Lady Rebels looking to pull off upset at Utah

Thursday, March 4, 2004 | 9:49 a.m.

While the consensus is that the Lady Rebels must run the table at next week's Mountain West Conference tournament to earn a spot in the NCAA tournament, their immediate goal is to get out from behind the 8-ball against Utah.

The conference-leading Utes (21-5, 11-1) drubbed UNLV 72-55 in the teams' first meeting at the Thomas & Mack Center on Feb. 8 and for that reason will a big favorite in tonight's rematch at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.

With Colorado State nipping at its heels, the Lady Rebels (19-6, 8-4) will need at least a split of the tough regular season-ending road trip to Utah to nail down the No. 3 seed in next week's conference event. UNLV will play at Brigham Young on Saturday night.

Tonight's game will match the two best shooting teams in the MWC by field-goal percentage, but only Utah was on target in the first meeting. Led by forward Kim Smith, last year's conference player of the year as a freshman, the Utes sank 54 percent from the field while holding UNLV to 34 percent shooting.

Smith was even better than advertised. She used up several Lady Rebels who tried to stop her, scoring 20 points and pulling down 10 rebounds by relying on court savvy more than natural ability.

"We're not going to focus on her as much as we did the first time," said UNLV coach Regina Miller. "The problem the first time is we got too close to her. We have to play better team defense on her than we did the first time."

The Lady Rebels will also have to get a little more production from RanDee Henry, who is expected to challenge Smith for conference player of the year honors. Henry, the MWC's leading scorer, was held to six points on 1-of-11 shooting in the first game.

UNLV also must stay away from giving up long scoring runs. Utah's 17-0 flurry in the second half broke open the first game, which the Utes led 35-30 at halftime.

The Lady Rebels believe they must take Utah out of its deliberate half-court offense which was so effective in the first game.

"We've got to get up and down the court and make them play our game," UNLV point guard InFini Robinson said.