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Work in progress that is UNLV basketball begins with victory

The (long) and (obvious) work in progress began against an NAIA Division II team from Mitchell, South Dakota, where a student body of fewer than 800 attend school in the middle of Tornado Alley.

Dakota Wesleyan is in its 100th season playing basketball, and there was a time Tuesday evening when you wondered if the Tigers might attempt that many 3-pointers … in the first half.

We can confirm UNLV has a men’s basketball team this season, as the lights officially were turned on when first-year coach Marvin Menzies was forced to bring the Rebels out of hiding for the first of two exhibitions at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Crazy. The sky didn’t fall and the world didn’t end and no one went screaming into the dead of night.

“It’s always good to win, even an exhibition, so you can learn and get better for when the real ones come into play,” Menzies said. “I think a lot of the errors are correctable. We’ll get through it. We’ll definitely get better. At the end of the day, I saw a lot of talent out there as we move forward.”

Creating any sort of buzz locally for the Rebels will be an exercise in patience, an expected truth with so many new faces dotting the program. Menzies inherited a team with just three returning bodies and one (junior Dwayne Morgan) is sidelined with an injured hip.

If you didn’t have a roster to identify the Rebels who beat the kids from Tornado Alley 96-80, fret not. I would assume few past Menzies and his coaching staff could correctly point out all those wearing the home whites.


 


UNLV didn’t announce an attendance, but think of it this way: If the school had shot those T-shirts out of air guns into the stands during timeouts, most everyone would have gone home with a gift.

Some might have snagged two.

For the most part this season, UNLV should be judged as more Costco sample than full meal, evaluated in segments rather than the entirety of results.

In this manner, to compete on a nightly basis, the Rebels are going to need the sort of energy seen in the opening four-plus minutes Tuesday.

It wasn’t that UNLV led 10-6 at the game’s first timeout.

It was how it led 10-6.

Three of its four baskets came off offensive rebounds and another on a transition layup off a great run-out from Tyrell Green. The Rebels also took a charge during that span.

Menzies needs to post in his team’s locker room that quote about continuous effort being the key to unlocking one’s potential. There is little chance that when things begin for real against South Alabama on Nov. 11, there will be few if any games where UNLV can offer a subpar work ethic and expect to win.

It’s not going to roll in and succeed as Duke or Kansas might on nights players don’t show up.

It needs to compete for 40 minutes as it did those opening four Tuesday.

UNLV needs to play harder than the other guys, to collect more 50-50 balls, to score more second-chance points. It needs to over-value each possession and, well, just want it more. It needs to rank among the nation’s leaders in floor burns.

It needs more plays like the one sophomore guard Kris Clyburn made with just over a minute remaining, elevating from one side to follow a miss and tip in a basket. There is no such thing as too many hustle plays for this group.

Exhibitions, especially for a team with so many unknowns, are about experimenting with lineups and running your stuff against different folks and seeing how your players react competing in front of someone other than its coaches.

There is little flow to anything. Nobody is in midseason form, expect perhaps referee David Hall, who needed about two minutes to make his first controversial charge call of the season.

Yes, we are off and running with the #MWRefs hashtag on Twitter for 2016-17.

Clyburn played with the confidence you expect from a player who helped his junior college team to a national semifinal appearance last year, totaling 22 points, 11 rebounds, three blocks and five steals in 34 minutes. He was active and bouncy and energetic.

There is much to learn for UNLV. Much to improve. It wasn’t good defensively at all, especially guarding the dribble. The footwork, the rotations, the awareness. It all lacked. The Rebels didn’t lock up the NAIA Division II kids one bit.

But they shared the ball well enough to manage 15 assists and have six players reach double figures in scoring. They had 18 second-chance points to just two for Dakota Wesleyan. UNLV shot 52 percent and only had 11 turnovers when it appeared early on as though it might total three times that.

Its offense had moments.

“We scored 96 points, but I didn’t think we played particularly well,” Menzies said.

It’s a work in progress that isn’t ending any time soon.

But if the Rebels play hard every night, the journey could go much smoother and deliver its share of success.

For the foreseeable future, evaluate them as a sample and not a full meal.

Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.

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