Rebels face another uphill climb

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Jan. 19, 2004 | 9:06 a.m.

SAN DIEGO -- Oops, they did it again.

For the third consecutive year, the UNLV Rebels have stumbled badly out of the blocks at the start of Mountain West Conference play.

Saturday afternoon's 83-78 loss to San Diego State at Cox Arena here marked the second season in a row that UNLV has begun MWC play with an 0-2 mark. And with the tough Front Range trip to Wyoming and Colorado State up next, the Rebels will need to at get at least a split to match the 1-3 starts they've had in each of Charlie Spoonhour's two previous years as head coach.

The Rebels (9-5, 0-2) have managed to overcome those slow starts to finish 9-5 and 8-6 in MWC play and finish in third place both years. The bad news is that UNLV also had to settle for NIT berths instead of receiving at-large invitations to the NCAA tournament.

"It's hard fighting an uphill battle," senior guard Demetrius Hunter, who finished with 11 points but was just 1-of-7 from 3-point range, said. "But we've got a lot of experienced players here who know what they have to do. Even though we're down 0-2, we've just got to forget it and find a way to build."

"We've dug ourselves a hole and we know we have to dig ourselves out of it," added senior center J.K. Edwards, who nearly had a double-double (8 points, 8 rebounds) despite playing just 19 minutes before fouling out. "That's about the only way we're going to make the (NCAA) tournament ... digging ourselves out.

"(The 0-2 start) is bad, but if everyone's mind is on the same page like it should be, we can come out of this. It's a tight jam we're in now but we've got to do what we've got to do because we're already in it. "

Spoonhour put it more bluntly.

"We're going to have to do what last year's team did and that's draw a line in the dirt and say, 'No more,' " Spoonhour said. "This is a nice bunch of guys to work with. It's a good bunch of kids. But that doesn't mean we're doing stuff right."

The Rebels' biggest problem in MWC has been shooting, especially from 3-point range. UNLV was just 5-of-18 (27.8 percent) from behind the arc against the Aztecs (11-6, 2-0) and just 9-of-34 on 3-pointers (26.5 percent) in their two conference games. Hunter, who has shot a solid 34.3 percent (25-of-73) from 3-point range for the season, is just 1-for-8 in conference play and has struggled defensively.

UNLV seemed to make big strides in its most glaring shortcoming -- rebounding -- in Saturday's loss, holding a surprising 35-30 edge over an Aztecs squad that entered the game ranked second in the MWC in that category. But that statistic was negated by some unusually sloppy ballhandling as the Rebels finished with a season-high 22 turnovers, or seven more than their average.

Fouls were also a big problem against the Aztecs. Both starting point guard Jerel Blassingame and Edwards, perhaps the two most important figures in UNLV's offense, were hampered by early foul trouble.

"We've got to find a way to keep J.K. on the floor," Spoonhour said. "He gets too many fouls and that has got to stop. And we're not going to win many games with Jerel sitting over there with me."

The Rebels were fortunate that true freshman backup point guard John Winston, sidelined most of the week with a pulled hamstring, felt well enough to play Saturday. Winston had five assists in 17 minutes and managed to keep the Rebels in the game early after Blassingame picked up his second foul less than four minutes into the game.

Even with the foul problems and poor outside shooting, the Rebels still found themselves in a two-possession game with 2:10 left and trailing, 78-74. But defensive breakdowns on San Diego State fastbreaks allowed point guard Wesley Stokes and forward Chris Walton to take rebounds end to end for layups to put the game out of reach.

Rule No. 1 of basketball defense is to stop penetration. But on back-to-back plays with the game on the line, the Rebels failed miserably.

"We got the thing to four (points) and then gave up two fullcourt baskets," Spoonhour said. "We cover that in practice every day."

Practice is something the Rebels have a lot of time for now before an equally struggling Wyoming (8-7, 1-1) in Laramie on Saturday afternoon. The Rebels have lost four in a row to the Cowboys.

Can the Rebels bounce back?

"We've got to," Edwards said. "We have got to bounce back because I refuse to be on a losing team. I know everybody else in this locker room is a winner. We've just got to go back to work and turn it around."