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by Chris Murray
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Wherever the Nevada football players have gone this offseason, they've seen one number — 2.5
Those are the projected number of wins Las Vegas sportsbooks have the Wolf Pack securing in its 13 games this season. With Nevada coming off back-to-back 2-10 campaigns and under the leadership of a new coaching staff led by head coach Jeff Choate, that over/under 2.5-win total isn't outlandish. But Nevada's players have used it as motivation.
"That motivates us like crazy, and Coach Choate and our strength and conditioning staff, they make sure that we know 2.5 wins is the average that they have us winning," Nevada defensive lineman Henry Ikahihifo said at Wednesday's Mountain West media days. "Our coach, he puts it on every single one of our weight racks — 2.5. And the players see that every day. We look at that 2.5, and we push ourselves every single workout to change that narrative that this season we're going to a bowl game and we're going to try and win this championship."
The Wolf Pack was picked to finish last in the MW media preseason poll with no Nevada players making the all-conference team. The Wolf Pack is 2-14 in MW games the last two seasons, both of which were under former head coach Ken Wilson. But the team's internal self-belief entering this season is high.
"The offense is definitely going to be explosive," said wide receiver Cortez Braham Jr., a transfer from West Virginia. "We've got a lot of pieces, a lot of weapons that lot of people don't think that we have. It's crazy that they picked us 12 because we've got a lot of good players on our team. I'm not shocked, but at the same time, we're going to prove a lot of people wrong. I'm 100 percent behind Coach Choate. As a program, as a group, we all can prove the world wrong."
Nevada Sports Net's Shannon Kelly is in Las Vegas covering this year's Mountain West football media days. You can watch her report on Wednesday's NSN Tonight below.
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