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.
UNLV Basketball
The Rebels and Arizona certainly didn’t disappoint Saturday night in delivering the type of tenor most hoped for, an overtime thriller won by the Wildcats 91-88 before 14,579.
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.
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.
He wasn’t a guy who made headlines. He might have eaten at McDonald’s, but never wore an All-American jersey with a patch of the golden arches on it. He never played a second of varsity ball in high school.
The Rebels, who opened their season with a 108-66 rout of Florida A&M, are longer, deeper, more athletic, more savvy, far better suited to compete on a nightly basis this season.
UNLV began practice Saturday, and coach Marvin Menzies talked about the FBI investigation into college basketball, a scandal that involves colleagues Tony Bland and Rick Pitino.
The Warriors believe former UNLV player Patrick McCaw can be one of those two-way players teams continuously pursue, but his place on the league’s best team was born from this reality: He can really defend.
A sixth year of eligibility means Michigan State fans will finally get to experience the former Bishop Gorman standout as a player and, more important, a man.
UNLV basketball received the sort of news not usually expected from a team coming off the worst season in program history with the commitment of a five-star prospect.
While it’s always a pleasing sound for basketball coaches when a fax machine signals the impending arrival of a signed letter of intent, welcoming new players to your program in 2017 now comes with a hint of apprehension.
The opening chapter of how the Rebels went from a team under Lon Kruger that made four NCAA fields his last five years to one that just concluded the worst season in program history begins in 2011, when Nigel Williams-Goss was a sophomore at Findlay Prep.
From the second a ridiculous 62-52 overtime loss to San Diego State ended on Thursday, how UNLV takes the next steps of improvement is squarely on the shoulders of coach Marvin Menzies.
UNLV president Len Jessup is searching for a new athletic director, and it will be the most important hire he makes during his time at the university.
When you are in the first year leading a program and your team is this bad, the rebuilding process can’t begin until the present tense of inferior ability has been addressed.