 "Photo: courtesy")
Call it the gun show.
Mike Leach's shotgun-ready offense will meet Nevada coach Chris Ault's powerful pistol formation when No. 12 Texas Tech kicks off against the Wolf Pack at 8:05 p.m. Saturday in Reno, Nev., at Mackay Stadium.
Last week against Grambling State, Ault's offense spread the ball between running backs like quarterback Graham Harrell does to his receivers.
Tech (1-0) used nine receivers in the passing game against Eastern Washington on Aug. 30, while Nevada (1-0) had 11 players run the ball en route to 426 yards rushing and seven touchdowns against the Tigers.
Of those 11, five had six or more carries and three of them ran for more than 60 yards.
"They're a tough team," Tech defensive captain Jake Ratliff said. "They lineup with two tight ends a lot of the time and just try to run it down your throat. I mean, they're not scared of anybody. They're gonna take their chances running the ball. They got a good quarterback. If he wants to run the ball he can do it too."
The pistol offense places the quarterback, 6-foot-6 sophomore Colin Kaepernick, three to four yards behind the center. Behind Kaepernick is a running back, who frequently is used in a wide range of plays such as draws, misdirection and play action to open up the passing game.
Leach said his team has its work cut out against a respectable Nevada team that is 19-5 at home in the last four years with Ault at the helm.
"Good team, they have been for years," said Leach, who compared Nevada's offense to Oklahoma State. "They are a regular bowl participant. Coach Ault's record speaks for itself. He's one of the most successful coaches in the history of college football. They've got one of the best quarterbacks we'll face all year, and a very good running back."
Senior running back Luke Lippincott was the Western Athletic Conference's leading rusher in 2007 with 1,420 yards on the ground and 15 touchdowns, however, Kaepernick is not afraid to run either.
Kaepernick had 717 yards in 2007, helping out a rushing attack that ranked seventh in the nation in total yardage with an average of 490 yards per game. Not much has changed since last season, considering the Wolf Pack had 629 total yards against Grambling State.
Ault, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, is in the fifth year of his third stint with his alma mater. He has been a player and coach at Nevada for 37 years. In all those years, Ault said he has a hard time comparing Tech's offense to any team he has ever seen, not even June Jones' spread offense that worked so well at Hawaii - another WAC team.
"They're a much different offense," he said. "As explosive as Hawaii, I think their passing game is a little bit more complex than Hawaii's. They do a great job of what they do, spreading you out and differentiating what I call their single routes; in other words, being able to call a particular route and isolating a particular receiver that they want to go to based on a call."
Trying to stop Tech's offense usually calls upon unorthodox defensive methods, Ault said, so Tech should not be surprised if it sees similar tactics to that of Eastern Washington, which showed looks Harrell had never seen before.
"It's tough, they're the premier throwing team in the country," he said. "They do so much with it, that defensively speaking, your versatility is limited. They are no huddle, they run a play every 27 seconds. They force you to do some things defensively in terms of play calling that you may not usually have available in terms of the number of opportunities you want to run a particular defense."
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