The fifth straight win was as impressive as the previous four, which is to say UNLV’s basketball team has found a consistent rhythm in beating opponents it should. Teams that just aren’t very good.
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UNLV lost its third basketball game of a young season Tuesday night because in the most critical of moments, it became sloppy defensively. It exhibited poor technique. It was Cal in the NCAA Tournament all over again.
College basketball is going cold turkey. It has chosen to abruptly cease a bad habit over gradual reduction, accepting the nausea and hives and dizziness and headaches and muscle pains all at once. Three words: It’s about time.
I was looking for Lewis Skolnick at one guard spot and Dudley “Booger” Dawson at small forward. But it wasn’t Adams College that UNLV’s basketball team welcomed Tuesday night. It was Adams State. The Rebels might have preferred a group of nerdy Tri-Lambs.
Play hard. Play together. The request might seem overly simplistic for college basketball players owning a wealth of ability, but Dave Rice knows that continuity most often comes before prosperity.
It’s not about the rule, about the NBA disallowing those players at its three-day rookie transition program from having guests in their hotel room. It’s more about this for Shabazz Muhammad: perception.
It wasn’t just the coaches and players competing for a national championship. It wasn’t just the 70,000 college basketball fans inside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis that 2010 evening.
His still is an imposing figure, towering on this particular day over those NBA players sitting on chairs and listening to his every word.
The headline across ESPN.com at 6 p.m. Thursday: “Stunner at No. 1.”
One of the trade rumors circling tonight’s NBA Draft goes like this: Minnesota would send third-year forward Derrick Williams and two first-round picks to move up from the No. 9 position and select Indiana guard Victor Oladipo.
Mark Heisler has seen Donald Sterling work, seen the genius that is Sterling in the world of real estate, seen a man who when it comes to closing another deal within his development empire, resembles a seasoned conductor directing an orchestra.
It has been said that while progress is a nice word, change is its motivator, and that change has its enemies.
If crafting an annual schedule to create an impressive RPI is a science, UNLV has consistently graded higher than most biology honor students. The Rebels have advanced to five of the past six NCAA Tournaments, mostly because of impressive records and yet also because their RPI has been so strong throughout the course of a season, their placement as an at-large team is often solidified weeks before Selection Sunday.
The summer of 2010 seems forever ago when it comes to the Miami Heat, to images of a welcome party that included dancing cheerleaders and blaring music and your typical South Beach pyrotechnics, a moment for their fans to celebrate a free-agent haul that was supposed to create a historic shift in NBA power for years to come.
In the swarm of opinion that followed a decision by Katin Reinhardt to transfer out of UNLV’s basketball program this week, an important point was lost: This is why the rule exists.