An accepted premise: The toughest thing about competing in the Mountain West for basketball is the travel. The second toughest thing: Preparing for such a variety of offenses.
Basketball
Like the lunatic fan everyone despises but tolerates because the home team wins when he attends the party or the nutcase who retires to his basement to create more good luck for his favorite side, UNLV should immediately enroll in a local hotel’s rewards program.
Stew Morrill is a coach known by few outside his profession’s fraternity and yet respected as much as anyone within it.
The trip from hell — at least by Mountain West basketball standards this season — taught UNLV some valuable lessons this past week. Most of them good.
Deville Smith took full advantage of just his fourth start on Wednesday. He will get a fifth at first-place San Diego State on Saturday. He is sure to remain in the lineup for the foreseeable future.
How teams react on the road each season often differs more than a teenager’s mood. It’s easier to win away from home in the NHL, NFL, Major League Baseball and even some sketchy Argentine soccer leagues than it is college basketball.
The Rebels today are a team stranded at sea with a giant hole in the raft, not enough life jackets and a radio transmitter engulfed in water. They are as disjointed off the court as they are on it, helplessly searching for reasons why they can’t beat average teams at home.