Rebels get a lashing and a loss at UNR

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Dec. 6, 2004 | 8:59 a.m.

RENO -- Watching UNLV coach Lon Kruger on the sideline during a game, it sometimes is hard to figure out whether he's coaching a basketball game or getting ready to deliver the Sunday sermon.

Unlike some of his Division I coaching colleagues, the mild-mannered Kansas native doesn't throw clipboards or do calisthenics every time a call goes against his team. In fact, a smile can usually be found on his face when he's talking with his team in a key situation or questioning the call of an official.

But if anyone has any doubts about Kruger's intensity or desire to win, they should have been a fly on the wall in the Rebels' locker room at the Lawlor Events Center here at halftime of Saturday night's game against Nevada-Reno.

Disgusted by his team's lack of effort, especially on the defensive end after falling quickly behind, 11-0, and allowing 49 first half points en route to a 84-78 loss to their in-state rivals, Kruger turned up the volume during his halftime speech.

It seemed to work. A much-more inspired Rebel squad came out after intermission and quickly overcame a 12-point deficit to take a 62-61 lead on a Louis Amundson layup. But ultimately several missed layups and dunks, not to mention a whole lot of Nick Fazekas (25 points, 10 rebounds), came back to haunt the Rebels (2-2) down the stretch.

If only UNLV had played with such passion in the first 20 minutes.

"He (Kruger) really lit into us," Amundson said. "He was really disappointed with our play in the first half. Everyone else was, too. We knew we had to pick it up."

Added senior guard Romel Beck, who scored a team-high 17 points, including 3-for-3 from 3-point range: "He can yell with the best of them. He's not going to hold nothing back. He's going to tell it like it is.

"He told us we've got to start playing. We didn't play hard in the first half. That's unacceptable. He came in here and fired us up and told us we had to play better."

Kruger was his usual soft-spoken self when he met with the media afterward.

"We didn't open like we need to of course," he said. "I thought Reno played great. I thought they did a lot of good things. We opened up from behind and battled back all night. (But) we've got to open things up a lot better."

Kruger was upset with his team's perimeter defense in the first half and made some adjustments to make things more difficult for Wolf Pack guards to get the ball inside and also to Fazekas, who scored 17 first half points but didn't score until the 6:41 mark of the second half.

"He wanted us to pressure the wings better," Beck said. "And then we came out and did that. We did a great job of chipping away at the lead. We had to."

Beck just shook his head when asked about his team falling behind 11-0 at the start.

"There's no explanation for that," he said. "We should always come out ready to play, and the first half we didn't come out ready to play. It took the second team to come out there and play to get us going. The first five, we've got to go in there and bust our (expletive) and start playing like we're the starting five."

The Rebels return to action on Wednesday night at West Coast Conference power Pepperdine.