all three seasons with the Wolf Pack. This is the second time that Ioane has served as Choate’s defensive coordinator. Previously, Ioane was Choate’s defensive coordinator at Montana State in 2019. He was still on Choate’s staff in 2020, but the Bobcats did not play that year due to COVID. When Choate left for Texas, Ioane went to Boise State as the Broncos co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach.
Ioane will run a 2-4-5 Nickel defense, which should open up the ground game nicely for the Bruins by playing a fifth defensive back and leaving just six men up front instead of having seven men up front like Wisconsin and Michigan State did. If they stick with the nickel and don’t put seven men upfront, it should result in another big rushing game for the Bruins. I’d expect them to gain more than 250 yards on the ground.
Let’s look at Nevada’s special teams personnel.
Special Teams
Sixth-year senior Joe McFadden will handle Nevada’s placekicking duties. McFadden is in his second season with Nevada after beginning his collegiate career with UConn. This season, he has made all 20 PAT tries and he is 10 of 12 on field goal attempts. Perhaps more importantly, McFadden is a perfect 10 for 10 on field goal tries of less than 50 yards. His only two misses were his two attempts longer than 50 yards.
Both misses came against North Dakota State. One of them was a 57-yard attempt with three seconds left in the first half and the other was a 54-yard try on fourth-and-sixteen in the third quarter. The fact that Choate would send him out to try two long field goals like that displays a level of confidence most college coaches may not have in their kicker, though a really long try with three seconds left in the half reflect a lack of confidence in the offense’s ability to take a shot deep than a vote of confidence in his kicker.
The same thing goes for the second long attempt. On fourth-and-sixteen, there may not have been much confidence in the ability to get the first down and a punt likely would have gone for a touchback due to a short field. It’s worth noting that McFadden’s career long was 50 yards. He made his first 50-yarder at UConn in 2023 and he repeated it last season with the Wolf Pack.
While McFadden was also kicking off earlier in the season, Australian freshman Jacob Fernandez seems to have taken over on kickoffs during October. McFadden and Fernandez both kicked off against UTEP, but Fernandez was the guy for all kickoffs against NDSU and SJSU. Half of Fernandez’s 12 kickoffs have gone for a touchback and he is averaging 64.0 yards per kickoff.
Ewan Baulch, another Australian true freshman, is Nevada’s starting punter. Baulch is averaging 43.26 yards per punt and his season long was a 61-yarder against Western Kentucky. Of his 27 punts, 15 of them have been fair caught by opponents while only one has landed in the end zone for a touchback. Six of his punts landed inside the 20 and four have traveled more than 50 yards.
When it comes to returners, Nevada’s depth chart has been as simple as possible. Only the first-string returners have returned a punt or kickoff for the Wolf Pack.
For punt returns, that’s sixth-year wide receiver Gerick Robinson. Robinson has returned 15 punts this season and he is averaging 13.8 yards per punt return. His longest punt return was a 43-yarder against Middle Tennessee, but he also had a 41-yard return against North Dakota State. So, while he has not returned one for a touchdown yet, he is still a dangerous return man.
Meanwhile, fifth-year running back Ky Woods is also very dangerous. Woods has returned nine kickoffs and he is averaging 32.33 yards per kickoff return. His longest return of the year came last week against San Jose State when he returned a kickoff 90 yards. He didn’t score on that return but it set the Wolf Pack up on the Spartans’ four-yard line and they scored on the first play from scrimmage on the drive, giving Nevada a 28-10 lead and sealing the win.
As a result, UCLA needs to make sure that the Bruin special teams are on point and don’t suffer any lapses which put the Wolf Pack in a position to score.
Go Bruins!!!
Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.