Thursday, Feb. 26, 2004 | 10:53 a.m.
If it's true that you reap what you sow, then the UNLV women's basketball team is left with trying to grimly reap a high seed in the upcoming Mountain West Conference tournament.
At least according to the NCAA bracketologists.
If you go by the so-called experts, any hope the Lady Rebels might have had of sneaking into the NCAA tournament as an at-large team was dashed by a 79-65 loss at Colorado State last week that also dropped UNLV into third place in the conference standings.
In fact, Collegerpi.com, which last year correctly predicted 31 of the 33 women's at-large teams and projected 55 of the 64 tournament teams to within one seed of their actual spot, this week has only one Mountain West team, league-leading Utah, advancing. And as a lowly No. 12 seed at that.
That's why UNLV coach Regina Miller thinks there's still hope.
"People who know a lot about it have Utah as a No. 5 or 6 seed," she said. "I feel pretty confident that our league will get at least two teams in."
At 7-3 in the MWC and 18-5 overall, UNLV is still on track for another outstanding season. But the Lady Rebels' low RPI -- UNLV begins tonight ranked 76th among the 324 NCAA schools -- means they might have to run the table at the conference tournament in Denver to get to the Big Dance.
But as Miller says, there's still two more weeks of basketball to be played before the NCAA bracket becomes the hot conversation topic. The Lady Rebels' immediate goal is to retake second place from New Mexico, which they will have the opportunity to do at 7:30 tonight at Cox Pavilion.
"We have to finish as strong as possible and get as high as seed (in the MWC tournament) as possible," Miller said. "But the priority is to play well."
In addition to overtaking the Lobos and narrowing the gap on first-place Utah, tonight's game also will give UNLV a chance to even the score against New Mexico (16-7, 8-2). The Lobos handed the Lady Rebels their first MWC loss, 70-66, before a sellout crowd of 18,018 in Albuquerque on Jan. 31.
UNLV led most of the way in that one before experiencing a scoring drought down the stretch. And the Lady Rebels haven't lost to New Mexico here since 1998. Still, it figures to be a tough game, if for no other reason that the Lobos are the only conference team to have beaten Utah, which they did 49-46 at The Pit last week.
While going 1-1 on last week's Front Range trip to Wyoming and CSU, the Lady Rebels rediscovered their shooting touch. UNLV has averaged 49 percent from the field over its past three games but continues to be plagued by turnovers, something Miller has been harping on in practice.
"Twelve or 14 turnovers is acceptable for an uptempo team like us," she said. "But we've been turning it over 18-24 times a game. We lead the conference in rebounding but it's hard to get an offensive rebound when we keep turning the ball over."
Miller said another goal during the MWC stretch run is to hold down the opposition's key player. In New Mexico's case, that would be Lindsey Arndt, a 6-foot-1 junior who is this week's MWC player of the week after averaging 14 points and 10 rebounds in the Lobos' sweep of Utah and BYU last week.
"We want to play better defense and not allow any player to score 20 points or more against us," Miller said in reference to Wyoming's Ashley Elliott going for 31 points in a 66-55 UNLV win last Thursday.
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