What the UNLV Rebels said after last night’s loss to San Diego State

Here’s what the UNLV men’s basketball team said following its 64-51 loss to San Diego State on Tuesday at the Thomas & Mack Center:

COACH MARVIN MENZIES

“Had good effort. Had good energy. Not a lot of execution. Took a couple of steps back in some areas. Maintained our desire and effort, which is good. I thought our defensive intensity was good. Outside of a few possessions where we had some miscues on defense and let Max (Hoetzel) get open for his threes, I thought we played a really good first half. I was anticipating the same second half, and then we just went dead offensively, which was not very good. Got right to the basket several times. Drew up plays where we got them layups. Drew up plays where we got them wide-open shots. Got to make shots to win the game. Defense will help you win championships, but not if you can’t get there because you can’t score. So we’re going to have to try to figure out some things to shoot the ball at a higher clip.”

On the confidence level of Kris Clyburn and Tyrell Green:

“I can’t really talk about their confidence level. I can talk about their lack of production. Kids are resilient for the most part, at least they’re pretty confident. This generation is pretty confident, so they’re going to be ready to go Saturday (at home against Air Force). Shooters have got to shoot the ball. Kris is a good player. Ty is a good player. … When a player knows his coach has confidence in him and that player feels good and it’s real confidence, you can usually get him back. They don’t fold quickly.”

“In the state of the union for where we’re at, we’ve got to find silver linings. We’ve got to stay positive. We’ve got to keep motivated to get better and play our best basketball in March. You know what, if we win three games or four games in March, nobody cares what happened tonight. Nobody cares. It’s all about getting better and getting better and getting better, and that’s what we do. That’s what I do, that’s what my teams do, and that’s what this team will do. I’m not shaking at all. They’re not going to get frazzled from me. They’re going to get inspired. They’re going to be motivated. And they’re going to play hard.”

GUARD UCHE OFOEGBU

“In games, you’re going to go through parts where you have to fight through adversity and things are not going to go your way. Coach talked about that before the game started, how there’s going to be a stretch where offensively we’re not going to click. It might be a little two-minute stretch, but keep going through it and we’d have a chance to prevail. I felt like we kind of let that linger.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.