UNLV meets first conference foe on the road

By Rob Miech

Saturday, Jan. 10, 2009 | 2:10 a.m.

FORT WORTH, Texas – Ten months ago, UNLV ran into a Jim Christian-led basketball team and took 20 minutes to smother it out of the NCAA tournament.

Christian’s squad doesn’t figure to wilt under pressure so easily this afternoon when TCU (10-5, 1-0 in the Mountain West Conference) plays host to UNLV (13-2, 1-0).

“They play hard and tough,” said UNLV assistant coach Lew Hill, who scouted the Horned Frogs. “They help each other out and contest every shot.”

In the first round of the NCAA tournament last spring, Christian coached Kent State when the Golden Flashes scored only 10 points in the first half against UNLV in Omaha.

It tied a modern-day record for first-half futility in the tournament. The Rebels defeated the Golden Flashes, 71-58, and lost to eventual national-champion Kansas in the next round.

Christian was wooed to TCU, which sports a new $5 million practice facility, by a seven-year contract with a base value of $4.2 million.

That the Frogs have won twice as many as they’ve lost is a major step for a program that hasn’t played in an NCAA tournament since Billy Tubbs ran his up-tempo game in 1998.

TCU, which last won a game in the NCAAs in 1987, averages only 3,104 fans for home games in the Daniel-Meyer Coliseum, so it’s a good thing Christian has time to turn it around.

The Frogs showed him their resiliency Tuesday night by beating Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, where junior college transfer Edvinas Ruzgas led them with 24 points.

UNLV has won its past eight games, but it hasn’t been watching tape of that victory over Kent State to remember how to beat Christian.

The Rebels only needed to review the lowlights of their league-opening, two-point victory over New Mexico to know how not to play.

The way they played defense on more than a few possessions, several Rebels should have considered transferring to matador school in Madrid.

Needless to say, UNLV fifth-year coach Lon Kruger ran an intense week of defensive drills in practice.

“Coach is trying to get our intensity up for the next game,” said senior guard Wink Adams. “That’s how we want to play the rest of the season. We can’t play like we did Saturday.”

Free-throw school might be in order, too, as the Rebels missed five of seven charity attempts in the final 38 seconds to give the Lobos a chance for a buzzer-beating game winner.

Kruger instructed his players to hit eight of 10 attempts at the end of every practice.

Players on the first and second teams, at opposite ends of the court, fired up one shot apiece and rotated. Miss at least three per 10 attempts, and it’s down and back.

“Eighty percent is a good mark for any college team,” Kruger said. “We had a chance to kind of wrap that game up earlier but we missed a bunch late.

“We had been shooting free throws well late in games until (that game). We’ll get better results next time.”

TCU is second in the nine-team league in free throws, at 73.8 percent. UNLV, at 67.5 percent, is eighth.

Adams isn’t too concerned about the misfiring at the line.

“It’ll work out,” he said. “I just think everyone, at first, wasn’t putting in the time. But we make a big deal about free throws in practice. Everyone’s shooting well.”

The game marks Adams’s return to the starting lineup after not playing in a victory at Louisville and playing reserve minutes against the Lobos.

He tweaked an abdominal muscle in the first half against Southern Utah on Dec. 23, when more than 10,000 fans witnessed his horrific fall to the floor.

Just 2 1/2 weeks later, the Houston native has a chance to improve to 7-0 in his home state. He doesn’t plan on having any Lone Star losses on his collegiate resume.

“Their defense is dictating their offense,” Adams said of the Frogs. “They get steals and play defense. They just execute. Whenever you play a team like that, it’s tough to get a win.

“It will take 10 or 11 guys to play defense and get the shots we want to win the game.”