3 takeaways: UNLV’s offense sputters in Frisco Bowl loss to Ohio — PHOTOS

FRISCO, Texas — It wasn’t the way a successful first season for UNLV football coach Dan Mullen was supposed to end.

The Rebels lost to Ohio University 17-10 in the Frisco Bowl on Tuesday night at Ford Center at The Star in by far their sloppiest and least-inspired effort of the season.

Playing before a national TV audience, UNLV (10-4) looked disoriented on offense from the start and was shut out in the first half for the first time this season. A disgusted Mullen said during a halftime interview on ESPN that it was the team’s worst half of the season, adding, “We just need to stop making these ridiculous mistakes.”

Junior quarterback Anthony Colandrea, the Mountain West’s Offensive Player of the Year, made two of those mistakes, an interception at the goal line late in the half and a lost fumble. The fumble came when UNLV had first-and-goal at the 9 on its second possession.

“We really beat ourselves,” Colandrea said. “The offense. We got in the red zone and couldn’t score, and that’s on me.”

Running back Sieh Bangura rushed for 149 yards and one touchdown for Ohio (9-4). Quarterback Parker Navarro added a rushing TD for the Bobcats, who ran for 207 yards.

UNLV finally scored on a program bowl record 50-yard field goal by Ramon Villela midway through the third quarter.

Colandrea added a 2-yard touchdown run on a fourth-down play with 4:45 left, but the Rebels never touched the ball again.

“The things we have to do at all times to play winning football, I didn’t make sure we did them,” Mullen said.

The Bobcats were playing without coach Brian Smith, who was fired last week for “engaging in serious professional misconduct and participating in activities that reflect unfavorably on the university.” Defensive coordinator John Hauser coached the team.

Here are three takeaways from the loss:

1. Role reversal

The theme for much of UNLV’s season has been the weekly question about whether the offense could score enough points to cover up for the defense’s inability to get stops and prevent big plays.

That’s not how the bowl game played out for the Rebels.

UNLV’s offense could not get out of its own way for most of the game. That’s after scoring at least 29 points in every game in the regular season before being held to 21 against Boise State in the Mountain West championship game.

Colandrea led an explosive offense that averaged 459 yards and 35.9 points per game, but the group mustered just 281 on Tuesday.

Along with Colandrea’s ill-advised pass into traffic that was intercepted, the Rebels dropped passes and committed penalties that nullified big plays.

“It starts with me,” Colandrea said. “When your quarterback doesn’t play good, you have no shot of winning a football game. Turnovers against a good football team, you can’t win, especially if they’re in the red zone. So tonight it was on me. I played bad the whole game.”

Even when they finally put together a touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, they took 5:57 to cover 79 yards and didn’t leave enough time to get the ball back.

It’s a group that looked lethargic and disorganized for one of the few times this season.

That’s probably not great timing for offensive coordinator Corey Dennis, who recently interviewed for the same job at Georgia Tech and might have wanted to showcase his creativity as part of the audition process.

It was the first time this season that the offense allowed a strong defensive effort to go to waste. Opponents had averaged 44.7 points per game in UNLV’s first three losses.

2. Theater of the absurd

Viewers tuning in to watch a college football game on the night before the night before Christmas didn’t see the most entertaining matchup of the bowl season, but they did get to experience one of the most bizarre.

The first quarter alone saw three mostly unforced fumbles, though one was overturned.

Then there was a targeting ejection from a replay review, an extra point that doinked off the upright and back onto the field and left the goal post rattling, a blocked punt that still traveled 17 yards, two interceptions and only six points in the first half.

That doesn’t even include a dated reference by the broadcast crew about needing legendary boxing cornerman Angelo Dundee to look at a bleeding Ohio player. Dundee died in 2012.

Perhaps everyone in the stadium was too hopped up on all that Scooter’s Coffee from the title sponsor.

Mullen certainly made his feelings known during the halftime interview. It was around that same time that offensive lineman Will Thomas was clearly agitated at his own sideline despite committing a first-half penalty that took a touchdown off the board.

That was before a second-half UNLV punt that bounced off an Ohio returner and was recovered by the Rebels to set up Villela’s field goal.

Oh, and UNLV running back Keyvone Lee ran into his own blocker with a big hole in front of him on a third-and-goal play from the 1 in the fourth quarter.

“We haven’t played in 17 days coming off the disappointment of the championship game,” Mullen said. “We had a couple of little hiccups where we had to cancel practice for a day and a half last week because of food poisoning. We had nobody available to practice. But that’s on me making sure we’re ready to show up at full speed.”

3. Vegas needs similar venue

Perhaps the most obvious observation coming out of Tuesday’s game was how useful of a facility the Ford Center is for the Frisco area.

It was constructed as part of the Dallas Cowboys’ magnificent headquarters, but it has served many purposes and is part of an upscale area that includes a hotel, commercial space and a sports medicine research facility.

The Ford Center seats 12,000 and is sometimes used for Cowboys practices, as well as hosting local high school lacrosse, soccer and football games.

It also serves as a medium-sized option in the region for events such as concerts, boxing and indoor football. Las Vegas has more than enough venues for that type of event.

What the valley could use, however, is a smaller building capable of staging football games that aren’t big enough to go to Allegiant Stadium.

There are plenty of reasons that one doesn’t exist in the valley, including but not limited to the forced blockade on Sam Boyd Stadium and the Raiders’ decision to not make their facility a functional stadium for such events or a public cultural hub of any sort.

The bottom line is that a city that probably has more arenas and venues than any other in the country does not have an alternative option for football.