It was an egregious, reprehensible, deplorable, humiliating, inconceivable, embarrassing loss for UNLV’s once-proud men’s basketball program. But it’s only one loss.
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There certainly is merit in the heart UNLV showed Thursday under coach Kevin Kruger despite the unforgiving outcome that sabotaged an exhilarating comeback.
UNLV’s women’s basketball team is NCAA Tournament bound for the first time since 2002, courtesy of three wins in three days during the conference tournament at Thomas Mack Center.
Fresno State waltzed into a subdued Thomas & Mack Center on Saturday, made 15 of 29 3-pointers, limited UNLV to 3 of 15 on 3s and left town with an 83-65 victory.
The fair point now is that you can’t change now. Or shouldn’t. Not those who understood from the beginning what this season would mean for UNLV basketball.
Duke and UNLV have taken separate, very different journeys through the college landscape since that Final Four game in 1991, when Bobby Hurley as the Blue Devils point guard helped guide his team to an upset that was viewed as improbable as it was historic.
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.
They made Chris Beard sit there for more than two hours while they discussed whether he was worthy of making $900,000 next season for drawing up X’s and O’s on his now famous dry eraser board, and $1.4 million a couple of seasons down the road, provided he is as successful here as he was at Arkansas-Little Rock last season.
UNLV officially has its coach and you couldn’t have hoped for a better opening message from him, one about building and winning and sustaining a level of success all the right ways, that the goal is not to get things done quickly but rather correctly.
Several times a hero in March, Steve Alford is a goat this time. The UCLA coach leaned back in his chair, rolled his eyes and watched his team get rocked by rival Southern California for the third time this season.