Roscoe Smith and Khem Birch are good enough to eventually find an NBA home. But it’s impossible to guarantee either will, because what the former UNLV players are discovering is that making it is as much about timing and opportunity as skill and upside.
Despite dwindling win totals, UNLV athletic director Tina Kunzer-Murphy is betting basketball coach Dave Rice can turn around the program in his fifth year and take the Rebels back to the NCAA Tournament. Anything less will be unacceptable.
Dave Rice just concluded his fourth season as UNLV’s coach, his second straight without a postseason appearance, and it is no secret that his job is in jeopardy after an 18-15 season. Rice and athletic director Tina Kunzer-Murphy are expected to meet this week.
An issue that has tormented the Rebels for most of the Mountain West season did them in again Thursday, when UNLV emerged from its locker room at intermission and promptly gave up a six-point lead, watching helplessly as San Diego State opened the second half on a 12-0 run.
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.
How ironic, and absolutely fitting, that on the day family and friends and fans and former players gathered to say a final goodbye to Jerry Tarkanian, it was a person with no UNLV ties that offered the most poignant and memorable tribute.
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.
The Rebels and Lobos are used to contending for the Mountain West basketball title. What happened to them this season? It will take a miraculous run in the conference tourney for either to earn a bid to the NCAAs.
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.
