Scarlet-gray Rebels need black-blue toughness

The origin dates to Tom Izzo's first season as Michigan State basketball coach in 1995, when his Spartans weren't all that great at scoring and he needed to discover ways to get more shots.

So he developed the War Drill.

The ball is shot and anything goes.

Run guys over. Swing an elbow. Throw a punch or two.

Anything to get a rebound.

The drill's nuances changed over the years as more and more programs nationally adopted their own ways to teach physicality, but the central purpose of instilling toughness remained constant.

UNLV returned to practice Monday for the first time since its forgettable loss at UNR, where a smaller but more determined Wolf Pack group outrebounded the Rebels in a 65-63 win Saturday.

It has remained a consistent theme in UNLV losses the past several years. The Rebels just aren't tough enough.

You can, to a certain point, recruit to such things. But toughness is most created during those two to three hours a day among your teammates and coaches, when your pride is challenged by those closest to you.

A lot of pride was challenged Monday.

At one point, the War Drill was in full effect.

"We didn't have any football pads out, but a few of the seats in the stands were casualties," UNLV interim coach Todd Simon said. "Practice went long, and they were focused and didn't fight it, and they embraced how difficult it was going to be. We reintroduced some topics that emphasized the physicality of the game. We wanted to make sure no stone was left unturned in terms of boxing out and getting 50-50 balls. We want to be the team delivering more bruises than receiving them.

"That's who we have to be moving forward — a gritty, nasty basketball team that when you play UNLV, you're going to lay in bed at night and be physically sore."

Simon is Michigan born and often attended Michigan State practices as a boy, influenced by how the Spartans competed. His view about what sort of team the Rebels should resemble also will be tested this week more so than at any time yet during Mountain West play, as UNLV welcomes the league's two best teams in Boise State tonight and San Diego State on Saturday.

UNLV entered the week in seventh place at 3-4, three games behind the Broncos and four behind the Aztecs. You would think, given how bad the conference is near its bottom, anything less than a sweep this week would all but eliminate the Rebels from championship contention.

They already might face too large a hill to scale.

But more than climbing back into a race in a league that seems destined for just one NCAA Tournament berth, the Rebels need to shake the image of a team in flux, both within its coaching staff and on those results produced.

They were 3-0 under Simon before falling back into a bad trap of turnovers and missed free throws and allowing far too many offensive rebounds at UNR, ills that led to UNLV beginning conference 0-3 and having coach Dave Rice fired.

Simon was handed the interim job over others with more experience, and anyone at UNLV who would suggest that decision didn't bring a heavy sense of resentment by some on the staff is lying. It did. It still does.

But winning has a way of at least calming those disagreements or differences in philosophy that might be touching a locker room, and nothing would help UNLV's cause better in this respect than two wins this week.

Translation: UNLV needs to beat Boise State and San Diego State for more important reasons than merely improving its place in the standings.

"Absolutely, this is a huge opportunity," Simon said. "Any time you're coming off a disappointment, you want to play the best. You're a little hungrier, a little more focused. We absolutely want to play the best teams, and Boise State and San Diego State are as good as it gets in our league.

"Truthfully, we're not focused on (a sweep). We're focused on the next practice and Boise State. It sounds cliche, but that's exactly how our mentality has to be. The only way to dig ourselves out of the hole we dug is one handful at a time. We have to scratch and claw our way back up, and it's not going to be by looking forward. It's going to be by taking one step at a time and becoming the best basketball team we can be."

And if they eventually prove tougher than usual, all the better.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached 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. On Twitter: @edgraney