(Written by kencraw)

The biggest problem with the UC Davis game is judging the quality of the UC Davis team. Last year they were a good but not great FCS team. The few pundits who are qualified at the level of judging UCD tend to be a bit too close to being homers, but nevertheless, they speak very highly of this year’s team, one going so far as to say 2022 might be their “best team ever”.

*IF* UC Davis is a top-end FCS team this year, it puts last week’s win in a much better light. Top end FCS teams are no slouches and can beat weaker FBS teams. However, if UC Davis is closer to a mediocre FCS team, then last week’s game is more concerning.

I bring all this up as I’m hoping UNLV will be a better, or at least more reliable, test. Last week UNLV easily beat Idaho State with a halftime score of 45-7. Idaho State is in the Big Sky conference along with UC Davis, although their record was a miserable 1-10. Ironically their lone victory was over UC Davis, at home. (I think we should consider that an outlier… UC Davis is the overall better FCS team.)

Nevertheless, overall it suggests that UNLV is at least good enough to take care of business against a weak FCS team. It’s better than they did last year, losing to their lone FCS opponent (admittedly Eastern Washington is a *MUCH* better FCS team than IDSt.). Last year they were a competent team within the Mountain West, losing a lot of close games en-route to a 2-10 overall record. Again, nothing impressive, but losing 38-30 to Fresno, 27-20 to San Jose, 28-20 to SDSU, suggests they can hang around with the big boys in the Mountain West.

Finally for their past record, their 37-10 loss to Arizona State early last season suggests that a good Pac-12 team should be able to handle them easily.

As far as changes for 2022, they’ve got a lot of new transfers in who look to make an impact and a returning QB who was hurt early in the season. He’s a pass-first runner (some might debate the pass-first part… but that’s at least the coaching staff’s goal for him).

Thus to sum it all up, UNLV looks to be a good 2nd opponent after UC Davis. It sets the Bears up to be 2-0 going into the tough game against Notre Dame but at the same time appears to be a better test of how Cal can perform against a “full sized” team. Minus melt-downing if the Bear lose, I’ll be looking most at how the Bears control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball (D-line was concerning last week), whether Plummer continues to improve and whether the running QB gives them any trouble.