Freshman point guard Dedan Thomas Jr. could be getting ready for his high school prom. Instead he leads the UNLV men’s basketball team in scoring and assists.
Sports Columns
David Jenkins Jr. has yet to get going for UNLV basketball, which lost a third straight game to open the season, falling to Alabama 86-74 on Tuesday night.
In a game they never led and, well, one you really never thought they would win, the Rebels fell to Cincinnati 65-61 before an announced gathering of 9,572 at the Thomas Mack Center.
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.
We can confirm UNLV has a men’s basketball team this season, as the lights officially were turned on when first-year coach Marvin Menzies was forced to bring the Rebels out of hiding for the first of two exhibitions at the Thomas & Mack Center.
Marvin Menzies is now coaching a program with a far more profound sense of history in a town whose annual expectations for UNLV basketball exist somewhere between unrealistic and foolish.
It requires the assembly of numerous small, often oddly shaped, interlocking pieces. When the puzzle that is the Rebels of next season is finished, it’s a good bet Cody Doolin will have defined a fairly significant piece.
The obvious question: Was the basketball game lost by Boise State or won by UNLV?
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.
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.
They can tweet all the expletives they want, and they can set world-record times for getting from a morgue of a locker room to a morgue of a bus, and they can talk about being disappointed until every flake of snow has melted atop the Rockies, but UNLV’s basketball team has only itself to blame for its Mountain West Conference standing today.
It will not amass the same level of national attention as knocking off North Carolina, nor receive the same ESPN lovefest as taking down a No. 1, nor hold the same perceived importance when March arrives and NCAA Tournament resumes are being debated.
1
2
3
4
5
World’s No. 1 restaurant for 2024 crowned in Las Vegas
Poker legend suffers shocking bad beat, eliminated from WSOP event
‘One of a kind’: Las Vegas comic, a headliner for 50 years, dies
‘It feels very lonely’: 80 years after D-Day, only 2 USS Nevada crew members remain
100-degree heat expected at Trump rally in Las Vegas