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Menzies remains upbeat despite Rebels’ two-game slide

Updated February 25, 2018 - 12:58 am

Minutes after the second poor performance in a row from his UNLV basketball team, coach Marvin Menzies answered questions from reporters in the same manner as other games.

If there was any sign of panic, he wasn’t showing it.

Menzies noted he had been in similar situations at New Mexico State, suffering late-season losses before turning it on in the conference tournament.

UNLV has three games remaining before the Mountain West tournament, and none is easy. Beginning with Sunday’s 11 a.m. game at New Mexico’s Dreamstyle Arena, two of those games are on the road to teams that already beat the Rebels and the other is at home against UNR, the conference’s best team.

“I’m not going to get down and frustrated beyond the point where it’s detrimental to our progress,” Menzies said. “We’ve got to coach these young men up, and we’ve got to get them ready. I’ll let the naysayers and nonbelievers … they’ll be enough of that chatter amongst themselves, I don’t need to get involved with that. I love my kids. I feel bad for them that they haven’t been successful the last couple of games.”

UNLV (19-9, 8-7 Mountain West) is a 1½-point underdog to the Lobos (14-14, 9-6) in the game, which will be televised on CBS Sports Network. New Mexico won the first meeting 85-81 when the Rebels blew a late 11-point lead.

The Lobos have won back-to-back games, including most recently outscoring Wyoming 119-114 on Tuesday.

After New Mexico, the Rebels close the season against No. 20 UNR on Wednesday at the Thomas & Mack Center and at Utah State on Saturday.

UNLV upset the Wolf Pack 86-78 in Reno on Feb. 7, but UNR leading scorer Caleb Martin didn’t play because of a foot injury. He is back, but the Wolf Pack now are without point guard Lindsey Drew, who has a torn Achilles.

Like New Mexico, Utah State overcame a late deficit to beat the Rebels at the T&M. The Aggies took a 79-78 lead on Sam Merrill’s 3-pointer with 1:42 left and went on to win 85-78 in the Jan. 6 game. Utah State’s Dee Glen Smith Spectrum is one of the toughest venues in the Mountain West.

“We’ve got to play more poised,” UNLV forward Shakur Juiston said. “We’ve got to watch all the other teams how they played against us, how poised and how smart they were and how they run their stuff and execute it. As soon as we figure that stuff out, the rest of the season can turn around completely.”

So UNLV has a tough task of trying to turn around a two-game stretch in which it lost by a combined 51 points and do it against challenging opponents. But as Menzies noted, he was in similar spots at New Mexico State.

The Aggies lost at UNR and Utah State in 2010 right before winning the Western Athletic Conference tournament. His WAC tournament title teams from 2012 to 2014 each suffered a late-season defeat.

“That’s like a whole different season when the tournament starts,” Menzies said. “I think they’ll be ready to play in March for sure, but we’ve got to get better before then.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.

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