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Nevada’s Toa Taua is Mountain West Wire’s Freshman of the Year
The Nevada Wolf Pack’s prized recruit was our staff’s overwhelming choice as Mountain West football’s freshman of the year.
Contact/Follow @MattK_FS & @MWCwire
Big things ahead for Nevada’s star runner.
– Offensive player of the year | Defensive player of the year
– Special teams player of the year
– Newcomer of the year | Coordinator of the year
A lot of people expected the Nevada Wolf Pack to take a step forward on the strength of their Air Raid offense in 2018, but no one expected the Taua of Terror to debut so soon, let alone make an enormous impact on Mountain West football.
That is exactly what Toa Taua did, though, which made him our staff’s obvious choice as the conference’s freshman of the year. Taua arrived in Reno with a justifiable amount of hype after running for nearly 1,800 yards as a senior in Lompoc, California. 247 Sports named him a four-star recruit and, to Taua’s credit, he looked every bit the part after a breakout game against Toledo in September. On the regular season, Taua finished seventh in the Mountain West with 816 rushing yards and scored seven touchdowns.
The 5-foot-8, 205-pound runner was, as you’d expect, not much fun to tackle, but Mountain West defenders will need to prepare for at least two more years of this. What Taua and his physical running style do next will be fun to watch and integral to Nevada’s next step.
https://twitter.com/JulianDelGaudio/status/1044390253333598209
https://twitter.com/NevadaSportsNet/status/1062836193513992192
Others receiving votes: Khalil Shakir, Boise State; Sean Chambers, Wyoming; Ilm Manning, Hawaii
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