The last time Nevada head coach Chris Tormey faced Oregon, it was his first game at the head of the Wolf Pack.
Tormey led his young team into Autzen Stadium and left with a 36-7 loss.
But this time around, the Wolf Pack have 18 returning starters who are searching for the team’s first winning season since 1998’s 6-5 campaign.
Nevada’s task now is to get the job done.
In their season opener Saturday against I-AA Southern Utah, the Wolf Pack narrowly pulled off a 24-23 win.
“We made enough mistakes to lose three games today,” Tormey told the Reno Gazette-Journal on Saturday. “We kept an underdog in the game. It was a more exciting game than it should have been.”
Regardless, it was a victory, and Nevada comes to Autzen after its first season-opening win since 1995.
In Saturday’s victory, Logan Carter did it all for the Wolf Pack.
The inside linebacker recovered a fumble for a touchdown, intercepted a pass and blocked an extra-point attempt that would have tied the game with 3:06 remaining.
Carter, the 2002 Western Athletic Conference Defensive Freshman of the Year, and junior running back Chance Kretschmer were the Wolf Pack’s standout players in the win.
Kretschmer rushed for 170 yards, picking up where he left off in 2001 after missing most of the 2002 season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
“Nevada’s a scary team for me,” Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. “They had a game where they had to scramble to win and I think that wakes you up as a team.”
According to Bellotti’s logic, the Wolf Pack should be wide awake for their trip to Eugene.
“There’s still a lot of optimism,” Tormey told the Gazette-Journal. “We’ve just got to stop making mistakes. We will get them corrected before we play Oregon.”
One of Nevada’s mistakes may have been overconfidence from all the hype of a winning season.
“I don’t know how you can be overconfident in your first game,” Tormey told the Gazette-Journal. “We certainly won’t be overconfident in Eugene. Hopefully Oregon will be overconfident. Once they see the tape, they’ll have every reason to be.”
Tormey learned from one of the best Pacific-10 Conference coaches about giving other teams the burden of overconfidence.
Tormey’s pre-Nevada experience against Oregon is from his days as a position coach for Washington. His 13 seasons included a stint as defensive coordinator for Don James in 1993 and 1994.
That Pac-10 knowledge may give Tormey a hand in Saturday’s game, as well as down the road this season.
Saturday marks Nevada’s second game against a Pac-10 school since Tormey’s opening loss to the Ducks three years ago (the Wolf Pack played Washington State last season). Nevada also managed to draw Tormey’s former employers, Washington, at Husky Stadium later this season.
“We’re one of the better teams on their schedule,” Bellotti said. “There’s nothing they would like better than to come in here and get a victory.”
Nevada has one victory against Oregon — the first ever game between the two schools, a 13-6 result, on Oct. 4, 1947. The teams have played each other four times in the past seven years.
Oregon’s 2002 season showed them the same fault of overconfidence Nevada may have hit, and the Ducks are trying to take it one game at a time.
“You can’t take anybody lightly,” Oregon center Dan Weaver said. “They played a really close game and they’ve got that experience under their belt.”