UNLV and San Diego State, who will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Mountain West basketball tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center, have played twice this season, with the Aztecs winning by six and two points. The Rebels had chances to win both games.
Mountain West basketball this season has neither been good enough from top to bottom or in possession of a dominating team to suggest anything is inconceivable as the conference tournament opens today at the Thomas & Mack Center.
Mountain West coaches cut the media out of voting for the all-conference team this year — and neglected to tell the writers. Don’t expect to learn who the coaches nominated or voted for.
In defeat, UNLV just might have defined its season-long mantra better than any of its previous 29 games. All In, All Together. And a few players short.
That was then: A group of college basketball players that helped embed into the game a hip-hop culture with how they dressed and what they said and the music blaring from their headphones. They influenced a nation of fans, a team viewed as rebellious by some and yet merchandising giants for corporate America.
It has become a common theme around UNLV’s basketball team, this game-by-game analysis by others of Chris Wood. Of his production and attitude and effort and whether that eating motion he makes after sinking a 3-pointer is really necessary or, well, just another level of self-serving folly.
I always loved this story about Jerry Tarkanian: It was shortly after UNLV won its national championship in basketball when a group of out-of-town reporters happened to be in the same restaurant as the Rebels coach.
Cox Pavilion is a midrange jumper from the Thomas & Mack Center, but there was more pushing of the ball and guarding of the dribble and running of set plays in the small gym Wednesday night than we have seen in the big arena of late.
In a season when UNLV was at least expected to hover in the neighborhood of the top in what has proven to be a second-rate Mountain West, things have sunk this low for the Rebels when talking positives: At least that 3-point streak remains intact.
There’s something in the sports writer’s code, an unwritten rule, about not asking for autographs. When I heard that Jerry Tarkanian had died Wednesday morning, asking him for his autograph when I was a young sports writer was one of the first things that popped into my mind.
