For long stretches, particularly in the second half, the Rebels didn’t play well at all in an 89-82 win Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Basketball
The Rebels and Arizona certainly didn’t disappoint Saturday night in delivering the type of tenor most hoped for, an overtime thriller won by the Wildcats 91-88 before 14,579.
While it’s impossible to directly connect Arizona being linked to arguably one of the biggest scandals in NCAA history with what has been surprisingly inconsistent results thus far, it’s hardly a stretch to suggest the two storylines share a common alliance.
Champions of the MGM Resorts Main Event, UNLV in an 85-58 win over Utah showed those at T-Mobile Arena and an ESPN2 audience how different things are from last year’s 11-win nightmare.
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.
The Rebels, who opened their season with a 108-66 rout of Florida A&M, are longer, deeper, more athletic, more savvy, far better suited to compete on a nightly basis this season.
The corrupt and dishonest culture that has defined the sport for decades has finally (thankfully) been shoved from the shadows and into plain view for all to see, the result of an FBI investigation into charges of fraud and bribery.
UNLV began practice Saturday, and coach Marvin Menzies talked about the FBI investigation into college basketball, a scandal that involves colleagues Tony Bland and Rick Pitino.
The dirtiest of NCAA sports on Tuesday was revealed for the fraudulent scam it always has been, and we just needed the principal federal law enforcement agency of the United States to prove it.
The rookie point guard mattered a ton, and the fact the Lakers won the entire thing and drew the number of fans they did was equally significant.
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.
The Warriors believe former UNLV player Patrick McCaw can be one of those two-way players teams continuously pursue, but his place on the league’s best team was born from this reality: He can really defend.
There never again will be an NBA rivalry like the Lakers and Celtics of the 1980s, a truth that has been dead and buried for years now.
The only thing that matters in this entire vessel of lunacy began with the Lakers falling to the Clippers 96-93 in overtime and Ball making his pro debut.
Southern Nevada will soon welcome two major professional sports franchises, but how soon will a championship parade follow?
