UNLV sends fans home early with awful effort against Boise State

They started filing out of the Thomas & Mack Center with more than nine minutes remaining in a college basketball game that was decided about the time Boise State’s bus arrived hours earlier, fans having witnessed too much of unquestionably the most forgettable performance yet for UNLV this season.

This was worse than Duke, because the Broncos aren’t in the same zip code as the Blue Devils for talent or much of anything else.

Because even though Duke put a 49-point whipping on UNLV at T-Mobile Arena, this was a Mountain West home game against a side that, while obviously better than the Rebels, entered with an RPI of 79 and a KenPom rating of 92.

Because the Rebels weren’t in any manner prepared from the opening tip.

It was 9-0 and 13-4 and 31-9 and 41-20 and 59-27.

Boise State is alone atop the league standings after a 77-59 win before an announced gathering of 8,872 disenchanted souls, and don’t for a second be fooled by the final margin.

It might have been 18. It felt like twice that, a game over when the score was 41-20 at halftime.

“Want to apologize for that effort,” UNLV coach Marvin Menzies said. “I’m not accustomed to that. It threw me for a loop. I’m not sure why. We will play harder and more tenacious than that. We will make sure of that. It felt helpless. They just beat us up.

“Who cares what the score is? Go do the right things. That was disappointing, playing the score. We have to get them to own the defensive side of things. We have to address that.”

There was no benefit of the doubt for UNLV this time in the initial 20 minutes, no thinking along the lines of a new team finding its way. No pass for having thrown together a roster in a matter of months. Not on this night.

The Rebels were awful, having proven that no matter how bad you might have thought UNLV could be defensively for stretches this season, it can be even worse.

Other than not defending the dribble, not finding shooters in transition, not having any semblance of toughness or tenacity to protect the lane, not staying with cutters, not rebounding, not stepping up to help when others got beat, not showing much effort, UNLV was pretty efficient on defense.

I suppose it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, because it’s not like UNLV has reminded anyone of Virginia.

In a Mountain West that is historically bad this season, UNLV ranks last in scoring defense, 10th in defensive rebounding, ninth in blocks and eighth in field-goal defense and 3-point defense.

Boise State shot 53 percent when building its insurmountable halftime advantage, which happens when most of your attempts are from within 3 feet.

Easy doesn’t begin to describe how things were for the Broncos.

Take the play of junior guard Chandler Hutchison. The league’s second-leading scorer with an 18.0 average finished with a career-high 28 points in 35 minutes, and there is no doubt he’s developing into a fine player.

But he was one trip of a UNLV player away from being Grayson Allen against UNLV. Scoring becomes less difficult when you’re playing against air.

“We started off terrible and couldn’t get enough stops,” UNLV forward Tyrell Green said. “We didn’t have any energy. We kept looking at the score and looking at the clock, and it was over. ”

Things weren’t much better offensively for UNLV, which shot 25 percent in the first half and time and again was limited to one shot because of poor ball movement and bad decisions.

The largest cheer of the half came with 1:03 remaining, when Jovan Mooring made a 3-pointer and extended UNLV’s record of consecutive games with one to 990, absolutely one of the most irrelevant marks in the NCAA.

I genuinely believe a majority of UNLV fans were, at that moment, more excited about the record remaining alive than they were upset the Rebels being down 19.

That’s sort of a problem and has been for some time with a totally meaningless record.

UNLV now hits the road for a game at Utah State on Saturday afternoon, into the snow and bitter cold of Utah, into the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, where the Aggies will be coming off a win against New Mexico.

There is no plausible reason to believe UNLV can win in altitude this season until proven otherwise, and if the Rebels arrive with the same mindset and defend in the same manner as Wednesday, they might as well remain home and save the university money on travel costs.

This was bad, and throwing together a roster had nothing to do with it.

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.