Bulldogs first MV champ to miss a bowl game in nearly 20 years. How did that happen?

The easy answers are all excuses. Fresno State is playing young, has had eight true freshmen start at least one game this season, which is tied for second-most in the nation. Fresno State is banged up, starting a ninth offensive line unit in its 11 games on Saturday in a 35-28 loss to Nevada.

But most of all it has suffered from a lack of execution late while becoming the first defending Mountain West Conference champion since 2001 to not make a bowl game.

Fresno State got the football back with 1:46 to go, the score tied. A Nevada punt had them pinned at their own 3-yard line.

There were a few ways the Bulldogs could have played that hand.

“The thought process was trying to win the game, trying to complete a ball and get us a little bit of space so we could do some things there,” coach Jeff Tedford said.

“You can look at it two ways. We can take a knee. We could have done that, but we were aggressive. We tried to win the game. We tried to throw the ball and make some plays to get the ball down the field and it wasn’t successful.”

The Bulldogs went three-and-out there with quarterback Jorge Reyna throwing the football on all three plays, none of them close.

On first down, wideout Keric Wheatfall appeared to cut off his route and Reyna threw deep up the right sideline, incomplete.

On second down, Reyna was low and away on a pass to Zane Pope on the left sideline.

On third down, under pressure, Reyna misfired on a pass to Emoryie Edwards, who would have been short of first-down yardage.

The Bulldogs burned only 26 seconds off the game clock and had to punt the ball back to Nevada, which got a 24-yard return to the Bulldogs’ 25.

Four plays later, Wolf Pack running back Toa Taua scored from 3 yards out with 12 seconds to go.

“It was a great job of us punting them back in there and once we pinned them in their own territory, we were fortunate we did not have to use any timeouts and got a great punt return from (Ben) Putnam,” Nevada coach Jay Norvell said.

“We tried to flip the field with the special teams and that put us in field goal range.”

Hard to fault the decision to push, even backed up like that.

But it might have been too much to ask of Fresno State (4-7, 2-5 in the MW), which has been outscored by a 51-10 margin in the fourth quarter of its five Mountain West Conference losses.

They were down 29-24 at Air Force entering the final quarter, up 28-24 against Colorado State, down 31-28 against Utah State, down 10-7 at San Diego State and tied at 28 against Nevada.

So, the Nevada defense was not the only thing they were up against.

Reyna has completed only 52.3% of his passes in the fourth quarter of the Bulldogs’ conference games, and 45.5% in those five losses after going 3 of 6 Saturday against the Wolf Pack.

A lot plays into that – pass protection, the receivers running the right routes, the lack of a consistent run game.

Rushing the football there or playing to get into overtime doesn’t guarantee a different result. But an inexperienced line wasn’t going to push the odds of winning the football game in the Bulldogs’ favor.

Fresno State ended up with a fourth loss by eight points or fewer. It was one of three Mountain West teams that went into the week still with a chance to become bowl eligible, and all three lost.

Only the Bulldogs, though, were defending Mountain West champion.

“It’s like I told those guys, I feel bad that we weren’t able to come away with the victory on Senior Night,” Tedford said. “They have been a part of a lot of great times in that stadium and those are the things they should remember. We had a lot of close games this year, but we haven’t found a way to win.“

By the numbers

1,317 – Career receiving yards for tight end Jared Rice, who caught five passes for 71 yards against the Wolf Pack. Rice set a school record for career receiving yards by a tight end, passing Bear Pascoe.

9 – Tackles for loss by Nevada, a season-high allowed by the Bulldogs. The plays went for minus-54 yards.

55.6 – Conversion percentage on third (7 of 15) and fourth downs (3 of 3) for the Wolf Pack, which came in ranked only 10th in the Mountain West in third-down conversion percentage at 36.5%.

5 – Explosive rushing plays of 20 or more yards by Nevada – the Wolf Pack had runs of 27, 24, 51, 25 and 21 yards. Fresno State had allowed only 13 runs of 20 or more yards this season and an average of 1.7 per game in Mountain West play.

8 – True freshman to start a game for the Bulldogs this season. Wideout Josh Kelly was added to the list against Nevada, joining linebacker Levelle Bailey, wideout Jalen Cropper, wideout Jamal Glaspie, offensive lineman Bula Schmidt, safety Evan Williams, cornerback Deshawn Ruffin and cornerback Randy Jordan.

3 – Touchdown passes by Nevada quarterback Carson Strong, who had only three over his past six games.

28 – Yards of offense in the fourth quarter by the Bulldogs, their third lowest output in any quarter this season.

86 and 29 – Third-down conversion percentages for Fresno State in the first and second halves. The Bulldogs were 6 of 7 on third downs in the first half and 2 of 7 in the second half.

7.5 – Yards per rush for Nevada (34 for 254), the highest allowed by the Bulldogs since Alabama averaged 7.8 in a 41-10 victory on Sept. 9, 2017.

34 and 25 – Yards, the length of the final two Nevada touchdown drives following an interception and a short punt and 24-yard punt return.

This story was originally published November 24, 2019 at 9:00 AM.