LAS VEGAS — Max Hall proved why he should lead the race for the Mountain West's top quarterback on Saturday when his pinpoint passing against hapless UNLV led the Cougars to an easy win, the 26th of his career.

No active QB in the league has amassed this many victories.

Hall, who has received plenty of scrutiny for his 10 interceptions this season, completed 21 of 27 passes for 320 yards and two TDs Saturday with no picks. But before kickoff, even ESPN chipped in, criticizing Hall's interceptions.

After his sixth game of 2009, Hall has completed 125 of 180 passes for 1,723 yards, 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions.

A year after Ty Detmer won the Heisman Trophy in 1991, after six games, the All-American had completed 184 of 284 passes for 2,575 yards and 17 touchdowns with 12 interceptions. At that stage of his senior season, Detmer had a season pass-efficiency rating of 152.25.

After Hall's six games of his senior year, he has an efficiency rating of 162.27.

The difference in touchdown-to-interception ratio, which many like to criticize in Hall, is a little misleading. In fact, when you consider the touchdown production of BYU's running backs, it is really misleading.

BYU has been feeding its backs running plays inside the red zone, especially when inside the 5. It takes little imagination to see Hall could produce TD passes with easy flips to Dennis Pitta or other receivers on short slants or fade routes.

If BYU coaches decide to run for touchdowns instead of giving the senior chances at TD passes, that shouldn't affect his TD-to-interception ratio like it does.

In Saturday's game, Unga had three touchdown runs, two of the long variety — and the third an easy walk from the 1. It was so easy the Cougar braintrust gave unsung walk-on freshman Jo Jo Pili a third-quarter TD run from the 1.

Both of those short TD runs could have been Hall passes for touchdowns, increasing his ratio. Thus, that knock on him could be viewed to be bogus without perspective.

Hall could have thrown four TD passes in this game. Instead, he got two, a spectacular catch and run by Dennis Pitta in the third quarter, and an equally impressive fake pass to Pitta and motion toss to the opposite side to J.J. Diluigi, who ran for a 15-yard touchdown after a 5-yard catch, also in the third.

e-mail: dharmon@desnews.com