Lady Rebels set for disappointing BYU

Wednesday, March 10, 2004 | 9:45 a.m.

DENVER -- There's a feeling among coaches that in a matchup of competitive teams, it's hard for one to beat the other three times in the same season.

If that's true, it could be to the Lady Rebels' advantage, provided they make it all the way to the Mountain West Conference women's basketball tournament championship game and New Mexico is the opponent.

But as the luck of the draw would have it, the sneaker will be on the other foot tonight when UNLV opens tournament play at 8:30 against Brigham Young at the Pepsi Center.

Although the third-seeded Lady Rebels are 0-2 against the top-seeded Lobos, having come up short in two close games, they are also 2-0 against the No. 6 Cougars. And one of the wins -- a 67-59 victory at Provo -- came just four nights ago.

The Cougars, picked to finish second in the regular season, have been the Mountain West's biggest disappointment. UNLV coach Regina Miller is just hoping BYU isn't entertaining any grand ideas about salvaging its season in Denver.

"They're a scary team," said Miller, whose team will bring a 21-6 record (10-4 MWC) into the tournament and needs a strong showing here to improve its position on the NCAA tournament bubble. "They have size and they have shooters and they play good defense.

"We'll definitely have to play a good game to beat them for the third time. We're not taking anything for granted. The way they finished is not indicative of the kind of team they have."

Miller's not the only one saying that. Virtually every one of the coaches who spoke on Monday's teleconference promoting the tournament believe there are as many as six teams that are capable of cutting down the nets on Saturday, with BYU (15-13, 5-9) among that group.

And the Cougars' seed is reason enough to put the rest of the conference on alert. It was just last year that the Colorado State men's team ran the table as a No. 6 seed at the Thomas & Mack Center and beat the Rebels' men on their home foor to crash the NCAA's big dance.

BYU coach Jeff Judkins, a former Utah Ute and Boston Celtic, said the great thing about conference tournaments is that they provide teams like his with a second chance.

"Hopefully, we can change a lot of things by playing well in this tournament," said Jenkins, whose Cougars are just two years removed from an NCAA Sweet 16 appearance and have been a MWC championship game participant in each of the past two years, when the event was played at the Thomas & Mack Center.

BYU beat UNLV 61-46 in the 2002 championship game.

"We've been able to put things together and we've been a little lucky playing in Las Vegas," Judkins said in reference to Erin Thorn's buzzer-beating 3-point shot in overtime that lifted BYU to a first-round victory against the Lady Rebels last year. "But I don't like our opponent. Vegas is one of the best teams in the league right now. The only positive is we just played them Saturday so we don't have to spend a lot of time on preparation."

He said much of that prep time will be spent on devising a way to stop UNLV's RanDee Henry, who has run amok against BYU in UNLV's two wins.

The MWC's newcomer of the year had a monster game in the Lady Rebels' 77-64 victory at Cox Pavilion, scoring 25 points and pulling down 20 rebounds. In Saturday's rematch, she finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds.

"We've got to get Henry to miss the trip," Judkins joked about what it would take for the Cougars to spring a first-round upset.

"She's one of the best players I've seen since I've been coaching the women. We don't have a big (front-line player) that can guard her from the outside and we don't have a guard that can guard her in the post. She's just a hard matchup for us."

The Lady Rebels have never won the Mountain West tournament, but this may be their best opportunity. As evidenced by a 68-60 overtime victory at Utah last Thursday, which snapped the Utes' 27-game home winning streak and knocked them down to a No. 2 seed in this tournament, UNLV is playing as well as anybody in the conference.

Miller said one of the keys to making a run in the tournament would be reprising the kind of team defense the Lady Rebels played at Utah.

"That was probably one of our best efforts in the Utah game, but the BYU game wasn't one of our best efforts," she said. "So now we have room for improvement."

The UNLV-BYU game will be the last of today's four quarterfinals, with No. 1 New Mexico meeting No. 8 Air Force, No. 4 Colorado State facing No. 5 Wyoming and No. 2 Utah meeting No. 7 San Diego State in the other three.

The New Mexico-Air Force and Colorado State-Wyoming winners will meet at noon on Friday in the first semifinal with the Utah-San Diego State survivor taking on either UNLV or BYU at 2:30.