Rebels face next road challenge, this time in ‘different’ Logan

LOGAN, Utah — He has been all over and back again countless times, college basketball coaching stops at six programs since 1999, having walked into some of the biggest and smallest and most famous of arenas, having stared at many of the nation’s more renowned and respected and, well, brazenly rude student sections, well schooled in the harrowing facts of life on the road.

And when Marv Menzies considers all the data collected over decades of acting as an assistant and then head coach, he ranks one place above all others for its difficulty in which to succeed.

“Logan,” he said.

The city to which he refers sits in Cache County, Utah, has a population of just less than 50,000 and is home to the main campus of Utah State, where Menzies will bring his UNLV team Saturday afternoon for its second Mountain West road game of the season.

The Rebels arrive off a stinker of a performance, their worst of the season, an 18-point home loss to Boise State on Wednesday that wasn’t competitive in any manner from the tip. In this way, perhaps it’s best UNLV make use of its chartered jet to try to discover better focus and effort away from Las Vegas.

And perhaps not.

Know this: Never in its 17-year history has the conference offered this poor a product on the floor, a collection of 11 teams that are average at best near the top and grow more dreadful as one’s eyes travel down the standings.

It’s a bad league, man, again deserving of no more than one NCAA Tournament bid.

It’s closer to the Southwestern Athletic Conference than anyone might have ever imagined.

But that doesn’t mean it’s any less difficult a travel conference as ever, where the realities of things like venues and altitude and time zones and logistics have translated into no program surviving a league season perfect on the road.

Menzies has a team full of new faces, a majority of whom don’t know what it’s like to arrive in Denver, climb aboard a bus and pray snow hasn’t shut down the pass to Laramie, Wyoming, who haven’t felt the intense sting when sucking air at 7,220 feet, who haven’t experienced the uniqueness of student sections in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and San Diego and, yes, especially Logan.

“They can get really personal (at Utah State),” said Menzies, who, when head coach at New Mexico State, made annual trips into the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum when Utah State was a member of the Western Athletic Conference. “They have a fantastic, passionate student fan base that does a very thorough job investigating your team. I haven’t yet been the head coach when playing in front of ‘The Show’ at San Diego State, but Logan is a different place.

“You can’t not say anything to your guys or they’ll get blindsided. Freshmen walk in and they’re like, ‘Holy smokes.’ You get certain things yelled at you, and it’s like, ‘Where’s security?’

“There is nothing like going through it. You don’t go into too much detail with the players. You don’t want them concentrating on anything other than the details of the game. That’s where their focus needs to be.”

It might help UNLV that Utah State doesn’t begin spring semester until Monday, meaning there is a chance — albeit a small one — the student section Saturday won’t be as full and rowdy as most home games. Miserable weather kept most fans away from a home game against New Mexico on Wednesday, meaning Menzies won’t at all mind more flurries moving into the area.

More than anything, this is the sort of game in which UNLV’s lack of a true leader on the court could prove costly should the margin be close down the stretch. Life on the road is hard enough, and even if a team’s travel goes smoothly and its regimen is consistent and properly managed, you can’t totally prepare for those hidden intangibles that a foreign atmosphere often presents.

“True home-court advantages are real, especially in conference,” Menzies said. “We have a very strict routine in how we travel — when we eat, when we shut them down, everything from minimizing distractions to maximizing physical output. Hopefully, we get a competitive advantage from all that sometimes.

“It’s not where we have one to two guys who are just natural leaders and have developed those characteristics. We don’t have those guys. We have more leadership by committee, where different guys are speaking up at different times. That wasn’t happening earlier in the season, so that’s good.”

Whether it’s good enough to overcome all the challenges of Logan is another question.

Contact columnist Ed Graney at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.