UNLV is intent on erasing last year’s NCAA Tournament first-round loss when the 11th-seeded Lady Rebels play sixth-seeded Michigan on Friday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Basketball
Southern Nevada will host the West Regional semifinal and final, but here are some things to watch over the tournament’s first week of games.
Liberty High basketball star Joshua Jefferson relishes the challenge of helping Saint Mary’s close the gap on national power Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference.
Having been canceled just two years ago due to growing concerns of the coronavirus, the NCAA Tournament will look like its familiar self.
Athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois fired men’s basketball coach Marvin Menzies after his third season Friday, bringing an end to a tenure that began with the culmination of one of the darkest points in program history.
A forgettable start to his final college season hung in the air before an announced crowd of 5,107 at T-Mobile Arena, but when Noah Robotham’s fallaway 3-pointer fell, the Rebels had a 92-90 overtime victory over Brigham Young.
He wasn’t a guy who made headlines. He might have eaten at McDonald’s, but never wore an All-American jersey with a patch of the golden arches on it. He never played a second of varsity ball in high school.
Nowhere was versatility more evident than the NBA Summer League, where a harvest of young talent spent the past 10 days inside Cox Pavilion and the Thomas & Mack Center trying to prove themselves.
Southern Nevada will soon welcome two major professional sports franchises, but how soon will a championship parade follow?
Two decades ago this month, Arizona’s basketball team won its only national title by beating Kentucky, a moment that caused many to believe a geographical shift of sorts had taken afoot in the college game.
I’m not sure on whose name the Ferris wheel will ultimately stop as UNLV’s next basketball coach, but the circus ride needs to be followed by a thorough, honest evaluation of the search process and those who directed the program to this point.
Robert Smith is the guy you hear on the radio during UNLV basketball games, the one his university should be ashamed of because it still hasn’t retired and hung his jersey in the rafters of the Thomas & Mack Center, the best point guard in Rebels history.
It wasn’t perfect. Far from it. But for a team that suited up six players on Friday who hadn’t competed in a regular-season Division I game, UNLV did more good than bad.
UNLV’s basketball team might over the next 24 hours be given the opportunity to continue a season that has delivered more disappointments than not, but the Rebels should deny any and all such inquiries.
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.
