Utes lead at halftime

Carlon Brown hit a long 3-pointer with 5 seconds remaining to send Utah into the locker room with a 33-31 halftime lead over UNLV at the Thomas & Mack Center tonight.

Chace Stanback had put the Rebels ahead with a layup 25 seconds earlier after they trailed by as many as nine points in the period.

Marshall Henderson hit four 3-pointers to lead the Utes with 12 points.

Tre’Von Willis is carrying the UNLV offense with 14 first-half points and five rebounds. Stanback has four points and five rebounds.

UNLV limited Utah to just four offensive rebounds, but the Utes got seven second-chance points to none for the Rebels.

The 3-point shot has also been a problem for UNLV. Matt Shaw made the team’s first attempt of the half, but the Rebels went 0-for-6 the rest of the way.

UNLV would probably like the see the pace quicken a bit in the second half. The Rebels are deeper and much more athletic than Utah.

Mea culpa

Utah’s Kim Tillie checked into the game early in the first half. He was expected to miss a minimum of three weeks after undergoing arthroscopic surgery last week.

The previous blog post stated that the Utes would be without the services of their leading rebounded, which obviously proved incorrect.

He does look a bit off his game, however, and was limited to just eight minutes of action. He had two fouls and didn‘t attempt a shot.

While we’re at it, Derrick Jasper made us look foolish as well. After calling out the UNLV guard in the pregame blog, he played very well in the first half.

Crowd igniter

Anthony Marshall came from well back to swat away a breakaway layup by Marshall Henderson midway through the second quarter.

Utah gathered the rebound, but Kendall Wallace came up with a steal and threw it ahead to Darris Santee for an easy dunk.

The crowd went ballistic.

The explosion was short-lived, however. Marshall Henderson buried back-to-back 3-pointers to push the Utah lead immediately back to nine.

Marshall Henderson

The Utah freshman is going to be a despised player in this league for the next four years everywhere but in Salt Lake City.

He is a scrappy little player, but really has no business being at the Division I level except for the incredibly accurate jump shot he possesses.

Henderson knocked down four 3’s in the first half alone tonight.

The kid just needs an inch of space to get off a 3-pointer and he doesn’t miss too many open ones.