There is first another 12-game schedule to navigate, and UNLV is hardly an easy book in which to predict an ending. The Rebels will be deeper than last season because it’s impossible not to be.
Sports Columns
With less than two weeks before the Rebels open their second season under Tony Sanchez, it remains undecided who will assume the starter’s role at the most critical position when Jackson State visits Sam Boyd Stadium on Sept. 1.
This is about the haves and have-nots of college athletics, and which side everyone wants to be on before the landscape changes forever and those not included are shoved aside for good.
Tony Samuel is intent on making things much better for the Rebels up front defensively, he being the only change this season to the staff of second-year coach Tony Sanchez.
The preparation now is for three exhibition games in a popular cruise-ship stop. But the work that probably will define how UNLV fares under first-year coach Marvin Menzies began in earnest last month.
Keith Belton will have as much to say about how improved the Rebels are this season and beyond as anyone else, his responsibility to grow the physiques of boys into men and men into bigger men.
When everyone else was running from UNLV’s basketball program like frightened guests from a T-Rex at a fictional park, Jalen Poyser didn’t budge.