UNLV on track to land NCAA Tournament bid

Steve Guiremand

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 | 10:14 a.m.

The UNLV women's basketball team hasn't made an NCAA Tournament appearance since 1994 when it lost to Montana, 77-67, in the first round.

But barring a total collapse during the final three weeks of the season, it looks like Regina Miller's squad is going to change that.

Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com, which runs a weekly bracket prediction for the men's and women's NCAA tourneys, has the Lady Rebels (20-4, 8-3) going as a No. 7 seed in the field of 64.

Palm projects UNLV to play Rice in an East Regional first round game at Nashville, Tenn. The Lady Rebels, under that scenario, would meet the winner of No. 2 seed Vanderbilt and Harvard in the second round.

Palm, whose RPI ratings closely mirror the ones used by the NCAA selection committee, last year correctly projected 32 of the 34 at-large teams for the NCAA women's tournament. Of the 64 teams that were selected, Palm came within one seed of their correct placing on 58.

Still, Miller, whose Lady Rebels left this morning for Colorado Springs and a Saturday afternoon date at Air Force (4-19, 0-10), isn't quite ready to pop the champagne.

"We're taking it one game at a time," Miller said. "We realize one of the things that the NCAA selection committee looks at is how you finish in your last 10 games of the season. If we can finish strong, it can only help our cause for an at-large bid ... provided we don't win the conference tournament."

The winner of the Mountain West tournament March 6-9 at the Thomas & Mack Center receives the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. UNLV is 7-3 in its last 10 games.

The Lady Rebels wrap up regular-season play next week with two tough home games against BYU (16-8, 7-4) on Thursday and defending MWC champion Utah (13-10, 6-5) on Saturday.

"If we can finish the regular season strong, we'd have 23 wins going into the tournament," Miller said. "There aren't many teams in the country other than a Connecticut or a Tennessee who would be able to say that. I think we'd get a strong look (from the NCAA selection committee). But our goal is still to win the Mountain West tournament."