The Aces ran past the Phoenix Mercury on Saturday at Michelob Ultra Arena, running their record to 6-1 after a record-breaking 38 points in the third quarter.
Sports Columns
UNLV, under first-year coach Kevin Kruger, lost to No. 4 Michigan on Friday night, but the Rebels stayed with the Wolverines for most of 40 minutes.
Kevin Kruger, who led the Rebels to an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 while playing for his father, was named the program’s new head coach on Sunday.
It’s hard to figure any of the other 15 teams still breathing can match UNR for its unity and resolve, amazing when you consider the Wolf Pack offer a starting lineup of five transfers.
Magic Johnson has said all the right things about what he needs to learn, at least enough to make you think he has a better chance as a former player to resemble Larry Bird as an NBA executive than Isiah Thomas.
Great rivalries at the prep level are more exception to any rule, so the one that has developed between Findlay Prep and Bishop Gorman is to be welcomed and celebrated annually.
You can never underestimate the spirit of sports, those intangibles that make certain athletes rise to the occasion when all seems lost in a season, when your bench has been reduced to the point your basketball coach spent part of his day before a conference game against your biggest rival glancing at the school’s football roster.
When it comes to selling the idea that getting to the NBA would be best accomplished at a particular college, UNLV’s coaching staff ranks among the finest nationally in delivering such a message. Dave Rice and his assistants own the most important of factors in such recruiting wars: tangible evidence.
NCAA officials hope proposed rule changes, including a shorter shot clock, will help increase scoring in college basketball. But it looks as if the rule changes will make things much tougher for lesser-talented teams to upset bigger, faster, more athletic ones.
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 Saturday.
History is pretty clear on this: You can’t begin listing the greatest Final Four games and not mention many — Magic vs. Larry in 1979, Texas Western and its all-black starting five vs. Kentucky in 1966, Jim Valvano looking for someone to hug in 1983, Villanova slaying Georgetown in 1985 — before reaching games between UNLV and Duke in 1990 and 1991.
It almost wasn’t fair. The NBA Summer League in Las Vegas had for nine previous years grown in a positive direction. More teams. More fans. More interest.
There wasn’t enough twine in California and all neighboring states to save Steve Alford during his first news conference for the college basketball coaching job no one can ever succeed at to the level it once knew.
If anything, the shove exposed the urgency that has attached itself to Mike Montgomery’s legacy. Perhaps it was for motivation’s sake, of driving his best player to greater heights. Perhaps it came from that cavernous place that said the moment was big, the game was bigger, and not many of either are left in his coaching career.
What a novel concept: A college basketball game in which the biggest plays are made by seniors.
