UNLV Rebels Head Coach Dan Mullen Praises Team After They 'Found A Way To Win' In Week 0

The UNLV Rebels won their season opener on Saturday when they knocked off the Idaho State Bengals at Allegiant Stadium by a score of 38 - 31. The Rebels did some things really great also showed some glaring flaws. Following the conclusion of the game, head coach Dan Mullen spoke after his first game with the team. While he knows there is still work to do, He made it clear that the most important thing was that his guys found a way to win a hard-fought game.

UNLV Rebels' Head Coach Dan Mullen Following Their Week 0 Victory

"Great job by these guys. Great way to come out and get a win. It's so hard to win. We have so many new faces on the field. I could get up here and give you all the different boring things of what happened in the game and all the little things that we have to fix, but the exciting thing of what happened is we were in a tough game against a team that this is their big game. They had the opportunity to come play in our stadium, to get to come play against a team like us and they're going to come out and give everything they have and they did. Their quarterback Jordan Cooke is an unbelievable football player. But the great thing is that we found a way to win. It could have been very easy for us to find a way to lose as a team, but this team, these guys all stuck together and found a way to win when it was important. We are going to enjoy this win tonight. We are going to get into work early tomorrow and we're going to start coaching and fixing and correcting everything.

I want to thank all the Rebel fans for creating the atmosphere today. We moved this game up on short notice to Week Zero and our fans showed up. I was looking around and I was shocked. I didn't know that we would pack the stadium the way that we did and they did a great job. I thank the band, they did an amazing job, and the dance team, the Rebel Girls and Company, and our cheerleaders. Everybody created a great atmosphere that certainly made it a lot of fun for everybody. I can't wait to come back here and see the type of atmosphere and home field advantage they give us in a couple of weeks against UCLA."