Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Rebels expect better effort against Aztecs

As the head football coach at the University of Arizona in the early 1980s, Larry Smith once had a helicopter fly over the practice field and drop some tennis balls down after a tough loss.

The message? Bounce back ... just like the tennis balls when they hit the ground.

UNLV head basketball coach Lon Kruger hasn't resorted to any of those kinds motivational ploys ... yet. But the Rebels (7-6, 0-1), who were embarrassed by Utah on national television Monday night, 70-52, in their Mountain West Conference opener, are well aware there are still 13 league games remaining.

"We're disappointed and that's the way we should be after losing the first game of our conference like that," senior point guard Jerel Blassingame said. "We're going to bounce back from it because we don't want to play like that again. We were embarrassed. We didn't play with no effort. We know we're a better team than that and we're going to go out and prove it Saturday."

The Rebels host San Diego State (7-7, 1-0), which upset BYU, 59-57, in its MWC opener in Provo, on Saturday night at the Thomas & Mack Center to kick off a three-game homestand.

Nobody is looking forward to getting back on the court to put the Utah debacle behind them more than Blassingame, who had arguably his worst game as a Rebel in Salt Lake City.

Blassingame, perhaps a little too fired up at times for his head-to-head matchup with Utah guard Marc Jackson, finished with just one assist in 22 minutes of action. He scored eight points and had three turnovers while Jackson finished with a game-high 23 points and three assists.

"A lot of it is I was in some foul trouble and I couldn't get a rhythm going," Blassingame said. "You know, you have games like that. I'm a player and I'm going to come back and probably have 10 assists on Saturday."

Blassingame would figure to get well this weekend against the Aztecs. San Diego State's returning starting point guard, Wesley Stokes, failed to qualify academically for the spring semester and his Aztecs career is over. Tyler Smith, a 6-foot-2 freshman walk-on from Santa Margarita High School in Mission Viejo, Calif., has started the past five games at that position for Steve Fisher's squad with sophomore shooting guard Brandon Heath also seeing some time at the point.

"I'm quite sure (Smith) is a good guard if they have him starting," Blassingame said. "I haven't seen him on tape yet but I'm going to get in there and watch some film of him."

Despite his one-assist effort at Utah, Blassingame still leads the Mountain West Conference by a wide margin with an average of 7.1 assists per game. Wyoming's Jay Straight is a distant second at 5.2, with no other guard in the conference even averaging four. Blassingame also ranks second to Utah's Tim Drisdom in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.9-to-1.

Blassingame, who also had just one assist in losses at Stanford and Boise State as a junior, said he hasn't gotten down on himself over Monday night's performance.

"Not at all," he said. "It happens. I know I haven't really been playing the ball I'm capable of playing. Maybe I can get it going on Saturday."

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