The Mountain West basketball tournament could offer several surprising results after a close race during the regular season.
UNLV
The once-proud program has now gone a decade without qualifying for the NCAA Tournament.
UNLV quarterback Doug Brumfield has many of the same traits as the greatest Rebel of them all: Randall Cunningham.
The Thomas Mack Center felt just like Laramie, minus about 5,000 feet of elevation. Hosting the MW Tournament isn’t any sort of home-court advantage for UNLV. Hasn’t been for some time.
UNLV, which struggled to defend the 3-point line most of the season, held Air Force to 0 of 9 in the first half and 2 of 18 overall on 3s in Wednesday’s blowout.
Three-sport high school star Giancarlo Stanton was recruited heavily by the Rebels when Mike Sanford was the football coach before switching his focus to baseball.
There is little chance UNLV athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois would turn down UCLA, despite the fact that its insides are a lot more challenging than the shiny exterior.
It was the longest of long weekends for Las Vegas sports fans. But there’s a long way to go to catch Cleveland.
For long stretches, particularly in the second half, the Rebels didn’t play well at all in an 89-82 win Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
When he was young, Cheickna Dembele would have to walk more than 30 minutes to find a basket at which to shoot, because that’s what everyone did. They walked.
The UNLV women’s soccer team will play fourth-ranked Brigham Young in a first-round NCAA Tournament game at 6 p.m. Friday in Provo, Utah.
Wyoming is another example that winning can be created different ways at different places. That perhaps more important than anything else for a new coach, understanding one’s culture stands above all else.
How much — and early — a UNLV fan base that can be as unrealistic as it is passionate buys into the newest version of the Rebels is anyone’s guess, but never underestimate how a team might respond to the perception of those who watch it.
A rent of $250,000 per game — $1.5 million over a traditional season of six home games — has been floated as a possible number. It’s also a price that falls in line nationally with other college programs that play in NFL stadiums.
UNLV offered far too many errors and missed way too many tackles to think it could depart the Rose Bowl a winner, falling to UCLA 42-21 before an announced crowd of 63,712.
