UNLV women’s basketball team fell to Creighton in a first-round game of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday. The Bluejays hit 15 3-pointers and had every answer.
Sports Columns
UNLV’s basketball team on Tuesday night knocked off another conference team from distance, and in the process swept the regular-season series from New Mexico for the first time in eight years with a 74-58 victory.
One of the main problems with UNLV athletics, perhaps the central one, is the fact it either doesn’t realize or accept its place in today’s world of collegiate athletics.
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.
A few things are undeniable: UNLV is likely a few recruiting classes from being NCAA Tournament worthy, and yet its fan base expects a nonconference schedule littered with high major opponents.
It appears UNLV is in the process of offering Lon Kruger-type money to its leading candidate, Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin. Problem: It’s not Lon Kruger.
We might be witnessing the worst college season for officiating in history, and that’s saying more than a mouthful about those blowing whistles. But rare is the night in which games don’t include questionable calls, no calls, clock errors, interpretation errors, miscues of all types.
This is a Christmas story that has nothing to do with the one that will be shown on TBS on a continuous loop Friday. This one is about UNLV coaches with soft spots in their hearts, and a Rebels basketball player who is much better beyond the 3-point stripe than he is with a Mexican yo-yo, and sick kids in the hospital, and the local sports radio host who brings them all together each year.
When the talent continued to sign on the dotted line and the depth became more than UNLV’s basketball team has enjoyed under fifth-year head coach Dave Rice, it wasn’t guaranteed the Rebels would immediately turn a corner back towards the NCAA Tournament.
He knew the matchup before it was announced and not because Dave Rice had some inside source feeding him information. It just made too much sense, is all.
The truth: UNLV forward Chris Wood made the correct choice, but there is a right way and wrong way to handle such matters, and Wood failed about as miserably as one can in the process of leaving after his sophomore season for the NBA.
Billions of people for billions of minutes a month take to social media, tweeting and posting and Instagraming our way through life. Which means there are billions of opportunities for cowards to shield themselves behind the pretense that with such independence comes the right to maliciously attack others without the fear of being held accountable.
There are different kinds of wins in sports. Ones when you outplay an opponent. Ones when you don’t and still succeed. Ones when you make your owns breaks. Ones when the other guys break down. UNLV’s basketball team had another kind Saturday. “This was a character win,” Rebels coach Dave Rice said.
It was as difficult and emotional a loss as you can imagine for UNLV’s basketball team. The Rebels played their hearts out for 45 minutes Saturday night and deserved a better fate.
Like the lunatic fan everyone despises but tolerates because the home team wins when he attends the party or the nutcase who retires to his basement to create more good luck for his favorite side, UNLV should immediately enroll in a local hotel’s rewards program.
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