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Rebels’ response could define season

NEW YORK

Is there such a thing as a season-defining moment for a college basketball team in just its fourth game?

For UNLV, it will find out today.

Dave Rice talked about bumps in the road. This was a 15-car pileup on Interstate 95 at rush hour. He talked about adversity. This was showing up to a gun fight with a water balloon. He talked about predictable downs. This was plummeting from atop the Empire State Building.

The NCAA Tournament atmosphere for UNLV against Stanford on Friday night — neutral court, neutral officials, opponent from a Power Five conference — played out more like a No. 1 seed vs. a No. 16.

The Rebels were never in the game and appeared as if they had no business on such a stage, falling 89-60 in a Coaches vs. Cancer semifinal at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

It was 9-0 Stanford before one of four UNLV shots hit the rim.

It was over when Rice called his first timeout … 1:57 into the game.

It is the worst loss for UNLV in 106 games under Rice, now in his fourth season. It didn’t seem like a 29-point margin. It seemed much worse. Stanford played the final six or so minutes with no starters on the floor. Bloodbath.

Which brings us to today’s third-place game against Temple at 4 p.m. PDT: How the Rebels and all their new faces react to being blown out Friday could ultimately determine the kind of season UNLV produces.

In short, how mentally tough is this particular group of players?

“My whole thing is, what is going to be our response?” Rice said. “That’s going to become the buzz phrase or buzz question for our program: What is our response? We got it handed to us tonight. We were very bad. It was a painful lesson, but nonetheless a lesson. We knew there would be times like this. That doesn’t make it OK. It’s an explanation, not an excuse.

“We’re trying to build a program and get ourselves ready for (Mountain West) play and win some of these games along the way. This one didn’t go our way. We didn’t play well. We didn’t execute. It’s an opportunity for us to learn a valuable lesson, but it’s all for naught if we don’t respond with a huge, positive effort (against Temple).”

It has to be his mindset today. It’s far too early for anything else. There is an entire season in front of UNLV.

But in watching the Rebels get embarrassed by a good but not yet great Stanford team, something became obvious: Those concerns about being dominated by UCLA in a closed-door scrimmage this month make a lot more sense now.

Real size bothered UNLV on Friday. A lot. Veteran guards who know how to find creases in a zone really bothered the Rebels. UCLA and Stanford have the sort of skill and athleticism that Morehead State and Sam Houston State don’t have. The defense that UNLV showed in winning both home games last week by a total of three points never stood a chance against Stanford.

Suddenly, the fouls (Stanford had 20, UNLV 18) and free-throw attempts (each shot 19) were near-equal and the result wasn’t. Everything about this game was neutral and UNLV got blasted.

Stanford made 14 3-pointers, and all but a few were uncontested. The Rebels were more lost trying to locate shooters than that puppy on the poster in your neighborhood.

“You have to take it and learn from it,” said Rebels freshman Rashad Vaughn, held to seven points on 2-of-9 shooting. “We came out slow, and (Stanford) is a really good team. When (that happens), it’s going to be hard to get back in the game.”

It’s over. UNLV didn’t shoot well enough, absolutely didn’t defend out of its two zone looks well enough, didn’t stay out of foul trouble well enough, didn’t do anything well enough.

It’s not about being young. That excuse shouldn’t be accepted this season. Kentucky is young, and while UNLV didn’t welcome the sort of NBA-ready recruiting haul the Wildcats did this season, the Rebels still ranked as a top-five class nationally.

Whether such talent truly exists within those Rice signed will be proven out over time, but how resilient they are could be known today.

What is that saying about how we must encounter defeat to know who we are, what depths we can rise from, how we can come out of it?

There is nothing like 89-60 to test such a challenge.

It’s a pretty deep hole.

That’s a pretty large chunk of defeat.

“It’s very important for us to (bounce back) and show what we learned from this game,” Vaughn said. “We can’t let one game affect us or the same thing will happen again. We have to let it go.”

In its fourth game of the season, UNLV faces a crossroads of sorts.

How will it respond?

How tough, really, are these Rebels?

What happens today very well could define the months to come.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.

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