When you know it’s time for league play to begin: At one point in your final nonconference game, your opponent has 12 turnovers, zero assists, nine shots in 12 minutes and its coach has screamed out at least eight set plays his team can’t execute or really has no idea what they mean.
They played a men’s college basketball game at South Point Arena on Tuesday and there wasn’t one dunk over the 40 minutes. There was half a dunk.
What was UNLV thinking, hiring Cindy Fredrick — the mother of Ali Farokhmanesh, the Northern Iowa sharpshooter who sank the Rebels basketball team last March in the NCAA Tournament — to be its new volleyball coach?
10. Jim Livengood is no Mike Hamrick: Thank goodness. UNLV athletics might have a chance. In his first year as the university’s athletic director, Livengood hired coaches in football (Bobby Hauck) and baseball (Tim Chambers) who could change the fortunes of both programs, announced a new, state-of-the-art basketball practice facility, restructured the department, reorganized fundraising and facility upgrade efforts, and had one more sit-down with local media to discuss the program’s vision than Hamrick had in six years.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The resume today will show a win against the nation’s No. 11 basketball team on a neutral court that was anything but neutral. It will not mention the names Jacob Pullen or Curtis Kelly or impermissible benefits or how any of it affected Kansas State on Tuesday evening.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This is a different kind of rust. This has nothing to do with a series of iron oxides or corrosion, unless you count a lack of defensive readiness.
The season’s first 10 games suggest this was the exception and not the rule, that UNLV’s basketball team on Wednesday simply had one of those nights.
