UNLV wins OT thriller after coach flummoxed by flat tire — PHOTOS
True story: Had things gone really bad for Josh Pastner on Tuesday night, you might have seen the UNLV basketball coach running down the 215 in his suit.
Pastner’s car got a flat tire on the way to the Thomas & Mack Center hours before his team edged Boise State 89-85 in overtime.
“I told myself, ‘You have to be at this game,’” Pastner said of his pregame issues. “Thank the good Lord he answered my prayers so I could be. How could I tell the guys to be gritty and tough and their coach wasn’t gritty and tough. I would have just run here. I would have found a way to get here.”
Gritty and tough. That’s what the Rebels were.
Not pretty. Not perfect by any means.
They snapped a two-game losing streak behind several players who made big plays at different times of the game.
Close whole way
None was more impressive than point guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, who scored a career-high 33 points on 11-of-23 shooting to go with five rebounds and six assists.
The final score pretty much defined the entire game. Close the whole way.
Neither team could shake the other.
Neither could create that big a margin.
Kimani Hamilton’s jumper with 43 seconds left in overtime gave UNLV an 86-84 lead. Tyrin Jones then sealed the win with a blocked shot with 17 seconds left.
“Players play, but tough players win,” Jones said.
Well, he actually borrowed the line from Pastner. It’s one of his standard sayings to the team.
A 3-pointer by Boise State forward Drew Fielder with 0.2 seconds remaining in regulation forced overtime at 76-76.
The Rebels (8-8, 3-2 Mountain West) led the Broncos 76-73 with eight seconds left, and Pastner chose not to foul before Fielder hit his 3.
The reason: UNLV hasn’t been that clean when it comes to free-throw line box-outs this season.
Pastner didn’t want to take the chance a made free throw was followed by a miss and a Boise State kick-out for a game-winning 3.
“The worst case scenario is we get five more minutes more of a game in overtime,” Pastner said. “We’ve been good in close games. We won against Stanford, St. Joe’s, this game. We had to grit this out. We had to tough this out.
“You have to have talent, obviously. But you have to find a way deep inside as a competitor. You have to be a fighter. I live my whole life that way, and if somebody doesn’t, I’m not aligned. That’s how it’s going to be. We found a way to get a win.”
Fielder scored 23 points and Andrew Meadow 21 for Boise State (9-8, 1-5), which has lost four straight conference games after being picked third in the preseason media poll.
The Broncos had no answer for Gibbs-Lawhorn, who logged the entire 45 minutes.
Hamilton also came up big when it mattered most, scoring his team’s final five points.
Toss-up game
“I’m glad we finally played energized for (an entire game),” said Gibbs-Lawhorn, who had to assume the lead guard position this season when Myles Che was lost to a foot injury. “I feel a lot better, especially since the beginning of the year. Shout-out to Coach Pastner, who has helped me get through the ups and downs.”
This was thought to be a toss-up game for two struggling teams, and such a forecast sure played out from the opening tip. UNLV led 40-39 at halftime, with back-and-forth action never allowing either side to pull away.
Boise State had the largest lead in the first 20 minutes at 30-23, only to see the Rebels rip off a 9-2 run to grab a one-point advantage.
During the run, Gibbs-Lawhorn added six straight points. He kept things going from there.
One impressive note: UNLV outrebounded Boise State — one of the league’s better teams on the boards — 40-33.
“It wasn’t easy,” Pastner said.
Yeah, but probably a little more so than if he had to run down the 215 in his suit.
Contact Ed Graney at egraney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @edgraney on X.
