Lady Rebels drop fifth straight

Friday, Jan. 30, 1998 | 7:12 a.m.

The Lady Rebels showed up with their 'A' game for their Western Athletic Conference contest with Colorado State Thursday night at Lied Gymnasium. Unfortunately for UNLV, it didn't stick around for the entire game.

UNLV hit 7 of its first 10 shots from the floor and jumped out to a 15-8 lead. But the Lady Rebels couldn't sustain that effort and eventually dropped their fifth straight game, 91-75.

"Actually, we have done that for three games now where we play 15, 17 minutes of really good basketball," McClain said. "In the second half we did some good things but we were 10 points in the hole and we're not a very good team coming from behind."

The Lady Rebels (2-17 overall, 1-7 in the WAC) trailed CSU (16-3, 6-2) by one point, 37-36, with 2:35 remaining in the first half. The Rams, however, outscored their hosts 11-0 in the final two minutes of the half, including a three-pointer at the buzzer by Becky Hammon, and took a 48-36 lead into the intermission.

As they did in the opening minutes of the game, the Lady Rebels took advantage of some CSU turnovers early in the second half and closed to within seven points (55-48) with 15 minutes remaining. Junior forward Angalete Dye scored eight of her season-high 28 points in the first five minutes of the second half.

"Angie Dye just went off," McClain said. "When Angie Dye plays like that, nobody can stop her."

Except for her own teammates. After getting the ball to Dye down low for easy layups early in the second half, the Lady Rebels inexplicably stopped feeding her the ball. CSU extended its lead to 20 points five minutes later.

"We just made some bad decisions," McClain said. "We took poor shots, we were getting tired ... and the guards really didn't recognize some things that they were giving to us."

Dye led all scorers with 28 points and 12 rebounds while Kristen Pool added 16 points for the Lady Rebels.

Hammon paced the Rams with 26 points and Katie Cronin added 24.

The Lady Rebels will attempt to remain in the hunt for a berth in the postseason WAC Tournament when they host Wyoming Saturday night at 7:05. UNLV concludes its three-game homestand with a 7:05 p.m. contest Wednesday against Air Force.

"We've got two big games coming up with Wyoming and Air Force," McClain said. "This is a big chance for us to get back into the WAC Tournament picture. It's encouraging for me that we stepped out and played well against Colorado State ... and we are doing some things better than we have in the past."